Tee shot

The holidays are coming: one if by land, two if by sea. I think I'm ready for them, prepared but not overly so. It always surprises me when people surprise me with gifts. Tautological? Maybe so, but I'd rather be surprised when people surprise me than not.

My new piano student's dad works for a coffee and tea importer and has, at the first lesson, supplied me with a svelte canister of illy espresso. He was also responsible for the aforementioned surprise, which, now, will be of no surprise to you, the reader, as I have foreshadowed it like a Thai sex professional's eyes. [I don't know why I feel the need to have a simile for everything.]

So, the contents of the surprise were teas. Generally I'm into coffee, but that doesn't mean I'm opposed to tea. I like the taste (although it doesn't excite me like the dark richness of some coffees) and I actually prefer the way it makes me feel. It's like going to the Handlebar wanting to order the Ground Nut Stew but ending up with the Handlebar Salad: a little less satisfying going down, but an hour later you feel much better.

So this post is fueled by tea. I don't think the tea itself is to blame for its stream-of-consciousness nature. But maybe. It's a totally different experience drinking tea. And to be more specific: good tea.

In fact, good anything.

I take food and drink for granted quite often. Coffee is my indentured servant; it fills a need and I only notice when it's bad. In the summer, when I'm riding multiple dozens of miles a day--sometimes scores--food becomes a necessity more than a luxury. I don't enjoy food as much when I'm eating whatever and whenever just to fuel the machine.

But when you encounter something you know is Quality--especially when you have to pay for it yourself--it gives you pause. Even in the heat of the summer, when Lisa took me to The Gage on Michigan, I savored the experience. [And yet I can't remember right now what I had. Being a third or fourth date, I must have had other things to think about. The meal at Uncommon Ground I remember more clearly: lamb ribs.]

So this morning, before I ate my chocolate croissant delivered last night by the New Wave croissant fairy, I had a lovely cup of loose leaf Earl Grey tea.

Ingredients: China black tea and white tips (96%), bergamot essential oil (2%), cornflowers and sunflowers (2%).

Subtle. The first cup might have been a little weak (or the milk was too strong), but it still drew me in. Maybe the more subdued taste pulls you in--like a whisper instead of a shout.

I love how, whether coffee or tea, when you don't stir it after adding milk, there are surprise plumes of lighter shades of brown that emerge, making swirlycues and spirals like little galaxies.

Fairy Tale

Once upon a castle, there was a time. The time is now. The place is here.

In the castle lived a family of princes and paupers, ogres and wizards, early mornings and wild knights.

And there was a Lord of the manor, the cock of the walk so-to-speak, who dealt in fantasy and debauchery, building things and tearing them down. No one was quite sure how he ascended to the throne; it seemed like it had always been that way. There was something peculiar about his perceived benevolence; somewhere lurking in the background was a Machiavellian instinct (or desire) that stole it away as soon as it gave.

And there was a princess, having the heart and soul of twenty fair maidens, who visited from afar, stopping for a moment on her travels, bringing warmth and joy, intelligence and insight. In her carpetbaggage were well-worn books, several pounds of curiosity, and, deep down, locked away in a secret vault, a feeling of inadequacy. You see, in the labyrinthine folds of knowledge, the expanding file folder in the recesses of her baggage, the princess lacked any proof of her abilities. So while others presented symbols of knowledge stamped onto parchment, she had to open her bag, show the books, show the lessons learned, demonstrate her curiosity.

[and, in the darkness, when no one was looking, she would spread her wings and fly...]

When the princess met the Lord of the manor, she immediately did not fall in love. Nor did he. This is not a love story. But one warm Fall day, when the turning of the leaves was frozen in time by hopeful optimism, the castle-dwellers took a long mental journey, in and out of space and time, and when they came back, the Lord and the princess were nowhere to be found.

Hours later, of course, there was a close up of them smoking a cigarette accompanied by a sultry sax solo.

At this point in the tale, I should point out that your humble narrator does not play a role in this story aside from outside observer. Granted, observing does constitute interaction (what's the sound of one hand clapping? what's the story without the teller?), affecting the outcome, but for out purposes, the effect is negligible.

What seemed like a chance encounter in the hallucinogenic haze turned into something more conscious and habitual. Over time, the princess flew less and less, exchanging freedom for stability and losing part of her soul in the process.

What is happiness? And who are we to interrupt what seems to be a convenient arrangement?

Happiness is being loved for all the qualities that you yourself love about you.

And unhappiness is being loved for only your most superficial qualities and being paraded around for those qualities.

[Everyone wants to be a little punk rock. And if they can't be it, they can at least buy it.]

So it seems that the fairy tale is coming to an end. And in the disintegration, I think I've made a new friend. [Not "Facebook friend" but real friend.] But maybe a "Moment friend". We may share a moment and help each other through this time and then drift apart, knowing that we'll always have Paris.

a million hours with a stranger

I was in Europe this summer for 2 months. My European friend here recommended that I go to her country, Belgium, and even to her city, Ghent. (City? Town? Standards are so different in Europe.) She even gave me a hookup: some friends who might be able to show me around town. They couldn't. But they gave me the email of another girl who was "into couchsurfing." (I don't think that's a euphemism for anything.)

We got beer--dark and rich Belgian beers--and had a nice chat before going to a Jazz club. We talked about music, and it seemed there were some points of convergence in our tastes: mostly Jazz and Blues.

Turns out, she was myopically passionate about African-inspired music, whether it be South African, Afro-Cuban, or African American. Me, I'm not into folk music per se but start to appreciate it more as it becomes more evolved, less visceral, more cerebral. Hence Jazz. Blues is not the most elevated of musical styles, and it certainly can wear out its welcome, but I think it's the sound, the Affect, that strikes a chord with me.

Somehow, I ended up in a car with this girl for several dozens of hours as we drove from Chicago to Memphis to New Orleans and finally to Austin. She was visiting the States, several months after we met in Belgium, came through Chicago and then wanted to explore the South. Somehow, I had never been. Really, the whole South, unexplored.

And the driving time gave us the time to explore our differences.

We started with music and moved on to life: she wanted kids with her boyfriend (a 48-year-old half Brazilian half Cameroon man living in Belgium, still living with his baby mamma) and projected that feeling on to every living being and possibly some inanimate objects as well. She's one of those women who would have children on her own if she had to. Which means that if she was preggers tomorrow and her man left her on Tuesday, she'd be just as happy raising the chilluns without him.

Having children was never really a goal of mine: more of an assumed eventuality. I somehow got over that feeling a couple of years ago. One would think we could just let our differences coexist, but I felt like I had to defend my lack of significant desire against her assumptions and projections.

I convinced her that it's a gender thing: men don't want children in the same visceral way that women do. In general. We may want progeny for a million other reasons, but we have reasons. The women who want little bundles of joy want them in the way that I want food when I'm hungry. I know this. I know that we all have our own path. But it took a lot of convincing for her to think like that.

And I think she just wanted to share her excitement with someone. Is that so wrong? I was not having it, and I feel a little bad, but I'm not about to fake it. So when she said that she had a couple weeks with her boyfriend in New York (before Chicago), I wasn't necessarily expecting: "I'm not going to drink very much...because I might be pregnant!" I should have just said, "That's great!" instead of "Oh. Really? First month off the pill?" That's not what people want to hear when they're excited about the possibility. At one point, frustrated by other things, I said something like: "Fine, get your hopes up." But really, what's the crime in that? I've learned not to get my hopes up (and I keep learning), but for her, she knows that, if she's not preggers now, she will be some day later. Mild disappointment assuaged by eternally springing hope.

And, deep down, secretly, maybe I didn't want her to be pregnant. It seemed like an unnecessary nuisance to deal with on the trip. (Such are children, albeit slightly necessary.) Also, maybe I was assessing her situation (never a good idea from the far outside of someone's situation) and judging this an inopportune time.

So, the big question--10,000 dollars--remains unanswered. She's back in Belgium; I'm back in Chicago. It's cold, and I'm hanging around the house trying to plot a course into the future (through conference with the past).

thankfulness

What better time than now--9am on Thanksgiving with my visiting Belgian friend asleep (and now in the shower)--to sit down and contemplate on the stuff I'm actually thankful for.

I've never been one to be thankful for thankfulness. It often seems like a task--an obligation--but, like so many other such tasks--yoga, reiki, meditating--it probably nudges my sanity in a positive direction.

This year, with 1/6th of the year spent tramping around Europe, the thankfulness flows like sweet Beaujolais on the third Thursday of November. And, having spent nearly 1/2 the year holed up in a cottage in the woods, I can feel thankfulness burning like a fire I built myself.

I never would have made it to Europe without a stockpile of money. And so, while my parents might assume I'm most thankful for the airline miles that sent me there, it all starts 10 years ago when I evaded taking on any big student loans. My parents had saved up 10k per year for me and my sister, which would have covered the tuition at U of I but not most private colleges. So I guess I should remember too that my intelligence, the one that won me another 9k in a scholarship. [This still feels like a crock; I feel like whatever smarts I got were won with no real effort of my own but through some sort of cosmic lottery: a mixture of genetics and parenting. Wherever it comes from, I'm thankful.]

[Aside: should I be thankful for my lack of work ethic?]

So without student loans from undergrad and having broke even (barely) from my teaching assistantship in grad school, I have been slowly saving up--mostly thanks to...

Bobby's Bike Hike

Yes, for as much as I complain about what the various vicissitudes of the job has done to my psyche, I can sometimes make "bank". Hell, I managed to save up 4k just in the last 3 months.

In fact, now that I think about it, this year, up until August, has been f*cking awesome. 6 months (re)discovering (my)self thanks to parents and the cottage (and some savings); 2 months (re)discovering Europe (and my)self. It's only been in the last couple months that I've actually had to make the doughnuts.

It's been a good ride so far; I hope to have as much to be thankful for next year.

crisis / opportunity

I've been through my fair share of premarital strife. Not to say more or less than other people; literally, a fair share. I've been both the cause and affected, equally balanced as if through some karmic law, and feel pretty confident that, whatever happens in the future, I'll make it through. (Because it will never be as bad as it was.)

I say all this because my roommate had a breakup. Got dumped. No fun for anyone. We all knew the guy was a jerk--including her--and so while it was a surprise, it left me feeling more relieved than anything. This was just before the weekend, even though they had some obligations over the weekend--which were held.

Weekend comes and goes, and it's Monday. I think about playing the drums, but it's the morning and she's probably still sleeping. But then she came home around noon and holed up in her room. Confusing to me.

Tuesday, same scenario. Still confusing but made worse by her more visible distress. While smoking on the back porch, I interrupt her solitude, trying to make conversation. I suggest we go get shakes. "Maybe," shivering and weepy.

When I'm in such a state, the last thing I want is to be around people. But I know everyone's different. I can't tell what she wants, what she needs.

She comes to find me after a bit. My hopes are raised: shakes? No. "If anyone comes looking for me, could you not let them in?" "Sure." "Thanks." I figure her now ex has threatened to come by, and she wants to avoid him.

I go to take a shower, get out, and go back to my room. There's been some moving around; the front door is unlocked. I get dressed. Halfway through, I hear people coming up the stairs. I hear unfamiliar voices coming in. I figure these are the people she wanted to keep out; too late. But then I notice the ambulance on the street.

I finish getting dressed and find her door closed, strange voices coming out. Eventually, the paramedics and two of her friends lead her out, wailing and sobbing, and they make their way carefully down the stairs.

There's a big cop car behind the ambulance with its lights on. After a few minutes, this stocky fast-talking cop comes up and grills me. "What's going on here?" I think to myself: "you're asking me? What the fuck. I want more answers than I can give." I figure he might know even less than I, so I tell him everything I know. "She broke up with her boyfriend over the weekend; she was sad and crying all day." I show him her room and we find a handle of vodka, borrowed from the well-stocked bar my other roommate keeps. And there's a note:

"I wanted to leave the room clean but I couldn't." -- in blue marker.

We can only assume what her intentions are. One housemate swears it was an accident; he's probably in denial. I am pretty confident the self-destruction was intentional--but to what degree? [I found out a day later she deleted her facebook profile.]

I wonder what I should have done differently and whether or not it would have had any effect. She's the type of person who relies heavily on substances to change how she feels--prescriptions for valium and anti-anxiety medication; self-medicated with alcohol. It's something I can't really relate to. I may have dabbled in this kind of thinking while getting through other romantic trauma, but I always learn the same lesson: substances are a distraction from the problem not the solution. In fact, this brand of thinking is more common among my roommates than I would have expected. Lots of drugs; lots of drinking--still somehow within reason but only just.

I'm prepared to assume that, anytime someone pollutes their body to such a degree, it is a sign of repression. Why don't we ever seek psychiatric help? Why do we wait until we completely fall apart? Health is one of those things that is improved by small increments over a long period of time--but can be destroyed much more quickly. The good news is, after a couple months of readjustment in which I've been somewhat depressed, I feel on some sort of track.

I have finally stopped worrying about not having a purpose, making finding a purpose my new purpose. It's at least a direction to find a direction.

Be well.

sadness is introverted anger

I was leading a group of tourists around the city on bikes the other day when I saw a woman. She was driving, I was biking, so I had every right to be happier than she. But she was driving a BMW, so she was probably more comfortable--with her richass-warmer turned on full bore in a desperate attempt to overcome frigidity. And yet she looked sad.

I faked a smile as I'm so wont to do. On the bike tour, I'm so good at faking it that it feels almost real. This must be how hookers feel. And in the fleeting moment that I passed, I saw in her face what I felt inside, whereas she probably only saw my shit-eating grin--nothing more than a reflex.

I think of this now thanks to Jeremy Denk--one of Lisa's friends whose blog I've been casually following. He opens:

My friend Cory said he heard a tiny scrap of laughter out his window the other night, and it made him want to cry, thinking of all the pleasures happening elsewhere.

And I know that feeling.

So my question is: did my faked happy smile make this woman a little less sad or did it exacerbate her sadness by showing her images of happiness? If the former, then it was worth it. If the latter, then I should have been more honest with my face, empathizing with her existential angst.

And finally, maybe the worst thing about sadness are those moments in which we are not permitted to show it, the moments in which we stifle it, tamp it down, and put on a pleasant façade. Either way, at some point and in some way, it's going to come out. Extroverted sadness is anger.

resume struggle: engage

Been there, back again. 3 months of adventuring--2 months in Europe and some time in Chicago--and I'm struggling again. This time, struggling to get back on track. The once-clear future has been clouded by months of ignoring it, teasing it, beating it with a stick. The when that mattered was now, but the current now is about then; how do we get there from here?

Europe was not not a struggle. But it was a struggle just to stay afloat, not leaving me time or energy to choose a direction. I'm a good swimmer, but out there in the middle of the ocean, it's hard to pick the right direction. I bobbed around for awhile, letting the currents guide me.

I spent most of August doing bike tours like mad--40 hours a week--and have been making

"bank". It gave me something to do, but I feel like I've been swimming on a treadmill; time to set the ocean in motion.

I have a love-hate relationship with the future. But at least I know it will be better than the past.

I almost started a whole new blog, but I think two will suffice: one for moments of forward momentum, the other for tangential shunts, the one framing the other.

And now a random word of the day: limn

ps

I'm not really that good at saying good bye; I'm better at saying see you later. So stay tuned. There is the potential for a few more postscripts.

rise above the wave ahead

Procrastination makes everything better. I'm sure that's how wine was discovered. (speaking of which, sip)

I'm sitting in a room in a French country house in the suburbs of Paris. Everything that I was building is either built or on hold. Including this blog. This blog was meant to be the commentary on my alone time in the woods of Michigan, embodying the struggle. And I was that struggle, and I am precisely that which I struggled against. But now I'm not struggling. Now I feel more like I'm living.

And so while I've been thinking about it, hinting at it, muttering it under my breath at coffee shops, now it's time to do it: end it. I have come to appreciate moments of cadence, juncture, as necessary to a healthy perception of time. And time is all we really have, no matter how many times it slips through out fingers.

So while this will be my last real post on this blog (I will finish culling for another best of post) I have already started another one: cork in the sea. Not only is it a line from one of my songs, it's the way I like to live my life, the way I'll have to be as I crisscross Europe for the next few months, sleeping on couches, guest rooms, and fancy hotels, hitchhiking and ridesharing to travel; it's going to be fun.

But not a struggle. It's more a matter of flow. As in, go with it.

Which is both exciting and difficult, so get ready for some good stories.

where i lay my head

In wrapping up this stage of my life, I thought it would be nice to pay homage to some of the perks and disadvantages of crashing with friends.

Right now, I'm staying in Nicole's while she is out of town. Having keys is a perk. Living on the 14th floor provides good views but adds a couple minutes in the elevator to the commute.

She definitely has one of the best showers.

She has internet, but it's flaky. But since it's a huge apartment building, there are 20 other wifis around; only two don't require passwords.

Unlike the other high-rises around, this one has a pool in which I went swimming today. It's not big enough to get a good workout in, but I went back and forth a couple dozen times, tread some water, and did some vertical kicking.

And then there's the unexpected. Nicole had told me how she went to IML last weekend; I had actually tried to go too but couldn't find it. (I had 2 hours to kill between bike tours.) IML is international man of leather and is primarily a gay leatherfest. Knowing all this, I was a little less surprised to see this calendar appear on the wall.

Do you like that egg shape I added? The gayest I felt was digitally altering the photo to hide the pen15. When I first noticed it, I was startled but in the hours and days that followed, I hardly even notice it. I think that's a decorative whip of some sort hanging next to it.

Speaking of gay, I read today that most homophobia grows out of homosexual desires that are perceived as repulsive and repressed: "there is a growing body of research that supports the notion that homophobia in some men could be a reaction to their own homosexual impulses." Looks like homophobia is uncool. Especially if you believe what Glee says. They (apparently) make homophobia look like something expressed by stupid bully jocks, casting it in a negative light. Some douchey conservative guy (who, at this point is still repressing the shit out of his homosexual urges, unlike some people...) thinks it's unbalanced, promoting a pro-gay anti-homophobe message. Um, duh? It's a show about musicals or something.

Although it is interesting that it's on Fox.

time for a sabbatical

I am always on the lookout for when things I see or read reference things going on in my life or the lives around me.

The other day, for instance, I went off to O'Hare to see Quentin before he heads to Europe for 2 months. Sound familiar? We're going to meet up along the way, so we have some things to talk about.

Related to something else, a conversation I had today, I found this article. It is ostensibly about "nervous breakdowns" but in the meat of the article brings up other terms, such as "burnout syndrome." It seems to me that you can be burnt out without having a breakdown. So maybe they're not perfect synonyms but part of our on-going quest to be more precise with language.

The scientists in Europe who came up with "burnout syndrome" talked about 3 varieties: frenetic, underchallenged, and worn out. I like those categories and think they may prove helpful to people to pinpoint the source of their angst.

I think I was dabbling in all three without really focusing on any one, avoiding completely burning out.

I spent the first few months defining the problems and then the next few months healing. Now I'm ready for an adventure. And then the cycle begins again.

take your machine to the airport

In a few days I'll be in Europe. My friend (and former student at Iowa) Quentin will be there during almost the same period as me. He left Wednesday from O'Hare and had a few hours before his flight, so I went out to hang.

I was in Andersonville, which is not on the Blue line, the most efficient way of getting to the airport. I had my bike, so I thought I would bike to Wicker Park, pick up the Blue line and then hang out in the WP with Laura afterwards. But then, the time changed and I decided to ride straight west, picking up the Blue line wherever I crossed it.

But then I crossed it and kept riding, making it all the way there.

To be honest, I did some research on biking to O'Hare finding this page. I took Foster straight west and then followed most of the suggestions, taking Higgins to Mannheim. Here's the route I took.

Higgins was fine at first--low traffic, 35 mph limit--but started to cause me worry when I saw some narrow bridges and other highway features. But, just like in the picture, there was little traffic. When the speed limit got to be 45, I was even more cautious but almost never felt unsafe. There was one SUV driven by some apathetic, life-hating SOB that left less room than I would like--when cars are passing faster, they should leave more room--but most were quite considerate.

Higgins to Mannheim isn't maybe the most direct route--a crow could do better--but is probably route that uses the most straight lines. I turned left on Mannheim, to the confusion of drivers and truckers, but since I turned with the left arrow, the bulk of the traffic stood still waiting at the light. I only stayed on Mannheim for a block, turning right at the first light and getting on Bessie Coleman drive going south.

The Higgins part was the worst; Bessie Coleman and the subsequent access road had much slower traffic, more lanes, and a really nice shoulder. I think it's funny that O'Hare is one of those few places in Chicago that you can't really get to without using some machine--car or train. Human power transportation--walking, biking--is somehow incongruous to airports--near the top of the industrial food chain. [A similar incongruity to when I rode my bike into and through the steel mill--marauding.] When I got to the terminals, there were a couple guys who had, apparently, passed me and who said "hey it's the bike guy." Whatever, sure. Das bin ich!

Then I met Quentin and had a coffee at one of the few places to buy anything to eat or drink not past security and talked about music, relationships, divorce, bikes, and meeting in Prague.

To leave, I was thinking of just taking the train to Wicker Park to meet Laura. But it was 5:40. There's a ban on bikes from 4-6pm on CTA trains (and 7-9am), which, ostensibly has something to do with rush hour. I was hoping to cheat the system (by 20 minutes), especially considering I was headed into the city--a reverse commute.

But no. The letter-of-the-law CTA peon checked his watch and barred me from entering. Well shit. I tried asking him how else I could leave O'Hare on bike but his only response was to wait 20 minutes. Not my M.O.

So I biked. Took the access road and then took Mannheim south (see photo at top) but jut for a few blocks (wide shoulders are key) and got on Irving Park going east. Irving is not the best bike road either but the best I could see on myPhone. I played with the lights a little to avoid riding in heavy traffic (~45mph) but mostly rode in the gutter like the disaffected minority I am. It's much more stressful, taking much more energy, riding along such roads. But I made it, only cursing under my breath at a few impatient drivers. Then, beautifully, like the sun piercing through the clouds after an afternoon thunderstorm, a guy in a metallic red pickup truck gave me a thumbs up. It totally worked, changing my whole perception of drivers from nameless, faceless tailpipes and license plates to people operating machinery. He turned somewhere behind me and then passed me. Then I passed him. And so on. It was super cute. Then, on Milwaukee, I passed him definitively and passed a long line of cars never to look back. Milwaukee progressively became better for biking, and I could feel the tension float away as the neighborhoods got more familiar.

So yes. It's possible to ride your bike to and from O'Hare, but it's not for the faint of heart (literally and figuratively; it's over 10 miles and you should go ~20mph so as to mimic the speed of traffic).

[It only took me 50 minutes, which is about the same as driving (with traffic). Bikes FTW!]

music and the brain

For some time, I've followed the New York Times "Most Emailed Articles" feed on Reader. I find it a good way to ensure that my reading material is both well-written, topical, and popular (to NYT readers).

Here's a quotation from an interesting one recently:

Both species are vocal learners, with the ability to imitate sounds. We share that rare skill with parrots. In that one respect, our brains are more like those of parrots than chimpanzees. Since vocal learning creates links between the hearing and movement centers of the brain, I hypothesized that this is what you need to be able to move to beat of music.

aside: Darick

I was at Darick's last night working on a post when he came home in a state of tense distraction. Somewhere between leaving the house in the morning, driving to work, working, and coming home, he had misplaced his wallet. We looked all over the apartment finding nothing, and he checked the car a couple of times.

He came up with two possible places it might have been left or dropped--both of which were dumpsters. In the morning, there were some new dress shirts still in the packages sitting on top of the dumpster in the alley. Maybe he had his wallet still in his hand and dropped it to pick up the dress shirts.

[Let's pause and appreciate the strangeness of new dress shirts being thrown out.]

Then, at work, he threw out a bag of garbage. Did it get mixed up?

We had dinner in, some really good homemade chili from Amish country in Ohio, and just as we finished watching what may be the best-worst movie I've ever seen, he got an email from the Old Town School. Apparently one of their teachers had found it and turned it in.

But the Old Town School is 40 blocks south. So how? Darick must have kept his Old Town membership card in his wallet, and whoever found it turned it in there. It's like what people used to do before the internet. They also could have just googled him and found darickmaassen.com.

narrative

Maybe what I am doing is telling my own personal narrative. Not just telling, wrangling it. For the overarching narrative arc has never been my forte. I can manage 5-10 minutes in music, 3 hours on a bike, but putting together days to make weeks, weeks to make months, months to make years, is a higher level.

A couple weeks ago, I stepped back from the day-to-day and made a highlight reel list of bullet points of my life, thinking it important to have some perspective. Right now, I am the only one charged with both the living and the telling of my life; some are not so fortunate:

"How does a man who invented himself as a force by writing one of the most eloquent memoirs in political history lose control of his own narrative?"

That is Maureen Dowd talking about Obama. I'm having a difficult enough time drawing an arc in my life; I can't imagine also having to contend with external biographers.

Sartre was famous for saying: "Life has no meaning a priori … It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose." I've spent the last 6 months, among other things, destroying and then rebuilding my own meaning, documenting it through the blog. Obama seemed to have a good sense of where he was from and where he was going--when he wrote Dreams. Maureen Dowd may be right, but I'm not too worried, hoping that his loss of core meaning is temporary.

hOpe.

Sartre and Beauvoir lived out their philosophy, but it was mostly Beauvoir who then turned her own biography back into philosophy by writing thinly disguised narratives of her life. (Which I hope to read in Paris, maybe finding the books used chez les bouquinistes.)

Beauvoir is remembered, of course, for The Second Sex, more of a dissection than a narrative, that posits women as second-class citizens. A lot has changed in the last 50 years--in America we almost just had a President who was a chick--but apparently there's a new translation that restores cuts made in the 1953 translation. According to the review, it is becoming more and more irrelevant.

Just like Obama, feminists have to tend to their narrative, pruning it like a tree.

As for me, I think I'm out of the "tending" phase and am moving towards "growing".

temperature

Monday, Memorial Day, I forgot to celebrate. The day started out a perfect temperature, as I rode down the LFP at 8am without any food or coffee in my system. It wasn't too crowded, but there were enough obstacles to keep it interesting--mostly runners who mostly know how to comport themselves on a multi-use path.

By the time I finished the 8 mile trek, in about half-an-hour, I felt a little warm and had gotten a bit sweaty. It felt like a nice day.

I was slated to do 2 Obama tours, riding down there in the morning with some people at 9, then meeting some more people down in Hyde Park at 10, finishing at about 12, sending the first people back to downtown, and meeting a new group at 1. Busy. There was only one woman who rode down at 9; though she seemed incredibly high maintenance at first, she turned out to be a good conversation partner. Good thing, since I basically hung out with her the whole first part of the day.

She also turned out to be a good rider and pushed the riding tempo faster than I would have on my own. At least, faster than I wanted to go that day, for I had already ridden a tour Friday, 2 tours Saturday, and one on Sunday with all the requisite commuting from Andersonville; I was really hoping for some relaxed riding.

We got down there in 29 minutes, about 15 minutes faster than with a "normal" group. On my road bike, I've made it in 22, but we were riding hybrids, quite a disadvantage.

The two people who were supposed to meet us in Hyde Park didn't show up, so we were still on our own. We ended up finishing the tour in an hour-and-a-quarter, 45 minutes faster than usual. And just as we pulled into the cafe at the Hyde Park Arts Center, it started to rain. I knew about the rain, I knew it was coming, but all signs pointed to it blasting through quickly. We watched it pour, and she shared some of her nosh, me waiting for my next tour, her waiting for the rain to clear before heading back.

The rain didn't end up stopping before the next tour showed up, snapping me out of my rainy-day reverie and into the reality of work. The four of them were of two groups: a mom from Pittsburgh visiting her daughter living in Chicago; a couple from something like Ft. Wayne, IN.

Fortunately, they were great sports, since the rain didn't let up till just after the tour ended. I was doing my best to be a great sport but was horribly unprepared, thinking that any rain would be brief and avoidable, and only had shorts and a t-shirt. The temperature dropped with the rain, and, in stark contrast to the first tour, I couldn't get the tour to go fast enough to build up any body heat; by the end of the tour I was shivering and cursing under my breath as we rode.

And then we couldn't see Obama's house. He was in town over the holiday weekend, so the security was much more strict. On our way out through Kenwood, in the blocks behind his house, we found nothing but blocked streets. I kept us going--mostly to stay warm--until we got to 47th street which was all blocked off. We stood there on the corner of 47th and Ellis, paralyzed in all directions by flashing lights: city cops, uchicago cops, state troopers, secret service, traffic management.

And then, in lieu of any glimpse of the house, we saw his motorcade. That seemed to suffice. Warmed the cockles of my heart but real warmth had to wait.

The tour ended, I got another coffee--my 3rd of the day--but this one mostly to warm up. It maybe worked, maybe not but ended up not making me feel great. At least I could fly up the lakefront and build up some heat. I took this photo on the way back as the rain finally cleared. I got back to the shop and stood in front of the hand driers for a while, warming up and drying off.

I borrowed a hoodie to ride back and was plenty warm, sweating just slightly. Had dinner at Corbett's--fish'n'chips, yum--and rode back. The weather had returned to perfect after a long, strange journey.

[I was a little disconcerted when I struggle to remember the people on the second tour--names, faces, origins--since the tour seemed so memorable. But then they came together like remembering a dream. I guess it's only normal; I figure I've seen a hundred people or more over the weekend.]

best of: Dec '09 - Jan '10

I killed a bottle of Absinthe and started sifting through my past. Here's the first installment.

• I make no small plans, but no good are big plans left unfinished. - 12/15/09
• I'm digging new grooves in the soft clay and yet they seem so familiar. Soon they'll become ruts but of my own doing. - 12/16/09
  
• Draguer is the French verb for flirt; bloguer is the French verb for blog. And here in Michigan, with a limited array of options [for the former], I can focus on the latter. - 12/17/09
  
• His characters are not studied tissue by tissue as under a scientist's microscope, rather they are built up living cell by living cell out of the author's experience and imagination. - 12/18/09
  
• There are still some piles destined for storage or things I just don't know what to do with yet. (and there still are) - Every week's end is another's beginning 12/20/09
  
• I realized that the remote, undisclosed location is not a magic bullet (go, go, go!) but is just part of the overall solution. I still have to show up and be present. - 12/21/09
  
• Time to get down with some cartography and chart a course. - 12/22/09
  
• I think therefore reality exists. - 12/23/09
  
• Having forgotten the "reason" for the season, I am still looking for a way to root myself, some tradition or belief that gives the holiday depth and purpose.
• The echoes of the past seem louder and heavier this year than before. Maybe that's because I'm finally listening. So maybe soon I'll understand. - 12/27/09
  
• sift for gold in a sea of crap. - 12/28/09
  
• Sometimes you have to close your eyes while you type so you can see your thoughts more clearly. Sometimes you have to close your eyes while you listen to hear the music better. - 12/30/09
  
• I am not my preferences. - 12/30/09
• NYE: After 4 hours of sleep, I was wide awake and the world was spinning with possibility. And just spinning.
• "Well do you live somewhere? 'Cause I don't." - 1/2/10
• I managed to bring in the new year with the perfect amount of planning and surprise, leading from one brunch to another, from coffee pot to pot luck. - 1/4/10
  
• Tomorrow begins tonight, but tonight began this morning. - 1/5/10
• Daft Punk!
• Sometimes you make your own great force in opposition to yourself. - 1/6/10
  
• Even if someone else had the right answer, I wouldn't believe it until I found it myself. - 1/6/10
  
• It's funny how I spend all day tweaking details and then the stuff I show you I made in like 10 minutes. - 1/6/10
  
• I am learning a lot about music the old fashioned way: aurally and through imitation. - 1/8/10
  
• Mad World, Va Tosca
• In my music, I strive to create organic change. - 1/12/10
  
• Off to the side of the road, I found some footsteps from days before; turns out, they were mine. And I got the silly idea to walk in them - walking in my own footsteps. I realized that it's a pretty good metaphor for what I'm doing up here. - 1/13/10
  
• I've also been trying to incorporate a new thought habit into my life: when I see people, I want to see them as the complex mystery of history and interrelationships and not as a 2-dimensional automaton. - 1/13/10
• Live each moment as if, when you die, they take a random, 15-minute sample of your waking life and use that to preserve your legacy to the universe. - 1/15/10
  
• Ostensibly, no big deal. Ostensibly, it's just a thing, an object, practically immaterial. But in this case, it had become even larger as a symbol than as an object. - 1/17/10
  
• I'm watching Anikan fall to the dark side; he's such a whiny crybaby. It reminds me of someone I'm getting to know all too well. (Me) - 1/18/10
  
• no matter how much I pretend, I am still holding out hope for something meaningful with someone. - 1/19/10
  
• That bottle didn't really contain wine, for me, but a year's worth of waiting, hoping, and disappointment. - 1/19/10
• I'm an intensity junky. - 1/19/10
• The things we keep we keep for our emotional attachment to them. In our Materialist culture, it's our' version of karma. - 1/19/10
• I got emotionally drunk and then had an emotional hangover. - 1/19/10
  
• [The] One thing that I love about Webern is that his entire catalog fits (as mp3s) on one CD. - 1/21/10
• My new process is to imagine the sounds - where they should be, what instruments, the overall gesture - and then draw them. - 1/21/10
  
• What goes through someone's mind when they put the entire beatles catalog on shuffle? Really? Aren't we sick of them yet? - 1/23/10
  
• In moments of inactivity, our brains have better access to autobiographical information. Maybe that information is painful, so we gorge on new information to keep the old pain from coming back. - 1/26/10
  
• This was tut-tutted by the U of C crowd... - 1/26/10
  
• The process by which you create reveals itself in the final product, so to really invent something new, you have to invent a new process. - 1/27/10
  
• And then Live crashed some more and made me sad. - 1/28/10
  
• I'm rediscovering the image that I had of what I am trying to do: some sort of mix-up, mash-up, covers, originals, electronics, live performers. - 2/3/10
  

LFP => $$$

I heart the lakefront path in Chicago.

But, seeing as I use it so much, in all types of weather in all seasons, I feel territorial about it. It's cumbersome to me to weave around slow-moving bikers; for me, the path is a bike highway--not for Sunday drivers. But I deal. I am always surprised when there are droves of runners, which I forget happens every nice weekend in the summer--especially in the early-morning hours. But I deal. Pedestrians are my least favorite variety of LFP (ab)users, especially tourists who are out for a leisurely gambol. Some of us are late for work; you'll have to excuse our speed.

And some of us only have one speed; mine is ~20mph.

On Friday night, I had the night tour. We had 30 people but I was training another guide, so the student-teacher ratio was a more manageable 15:1. [For the record, I have total confidence leading a group on my own--up to 30 but not over.] And as we rode north on the LFP by Oak Street beach, there were a new variety of pedestrians clogging the LFP: hundreds of disillusioned minority youth, in groups of 5-15, engaged in whatever sorts of in-group / out-group antagonism that are trendy these days. Not that I felt too threatened--for myself or for the tour--but I was annoyed at their slowness, their lemming-like groupthink, and complete disregard for other users of the path.

But maybe I should have felt unsafe. The past few weeks, as I've "home" on the LFP, I've noticed a stronger police presence. This weekend (Memorial Day), I've seen marked and unmarked cars, and roving gangs of bike cops. It's like the Jets and the Sharks out here. And apparently, they are there in response to angst-fueled youth riots like the ones that happened on Wednesday. Granted, only 22 people got arrested. This isn't large-scale--yet.

The other clear problem with disaffected youth is that they leave the beach TRASHED. Friday night, the beach looked as bad as Grant Park after Taste of Chicago.

Why can't we all get along? For me, on the LFP, the simple answer is that we're all moving at such different speeds. How can I, on my bike going 20mph, effectively navigate through a mass of inconsiderate boobs traveling at near tectonic speeds.

I think of this as a metaphor for the economy. What if the ratrace really is a race? As we're running along, the only other competitors we care about are the ones just ahead of us and the ones just behind. The people limping along 10 miles back are of no concern; the people 10 miles ahead we can just barely see.

On the path, I am the clear winner--the Warren Buffett--and everyone else is just in my way. Having a bike is like having an education--a tool to a better (faster) life. In the real economy, I feel uncompetitive, or more like I am choosing not to compete or choosing not to see it as a competition. And yet, I'm still stuck on the racetrack, worried more about the soundtrack to the journey than getting to the destination first.

[The whole lakefront path experience, and the thoughts and feelings it arose in me, made me think that maybe affirmative action should focus more on geography than race. The economic segregation is a bigger problem than racial segregation: it's so easy to confuse them because most poor neighborhoods in Chicago are Black, but not all African-Americans are poor.]

evankuchar dot com

The whole time I was in Michigan, I had no real deadlines. Now I do. In a week, I'm going to Europe for two months. I wanted to get some perspective on what I've done and maybe get some insight into where I'm going. It would be nice, too, to have something to show people when I struggle to tell people about what I do.

So I made a website. To be fair, I've tried this before and have various attempts floating around the 'net, but this new attempt seems the closest to nutshelling myself so far. And I uploaded some new stuff, organizing it by genre / style.

Check it out: www.evankuchar.com

[You can also use: evankuchar.wordpress.com]

meta-post

I never had a blog before this one; it's been an interesting journey for both myself and my family and friends.

Some of you I never see in real life, so reading the blog is the only real insight you have into my boho life. But for friends, like Laura, and family, like my mom, the blog sometimes becomes something more than just a record of my activities: it becomes part of the discussion, part of the activities. If I'm writing about what I'm doing, and what I'm doing involves talking about the blog, then shouldn't I be writing about what I'm talking about what I'm writing about?

Firstly, it creates a slight imbalance in a relationship. Unless you have a blog that I follow (and unless you update it on a regular basis), then you have more of an insight into the day-to-day fluctuations. Ironically, people like Rob and Sarah (probably not the Sarah you're thinking of; she used to be a regular reader but is now doing yoga in California), the only two of my readers who have blogs, don't live nearby and so the balance is more equal. With my mom, however, I'll either start telling her something I've already written about in the blog--I hate telling the same story twice to the same person--or I'll have exhausted a story by writing about it and not want to talk about it any more.

I think the strangeness ultimately is most apparent to the other person involved; I sometimes forget that other people read this, so much it feels like a journal.

Secondly, it's forced me to categorize my life: there are some things that are blog-worthy but not conversation worthy; there are others that I would talk about but would never put in writing--certainly not for the whole world to read; and then there are those rare moments that are so unique, such good stories, that they merit a written description as well as a live, in-the-flesh narrative performance.

I've been reading through some of my old posts (so now I'm writing about reading what I wrote long ago; it's a vicious cycle), and, through reading other personal blogs, I've realized some things that make a good post. Recently, for instance, I've been trying to keep each post to one topic, one story. Maybe that means I post several times in a day (when my life is particularly exciting); some days I shouldn't post at all. The posts (of mine) that I find the most loathsome are the ones that just present a laundry list of things I've done. Sometimes, how those things fit together IS the story; sometimes it's just unfocused drivel.

I've also learned that pictures really help make a post more readable. I just am usually too lazy.

I've also learned a lot about storytelling from LOST (which people in real life are getting sick of hearing about)--like how to tie together a complicated story, full of tangents and create an overall structure. Stay tuned for more sepia-toned flashbacks.

memory is a habit

Regarding Jens Peter Jacobsen, whose works I still haven't read:

"In a letter he once stated his belief that every book to be of real value must embody the struggle of one or more persons against all those things which try to keep one from existing in one's own way."

the green fairy

It's my last night at the cottage. I've been back and forth from Chicago to Michigan so many times it hurts my brain to try to remember: sometimes taking the train, sometimes driving, and always thinking about which bike I'll have access to where.

I went for a bike ride yesterday that made me feel great. Must have been about 20 miles, since I followed some route that claimed as much. There are bike routes posted all over up here, planned by Backroads Bikeways. Hilly but not too hilly, roads were good not great. And there was one part where the road disappeared altogether. Granted, it said "road closed" (to thru traffic) and I went ahead anyway.

And tonight I used the grill for the second time, the first being last week with Laura. I made the same thing: a boneless ribeye, marinated in salt and balsamic. Good stuff. And, just like last week, I forgot about the sweet potatoes until just now. Sounds like dessert.

All the things that make the house a good vacation house are really only available in the nice weather: bike rides, grilling, outdoor fires, the beach, sunsets. I haven't seen any sunsets since I've been up here. It's a strange concept, being able to have a sunset just about any night; in my mind they are sacred, associated with vacations with family or friends; seems strange to witness alone. And it seems strange that it seems strange to a guy who voluntarily made his primary habitation a lonesome cottage in the woods.

But my vacation was different this time around than other vacations. It seemed more like work, but the work was largely unpaid and mostly involved synthesizing various former and future selves into one. I think it's easy to put self-work on hold when we get busy with more lucrative activities. Maybe it's just because I'm a procrastinator, but I had issues from years ago that came up--both expected and unexpected. Maybe this is what therapy is like, except more regular and less intense--surely more sustainable.

And so to celebrate my last night, I started with steak and am finishing with Absinthe. I've got a few shots left in the bottle, and I can't imagine doing this with anyone else.

coming together

Everything is aligning for my trip to Europe. First, my passport, which I had applied for (having definitively lost the other one) arrived after only 3 weeks of processing. Then, after weeks of silence, all of my European friends contacted me. On Monday. Did they all get together and plan it?

I should be fine staying in Paris for a couple weeks, staying with Clément, Laure, and/or couchsurfing. Clément I met in Chicago when I sold him a futon through craigslist. We ended up becoming friends and went to Resonate and some other illicit, illegal, secret dance parties. Laure I know through Merle, whom I met when I was in Paris in 2000. Merle was Laure's au pair, but I never met her then. I met her and her family when they came through Chicago; I took her on a bike tour.

Then, I would love to get to the Breton coast to see Jennifer, the américaine with whom I did a hike through Auvergne 10 years ago. But that's out of the way. At some point, I'll head somewhere east, ending up in Switzerland to go hiking or wine tasting with a new ladyfriend. When I say "ending up", that's the only real firm destination of the journey (aside from the end), and it's only partway through the trip. Then after July 11 or so, I'll keep heading east through southern Germany, Munich, maybe Vienna and Prague. I may just have to bite the bullet and buy a ticket from Prague to Paris. Probably training it. Looks like there are overnight fares from $99.

Also, my boss put me in contact with some friends who have a vineyard near Lyon. Sounds idyllic. Maybe I'll stop there around the time I'm in Switzerland.

Oh and then I hope to see a few stages of the Tour de France. My buddy Quentin (rode across Iowa with him) (and, actually, was his T.A. at UIowa) will be in Europe for almost the exact same time I am. He's following the whole thing; I'm going to do a few bits in the Alpes.

It's just about beginning!

FOUND

Every end is a new beginning. I think I've said that before--maybe in a dream, maybe in another life.

And it's only at these junctures, where an ending fades to the bright light of a beginning, that we can look back, encapsulate, and ask the ultimate question: "Does any of this matter?"

Still, after all these years, it's a matter of perspective and faith. Just because we all end up going to the same place doesn't mean the path we choose to get there is unimportant. The only certain destination is death; best not to make the journey too direct; better to have all sorts of surprise plot twists, tangents, and even parallels.

The stories end up becoming almost mythological, almost as if the creator(s) was/were spinning out a new theology that combines the ascending religions (destination: Heaven) with the descending religions (all praise Gaia). And with this quasi-religious set of stories, just like with other religious texts, the question of reality is less than important. Whatever this light is, we can be sure it's a metaphor. And whatever it's a metaphor for is subject to whatever religious background you hail from.

Q: So do our actions matter? A: It depends on your perspective.

For the more self-centered--narcissistic--everything matters a great deal. But if you step back from the individual and look at a whole city, the actions of each individual don't matter so much as those of the collective. It's like going from playing singles tennis to rugby. (Let's see Pete Sampras do that.) But if you take another step back and look at how that city fits into a country, then the collective actions of that city only matter insofar as they fit in with the country. So instead of being on the rugby team, you watch from the stands, understanding that this game doesn't matter to much of the world, and yet it is the whole world to those on the field. And finally, how much do our actions matter to a spy satellite. The nations of the world fit together; some will win today and lose tomorrow; others will continually struggle with scarcity.

But from the ultimate perspective, the one from which we look back as we fade into the light, none of it matters: all our journeys, all our tribulations, appear so infinitesimal, so arbitrary.

So while some pessimists say none of it matters, I argue that everything matters to someone and nothing (besides death) matters to everyone.

No one dies for no reason.
(Except maybe Nikki and Paulo. Their lives were totally without purpose.)

Zeusx3!!!

I tried to have an uncomplicated weekend. It ended up being appropriately brief but still managed to call upon most of my logistical skills. I drove in Saturday evening with Laura, who had come up Friday night to escape the bright lights of the city. She was going to Hyde Park, so I parked there and got my bike out of the car to ride into the city. Just as I was assembling the front tire, I saw Toni walking her dog. I asked her "How's Zeus doing?" Zeus is her husband; I used to sub at the school where he teaches (taught?) and used to teach him piano when I lived in the co-op. They live right behind the co-op. She said that he was fine and that he was "right around the corner." Literally. I look over, and there's Zeus. We chat for a moment about what has happened in the last 7 years since I left Hyde Park (Has it really been that long?) and then I make haste to go downtown.

Just another random encounter.

The tour went pretty well--probably because I had invited a new lady to come on the tour and was trying to impress.

Then, I saw him again. I was riding down the LFP and had to weave my way around a bunch of runners--blech. There was some charity run/walk thing going on, slowing my progress slightly; still, though, I managed to make it from downtown to Hyde Park in less than 30 minutes. And, who was participating in the run/walk? Zeus. I waved, as he was coming towards me on my way south, but he didn't see. He's a big runner, so it makes sense.

Just a second random encounter.

During the Obama tour, which goes through Hyde Park right by the co-op (where I used to live) I was thinking that these types of random encounters come in 3s. Sure enough. We stop by the Obama's house, a block away from Zeus's, and he pulls up in a car--on the way back from the run/walk--and reminds me to tell the folks that the future Cook County Board Prez lives down the street. That would be Toni.

Three random encounters. Granted, they all were perfectly explainable on their own. That being said, I've done the Obama tour dozens, if not scores of times and have never seen him, and what really makes it bizarre is that the coincidences happened, like they do, in 3s.

In the picture above, Zeus is the one that looks like Zeus. It's more than a name, it's a way of life.

surprise visit

It's morning in Michigan--but barely. It's 11:30 local time but feels like the perpetual cracking of dawn. The sun is nowhere to be seen and yet everywhere, illuminating the high blanket of clouds from behind into a bright, unchanging grey.

Last night, thought, the lights were terrestrial, for I was in Chicago. I made the decision midway through the day though had already been pondering it for a few days. There was a post on some high-profile new-music/composition blog about a group playing in Chicago, describing them as partway between Rock/Pop and Classical. I was intrigued. And, there was a party for Bobby's right before, involving free drinks.

So I went from having Black&Blues on the Right bank of the river to a small hall on the 10th floor of one of the original skyscrapers in Chicago. Unfortunately, by the time I left the bar, I only had 11 minutes to make it from the river to 400 S Michigan. I took lower Columbus, which is my new favorite way to go from Millennium Station to Bobby's. Then, I started running. I'm not much of a runner, so I could only go a few blocks at a time before walking again. I also had on the wrong shoes. Made it to the hall a mere 5 minutes late only to hear them say "let's wait another 5 minutes". Apparently the crowd wasn't what they were expecting. And the concert itself was somewhat short.

Good thing, because I really had to pee.

The concert was just so so. It wasn't exactly Classical-Pop fusion, more just "New Music". And, for me, that's a euphemism for "Who Cares Music". But I saw a friend, Kathryn, whom I met through Twitter, and we had a good talk; I think she's going to join me on my other blog--Beyond Words--in writing reviews.

But then I had an hour to kill. I finally got some food--although strangely, the cheese and crackers had mostly subdued my hunger--and then got lured into a bar by some Siren's song or another. I think it was the Decemberists. They were playing all sorts of good music (from a couple years back), including Sufjan, Wilco, and Spoon.

Then finally the train. And on my way back, Sartre died. And then so did Simone. It was an emotional end to a journey--a whole lifetime. I wasn't quite happy with the way it all ended, but then again, we don't exactly get to choose how we go. By the end, Sartre was totally blind after a series of strokes, and, though he was told to quit drinking, he was supplied with whiskey by one of his many ladyfriends.

I found this video, part of a documentary from '67.

memory is a choice

Every morning, I seem to have the same problem: a complete lack of identity due to a memory that is still slumbering, dreaming, inventing. It's hard to see where you've been when you're always going somewhere new. It is, in fact, memory that gives us a sense of trajectory, and the history helps predict the future. But not all of our history matters. The parts of our history that matter are the parts that we choose to remember. Memory is a choice. The parts that we choose to remember make up our narrative that we tell ourselves every morning. It would be easy--if I could choose--to focus on certain stories in lieu of others; write them down, make a sort of living autobiography to skim through (and add to) every couple of days.

I was thinking about writing such a history--the highlights--on the blog. I would probably include:

• birth
• sister's birth
• childhood friend Ryan
• contemplating infinity
• the time I saved a girl from drowning
• surprising everybody by going to state in the 50 free, shaving my head, coming really close (to beating somebody)
• skydiving
• Paris '99-'00
• hiking in Auvergne / meeting "Le Chien" / hitchhiking to Monpellier
• Dré
• Passau / Vienna
• California with Ana; snowboarding
• mushrooms
• and the other time I transcended space and time
• Mo
• RAGBRAI
• meeting Boulez, telling him:
• "Je vous admire autant que je vous déteste."
• Georgia --------->--------->-------->-------->
• the time on the bike tour when I crashed into a girl to prevent her from riding into traffic
• Cory
• drinking PBR from a paper bag in Grant Park during Obama's victory celebration

And then there are all the people who are still in my life--you know who you are. You don't actually want to be on the list, because that means I can encapsulate your influence. And that sounds like something fascists do to dissidents.

condamné

The esprit of Sartre has been flitting about, hovering, casting a shadow on these days. He said once that there is no a priori meaning to life, that we are charged with giving it our own meaning. Condemned to be free, we are to make our own fate.

It's not as easy as it sounds. We're only free in the present when we are free from our history--cultural and personal. [That's probably why drugs are so popular, allowing us to forget our past and be truly free in the present--and unmindful of the future.]

Over the weekend, without any particular provocation, I had a sudden return of mental images from my past; in general, I am not very good about keeping my own history present, so it was a welcome change. I realized that we are imprisoned by our past even when we don't forget it; repressing it, we store it in our subconsciousness and are still controlled by it. And, being imprisoned by our past, we need to be aware of this while acting in the present so as not to enchain ourselves in the future to a maximum security prison.

Every time you read it or say it, it makes another copy in your brain.

So if everything is in there, recorded by our mental supercomputer, there is no real escape from the past; we might as well be aware of its influence so we can consciously choose it: bend to it (so as not to repeat a mistake) or stubbornly oppose it.

And all of this, of course, takes place in an ideal vacuum, where physical bodies don't exist. Our bodies constrain us, too, and shouldn't be ignored. JPS thought we could control them--even believing that Simone should be able to control her seasickness. Clearly, we are controlled, to some extent by our physicality. In fact, it's like a wrestling match between our bodies and our minds. [That is, Sartre, as a man, thought of it like a wrestling match, one that he could win, but maybe we should see it more like a dance.] I think our physical bodies are a random element, like a knuckleball dancing in the breeze, constantly remind us that we are physical beings first and intellectual and spiritual beings second.

I don't know if thinking like this will help me make decisions: I tend to either wait till all the facts are in (procrastinate) or impulsively choose at random. Some sort of middle ground would be helpful.

in sync

Today turned out to be a weekend: a day off. I drove back from Chicago and am now at Michigan. I had a sandwich at the corner market and then came home to make a fire while I fiddled on the guitar. Then, done with fiddling, I turned on the tv for a second, finding Jeopardy in time to hear the answer to Final Jeopardy. The guy who got it wrong said "Who is Camus?" I thought maybe the right answer was Sartre, which would be uncanny considering I'm reading a book about his relationship with de Beauvoir. Sure enough, according to a random tweet I found, the right answer was Sartre. Uncanny.

moon day

Don't forget, today is the moon's day, so I can be as mercurial as I want. When is Mercury's day?

I had two funny moments of synchronicity that I couldn't describe poetically. First, Friday morning, I did a tour for the Gundlach Bundschu wine club. Despite their age--40s through 70s--they were a fun group: a bunch of wine enthusiasts on a rampage through Chicago for the weekend, not knowing what was coming next. The tour was a bit of a surprise, especially for the handful of geriatric types who couldn't handle the biking. We were prepared. There were a half-dozen pedicabs that came on the tour, transporting up to 12 people. They were the typical skinny hipster types with tattoos but had on shirts and ties for the occasion. After the tour they had to hurry up to Wrigley to shuttle people around after the game.

I ate on the tour--a clear perk along with the bottle of wine they gave me--but Martin "Safety" Hazard was stuck in the shop, so I offered to pick him up a 5-dollar footlong. As soon as I entered Subway, I looked at the flatscreen--yes, a flatscreen in Subway--and saw that they had the Cubs game on. But instead of showing the Cubs at that moment, they were showing the 5 pedicab guys I had seen earlier that day. Must have been a slow inning. I suspect they showed them on tv mostly because of their wardrobe, which was inspired by working with us. Just another random moment. Good times.

surfs up

i sat down to do this but found myself doing something else.

i've been in the city but am now watching a fire burn in the country.

so many new people.

every time you read it or say it, it makes another copy in your brain.

and everyone you meet--at work or in the street.

i met 20 people twice a day friday saturday sunday

riding bikes, telling stories, making jokes.

last minute stayed with laura in david's bed--

he's in india--

last minute went home with scott from work.

he lives in a borrowed condo in the south loop

the view from the balcony is here.

so many bikes, so many miles.

so many blank stares, so many smiles.

what would i become if i stopped flying around:

something more or something less?

motion towards

I was on the way back from the Roadhouse, thinking about Sartre--who, by the way, was apparently a real person but was different than I would have imagined him had I ever thought to imagine him--and I wanted to write a blog post that not only charted but prodded any sort of progress towards self-awareness. I've been reading "Tête-à-Tête" which chronicles the relationship between Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir along with all the tangential relationships that spun off from them. So far, I'm mostly impressed by their level of commitment--not to each other but to an idea, one of self-determining individualism. At least, that's where they are now; I think it all changes after the War when they are forced to wake up from their idealism.

Reading about them is motivating me to remember my own freedom. It's easy to forget to embody the struggle when you're alone much of the week. While we are not as free as they assume in their philosophy, we are freer than we think. I blame the filter in our brain that keeps us from entertaining notions that are too far out of bounds. Like, I am not going to consider joining the Navy. But how many passable notions are we blocking along with the totally impossible? Too many. Free is as free does; free doers are free thinkers.

And just as Sartre, as character in this book, is teaching by example, so does Holden Caulfield. And between the time I got home, thinking of writing this blog post, and now, I found a South Park on tv. I really wish it were more accepted in intellectual circles to cite South Park episodes, but they really do hit some nails on the head--a handful every episode.

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NYT: creativity

I'm reading a really interesting article about creativity.

Highlights:

• new definition: "the ability to restructure one’s understanding of a situation in a nonobvious way."
• "Although intelligence and skill are generally associated with the fast and efficient firing of neurons, subjects who tested high in creativity had thinner white matter and connecting axons that have the effect of slowing nerve traffic in the brain."

(Sometimes I think I'm an intellectual, an academic, but maybe I'm really more of a creative. And so while I feel slightly out of place among hardcore academics (whose brains have achieved fast, efficiency by thinking inside the box/framework), maybe that's only because I think I should belong. But I've never valued efficiency or encyclopedic knowledge, so why would I?)

• "creativity not only involves coming up with something new, but also with shutting down the brain’s habitual response, or letting go of conventional solutions."

This was talking about people intuiting the answer, allowing it to appear from their subconscious by closing their eyes, reducing activity in the visual cortex.

• And finally: “Humor is an important part of creativity.”
  

So that must mean I'm creative but only about 20% of the time. Which is, at least, an improvement.