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.

.

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.

esclavage

In preparation for my European galavanting, I was looking up people on couchsurfing, and then someone coming to Chicago did the same to me. So on Saturday, after waking up in Lakeview and riding down to do the Obama tour, I met up with Xavier, who is French but living in Germany, and gave him a haphazard walking tour of Michigan ave and the lake.

For some reason, watching movies in French sometimes makes me feel like I know nothing of the language (prolly a lot of slang) but having a 3-hour conversation with a native makes me feel fluent--even still after all these years of mental corrosion.

The part that I found most interesting was talking about health insurance in Germany (where he works). He was talking about using his airlines miles to buy an around-the-world ticket, maybe next year, but would have to ask his work for a 6-month unpaid leave to do so. (Granted, he gets 30 days of vacay a year, he could probably squeeze the whole world into 6 weeks.) I told him he could just quit and take the whole year, but he cited health insurance as the primary reason not to quit. Apparently, in Germany, like it will be here in the States, you are required to have insurance, but if you have a job, your employer is required to provide it. But if you don't have a job, you have to pay for it, and it can be prohibitively expensive. Of course, if you lose your job, I'm sure the gov't helps out, but, like in America, you can't be "unemployed" if you just up and quit. I told him "C'est de l'esclavage!", realizing that my little 6-month sabbatical would be lemon difficult.

We ended up at Millennium Park. You can see me and my bike reflected in the Bean; he's taking a photo and is ghosted in the merge of the various photos.

too smart for its own good

Today, I got an email from Trip Advisor advising me on things to see and places to stay in Lausanne, Switzerland--out of the blue, just like that. And, as a point of fact, I am planning on going there in early July. Coincidences can sometimes just be happy accidents, but in this case, I think it's more pernicious--a matter of the various internet sites conspiring to make my life easier. Did I end up on a Trip Advisor page while looking up Lausanne? I certainly didn't log in. Or did Google communicate the info? All the internet sites are apparently talking to each other now, so it's possible. [As in, Facebook and Yelp can collaborate to know what to recommend.]

In a coincidence of a more pure nature, I was trying to write "tâcher" in an email today but wrote "tacher" instead. I felt hesitant about it and looked it up to be sure. Sure enough, they are conjugated the same way--and I would pronounce them both the same--but tâcher means "to try" while tacher means to stain--like to get a stain on your clothes. So, just now, in lieu of watching another episode of "The Atheism Tapes" (which I'll get into later), I decided to watch some "Merci Professeur" on TV5.org. I don't think we have anything like this aux États-Unis. It's a web programme in which this affable professor type passionately explains the subtilités of French grammaire and origines of the more obscur words. And the one that came up? Tacher or Tâcher. He's worth watching even if you don't understand, but I had to download some Windows mumbo-jumbo (Media Player?) to watch it.

Apparently Safari is not the most popular internet browser, accounting for less than 5% of internet traffic. Firefox is ~50% and IE8 is just ahead of Chrome at around 15%. I learned this when I looked it up after being told that American Airlines' website doesn't support Safari. After making it all the way through the reservation process, I got an error message on the very last page. I called them, and they told me to use Firefox. Which I did and have my ticket, but couldn't they program their website to tell me not to use Safari-at the beginning? It's a good thing I have Firefox and Chrome installed--just in case. I use Chrome for my alias Twitter account but that's about it.

[Update, I looked at my browser history and found that I did, in fact, get directed to Trip Advisor from a Google search. And I'm apparently still logged in from months or years ago, so it was just Trip Advisor following up with info they harvested themselves. Still, I swear, the internet is becoming more conscious.]

I leave you with this video I came across today. It's amusing. My internet is nowhere this fast regardless of browser.

like in a dream

I sat in front of the corner store where I get my coffee every day--sounds bougie, but it's only a buck if you bring your own mug--and I remembered something that reminded me of something else that led to something else.

First, I got up at about 8:15 this morning--using "natural rising" as my mom called it in her convent days--and did some yoga before walking down to the store. I've fallen into this nice routine in the past couple weeks, but I'm always fiddling with my morning rituals such that they never actually become rituals. But I remembered something that some loathsome impish man once told me (a teacher at Price Elementary on the south side of Chicago): you should wake with enough time such that you have an hour of get-ready/downtime before you have to leave. An hour. Before work. I'm going to try to keep this timeframe in mind however my routine shifts, but for me it's more an issue of keeping to just an hour, not more.

And this line of thinking made me think of a TED talk or a NYT article--ironically, I can't remember--that posited that unstructured periods of "rest" help the brain process and store the information it's taken in and helps the brain access more remote memories--almost like dreaming but more grounded in reality.

And that made me think about meditation. To me, that's the goal and benefit of meditation, which I got back into this week. And the M-word shouldn't be confused with a particular practice or theology but just as a period of consciously giving your brain rest so it can defragment itself. I think we all do this in different ways but are rarely aware of it. For me, I think I got good at it through playing the piano--improvising specifically--and now consciously try to access that state whenever I can: sitting, walking, biking, and even driving. This week, I feel more centered and am having an easier time accessing this space. Last week, I felt like I was just running from one thing to the next and couldn't see the forest for the trees.

And this led me to think about procrastination, which I define as "avoiding doing things that are difficult". To me it feels like a mental block, like I can't even imagine doing whatever it is right now. And this block like a cancer grows. So if you avoid doing the dishes (which I do), then you avoid other dumb things that seem unimportant but really are. The action is more of a symbol than discrete act, symbolizing our ability to overcome our shortcomings. Writing music takes a lot of different abilities, and when I ignore the ones that are difficult to me, it comes out sounding 2-dimensional. The best music springs forth through a perfect collaboration of all the parts of the brain (or all the brains in the band) and then engages all the parts of the audience.

Gotta do the dumb things I gotta do.

100

I have achieved significance--if only to myself--for this is my 100th post.

I'm having a typical hobo-boho weekend in Chicago, staying at Darick's to watch his cat, Archie. I pulled in Friday afternoon after submitting my application for a new passport (you can't renew an expired passport when you can't find it; I blame moving for its loss) and, apparently, was too hasty in moving my things into the apartment. After realizing that I couldn't get in through the back door due to construction, I tried the front. Never having gone through the front door, I was dubious of the key. Turns out it doesn't work. Called Darick, got ahold of his neighbor, got another set of keys that works better but barely. I go back outside and find my car radio lying on the pavement by my driver's side door. Confusion on top of a steadily brewing flustering. Was someone trying to steal it? Did I drop it? Where's its case?

Found the case nearby. Must have dropped it. Then sat around for a couple hours waiting for Leslie, aka pirate girl, to come by to hang out before Mass. Hours go by, I take a nap. She shows up with just enough time to make it to Mass, saying it would be fun to ride through Wrigleyville because a Cubs game just let out--me saying the lakefront would be better, easier. We go down Clark anyway and start running into throngs of elated Cubs fans. She, of course, knows all the pedicab drivers, having done it for years, and so wants to stop and chat with all of them. It was a pretty typical way to spend time "with" Leslie. After she crashes into me trying to pass a bus, I tell her it's time to head to the lakefront and start to. She disagrees, apparently, and keeps going down Clark. Many minutes later--and several phone calls--we almost re-intersect but don't until Daley Plaza. The good news is that she knows people I could join if I wanted to go to Burning Man this year. Mass ensues; I have more pictures on FB.

There are a lot of similarities between Critical Mass and Resonate, but I feel like the lack of structure in Mass gets in the way of any meaningful experience beyond a fun bike ride with 1000 people. I probably would enjoy it drunk. But just as it's hard to be neutral on a moving train, it's hard to feel totally comfortable at a moving party on wheels.

Then, Nicole made dinner for me and some of her Persian friends, ending with chocolate and Scotch (Macallan 12) and then more Scotch (Bowmore Darkest Sherry cask, a new favorite) at the Duke of Perth--a Scottish bar on Clark, which I would have passed had I followed Leslie.

At some point, Nicole's Persian friend wanted to put makeup on me--I'm not sure why, and I can't come up with any clear, rational reason why I acquiesced. It didn't look so much bad as it made me look evil. I'm all set for when I become an post-emo-goth-rocker-slash-alt-classical-techno-rave-composer.

If you haven't checked out my ChicagoNOW blog this week, there are some interesting musings (I can hardly call them "thoughts") on the state of music today.

And now, the subject of the film "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train", Howard Zinn:

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