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.

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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