And I'm almost at the end of another journey - the first season of Lost. Sometimes it seems so far greater than a tv show; sometimes it shows its roots as a prime-time drama. Either way, it proves, along with the Watchmen, that if you pay attention to the details, tying them together, connecting, you elevate an artisanal craft, mere entertainment, to something more profound, touching on the intellectual as well as emotional, hinting at the spiritual.
Once they start touching us physically, we'll know that we really do live in a hologram.
The ant problem has subsided to its usual level. I saw only one ant yesterday and disposed of it properly. I did, however, see a half-dozen dead ants in the skylight, eternally resting on the screen. Odd. Were they on their way in or out?
I found something useful yesterday, and it made sure it's point was taken. It started on the way back from South Bend. I thought it was a lot closer, but in fact it took 45 minutes of driving through the beautiful backwoods and farms of southwest michigan and northern Indiana. My favorite was a street that didn't show up on myPhone's map (at the level to which I was zoomed) called State Line road. Narrow, twists, turns, hills, and few other cars. Highly recommended. I finally got to South Bend and found the coffee shop I was looking for, looked around for 10 minutes for anything better, and ended up back where I started at the Chicory Cafe. Good stuff. Well, good beignets, weak coffee. The whole place has a sort of Cajun, Nawlins feel to it. I thought it a shame that I missed Mardi Gras - and Ash Wednesday for that matter - and that I had ignored the custom of giving something up. It's not really my thing, but I like the idea of it. And in my current religious drift, I have no period of fasting or giving up. There are worse fates.
On the way back from S.B., I listened to 3 classic TED talks that I had on myPhone. All three were about happiness and/or creativity, all three concluding that we are happiest when we are in the Flow, not when we are isolated (ahem) and thinking about our own happiness. I would posit that we have to think about our happiness in order to find the flow that suits us best. Which is what I'm trying to do. I may not be happy all the time up here, but hopefully, through regular practice and work, I can create the structures that let it flow. Whatever it is.
The most direct of the talks was the one I embedded below. After getting back to the house, my mom called from the car on her way from Springfield back to the burbs. She had listened to the same TED talk at some point recently and brought it up before I even could. Odd. The point that I'm taking away is that the secret to creativity is being in the Flow, which is hard to do. Like meditating, you get better over time. Like meditating, you can't reproach yourself for not being a rockstar right off the bat. So, for want of anything more specific, my goal these days, as it has been in many previous moments in my life, is to practice being in the Flow - come what may.
In a few hours, I'll head back to Chicago - via car - going to see this avant-garde opera USW by Opera Cabal. I should read about Rosa Luxemburg, because from the sounds of things, they don't give you a clear narrative of who she is. She's apparently important. I'm a little tired of Marxists - but not as much as libertarians or the people who think they know what our founding fathers thought.
Tomorrow is La Damnation de Faust by Berlioz at the Lyric. Had the usual date trouble but found a suitable one yesterday.
Then Sunday to the family's house in the burbs to see my sister and her baby. And then back. I had some great ideas yesterday and I'm excited to build on them. To be fair, the ideas that I had yesterday were built from fragments I had a couple weeks ago. That's how it works, you produce a load of crap from which mushrooms grow; then you eat the mushrooms and have hallucinations of the music at the end of the world; then you write it down.
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