Free bus uptown to the other office. It smells like a damp tent and it’s a runaround day, like a piston on the island, up down up down 135 116 168 116 135, the stack is full. Sweating already. Wallet uncomfortable in my back pocket.Turn signal song driving my impatience as we sit in the tent, unmoving.
1. Final presentation last night was fine.
2. New sound system for living room.
3. Today is train like a motherfucker day.
4. The mysticism of pictorial evidence occurs again.
1. My group went last and our idea was good. We didn’t get many questions but it was late and after so many presentations, some of which went upwards of 25 minutes, everyone was very ready to leave. We kept it short.
When I present, I improvise. Doesn’t matter what the venue is, what the subject is or what the purpose is. Even if I have everything carefully written out, I never stay on it for more than a few lines. I don’t seem to be able to *not* improvise.
It’s probably not wise, overall. But my presentations are almost always better when I go free because I can get the audience more engaged. I’m sensitive when I speak publicly, and can’t help but pay close attention to visual cues from the audience: are they with me or still trying to find me? I react and sometimes end up in places I had no intention of speaking about. Sometimes I enter totally unknown realms. There’s something about being in the spotlight of an audience that I find helpful. It forces my lazy mind to pay careful attention to itself. When I’m speaking in that setting, I’m also less aware of myself, somehow.
2. I splurged (a little) on a sound system for the newly emptied living room. What happened was that my usual sound source, a pair of studio monitors connected to an external sound card running from a computer, was moved into Hollow Way, leaving the living room soundless. I need music. Fixed.
3. Nuff said about this subject. I’m eating 100 grams of oats right now.
4. One of my best friends from childhood just sent me a batch of incredible pictures of us from when we were growing up. I had no idea they existed and they’re absolutely marvelous. I’m somewhere in the picture below:
Most of the paper done on coffee and snacks late last night. A little zombic today but worth it so I don’t have to stress about it during the day. I still need to finish it, but it shouldn’t be too bad. Maybe two more hours of work.
“For to perceive, a beholder must create his own experience. And his creation must include relations comparable to those which the original producer underwent.” (Dewey, “Art as Experience”, p.56)
Is this true? A perceiver’s experience must include parts of what the artist experienced when making the object (in order for “an aesthetic experience” to occur). I like the sound of it, but am uncertain I agree.
I need to figure that out before our presentation tonight. I meet with my group at 3:30 to practice for the 4:40 presentation. Then it’ll all be over, again.
I fell asleep listening to the Improv4Humans podcast, a weekly that consists of a group of rotating improv comedians who create improvised sketches off of words submitted to the audience via twitter. It’s a good way to konk out, with a smile your face, especially if it’s not usually that way.
A laborer uses his body. A craftsman uses his body and his mind. An artist uses his body, his mind, and his heart.
The weekend was fast and fun. As usual, the abruptness of Monday morning has me at the secret office a little later than usual, and fairly under fed. I need one hour after wakeup to have any kind of an appetite, and sometimes the timing of that throws me off for a whole morning.
At present, I’m starving.
On Saturday I used the morning for arranging and cleaning up since the creation of Hollow Way Studios. Lots of furniture shifting and tossing and more clearing out the unessential. The afternoon was for training.
(BTW, why Hollow Way? My neighborhood of Manhattanville used to be called Hollow Way during the colonial wars and was the site of this important battle.) (And it sounds nice and black metally).
After about 2.5 hours of sparring and hitting the heavy bag, I was starved. I took in 8 grams of creatine powder, whey protein and three granola bars. About 10 minutes after consumption my body filled in. All of that good sugar reaching into every trained muscle. It felt very good. I continued eating clean for the rest of the day and into Sunday.
Sunday was a three-parter. Morning still more cleaning up at my place, and eating, and then an afternoon jam with a friend in Hollow Way. I went to train for an hour and found myself 6 or so lbs heavier than two weeks ago, and looking very filled-in. It’s was nice to be back at my ideal weight, finally, though it’s not all real yet. Much of that was from massive consumption over the weekend– in a few more weeks it’ll be solid again.
After training, a new-ish friend came over to cook and watch the last UFC fight (which I downloaded the same day). I had resisted doing stuff like that for a few months, but I guess it’s time for that, now. It was a full day and time moved quickly.
When she got there, she said my place reminded her of a gallery and she loved it. That was nice to hear because emptying it out was a risk.
If she or anyone else didn’t like it much, would I care?
Maybe a little.
We hit my favorite super market and grabbed salmon and spinach and rice and some other things that I didn’t really know, and came back and cooked and chatted and listened to Agalloc, and had a nice, relaxing time. We talked a lot about dating and stuff like that. Not my favorite topic. Not at all. But she was into it so I went along, contributing when able, though never getting too personal. By the time I had the place to myself again I was full and tired. It was midnight.
I forgot to work on my presentation for tomorrow night’s final aesthetics class. Dang. It’s a group thing, which sucks. Once it’s over, I will probably never take another course in my life.
Though I suppose I’ve said that before.
There’s a paper that’s supposed to go with the presentation and I haven’t even thought of what to say yet. I have until tomorrow, with two full work days between now and then.
These little stresses will be a welcome absence after tomorrow night.
Continuing to take classes has kept me socializing and interacting with people. Were it not for that, I’m not sure what I’d be up to when not at home alone or traveling or working or training.
If I didn’t have a reason to socialize, I might just disappear into my work, which probably isn’t great. I was never good at finding that balance, it never came naturally to me. Attending courses seems to always lead to new connections with people, new groups, things to do and people to see– and have salmon steaks with on Sunday nights.
So, good Monday to you. May the rain of NYC this morning cool your tempers and souls as it has mine. Let’s do one novel thing today before it’s over, and let’s not have more than one cup of a coffee and see what happens. Let’s bite down hard when punching the bag later and fall asleep exhausted from intensity.
After aesthetics class I headed down the Bowery to meet up with someone I hadn’t seen in a couple of years. We started with tacos at a place called Taquiera and then she took me to a rooftop bar/lounge about 4 blocks away and talked about many things. The bouncer was a friend of hers so we just went right on in. The place has been open for 4 months only. Not my kind of place, but it was OK.
I don’t connect with people easily. I’m just not a people person. I like people, and without my friends this life wouldn’t be worth living. But I don’t pine for large crowds of merriment. I don’t see the point of it and don’t enjoy myself in those settings. It’s hard not to observe everything as a social science lab. I focus unintentionally on how people stand and act, what they say and how they use their voices. I see people trying so hard to look like they’re not trying, and I see the people who are oblivious to what’s actually happening there.
I find it to be fine, but not as worthwhile as about a thousand other things I’d rather do than demonstrate an amiable personality type and establishing attraction with and from strangers in a crowded room. It’s just always felt weird and dumb to me and now I pretty much stand by it, instead of trying shake it off.
I feel my social high when I’m having an immersive, connected conversation, and that usually (maybe exclusively?) takes place with one person at a time.
I can fake being hyper social. I can make small talk and the BS of patterned speech. But sometimes I just don’t care enough about the other person’s impression of me to fake it for their sake. The only time I really fake it is for my sake. But it takes lots of energy.
I sipped at a beer and she had weird and complicated cocktails that cost $12. The lighting was blue and the music not too loud. But it was hot– still heat-waving at 11p on a roof in the Lower East Side.
She asked if I wanted to go up and check out her place– right in the heart of Chinatown in the tallest building around there. 25th floor, the view of the Manhattan bridge was amazing.
12am and I needed to go. On my way to the Grand St. station I got turned around twice. The little streets of Chinatown are tricky, winding and show up only as fine gray lines on google maps. When I eventually found the station, the next B/D train was a 30 minute wait. I changed at 59th St. to the 1 train, another 15 minute wait. After everything I was in my shower, rinsing off an incredibly long day by 1:30a, asleep by 2, up at 8, office by 8:45, conference call series from 9-11a.
I’m now ready to train like a motherfucker.
Supposed to go out again tonight.
Let this not be a pattern for summer, I have better things to do.
Yet, it would probably be good for me after other recent changes.
I yearn for simplicity of everything right now. Is that a hammock in the trees, going back to competing seriously, or pretending that nothing matters and just hedonizing.
The first two options mean life, the latter means death, and I have enough reasons to make the first option better, indefinitely.
“It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.” Bruce Lee
The first time I read that was in the book Bruce Lee wrote while he was recovering from a broken back. I was probably about 16 or so and reading just about everything I could get my hands on that had anything to do with martial arts. Throughout his writing and demonstrations, it is clear that his fighting technique was really focused on the simplest executions. The shortest distances and the fastest reactions. For him, the ultimate in simplicity was the state of “no mind”, where there is no: “Punch that thing now!”, and rather just “punch”. The command is not to send the fist to the target, but it’s to create the fist at the target instantly. That’s simplicity.
Don’t go there, but rather be there, already.
The cutting away the unessential is something I strive for and am terrible at. I’ve gone through phases of accumulation, and the simplest form is the accumulation of things– toys mostly, whether they be computers or instruments or unessential gear, little “luxuries”, sometimes larger luxuries, mostly serving little purpose but somehow happening.
These phases of accumulation are interrupted by moments of clarity when I see the truth in things, in myself, in the situations of life. I don’t know exactly what turns the light on in these cases, but it happens and seems unavoidable (not that it should be avoided).
Following the interruptions are massive clear-outs. I remove things with abandon, appreciating more and more the empty space created by their absence. Room there, a space there, an open surface there. A corner in which to look at nothing being in the corner. Empty space is a vision of potential, and potential feels good, sometimes better than realization.
The most complicated form of accumulation takes place in the mind. Thoughts that shouldn’t be there, memories that have served their purpose and are now a nuisance. The inner voice that so frequently repeats unhelpful things, getting in the way, preventing the reaching of highest potential. That kind of accumulation is also phasic, for me. And after reaching a point of over-collection in the head, a purging takes place, a refocusing on what’s important and true, and getting back to simplicity. At least an attempt at it. It can be confusing, to the few people around me, and even to myself.
I have a lot of self-directed anger. I get so mad at myself for thinking certain things, or feeling certain ways, and especially for making certain decisions. When I reach a point of self-directed anger turning to a kind of hatred, inner and outer, I have to try hard to recognize I’ve reached that point and that I need to get back to the essentials and focus again on finding and pursuing clarity and purpose, and not letting the isolation that follows cause inner harm.
The city is supposed to be 100+ plus today. In June. Maybe this will be the way things are from now on.
I had a perfect night last night. My living room was cool and comfortable, lit by just my desk lamp and computer screen, and I listened quietly to some old metal bands while working on a paper until about 12am. When I hit bed, my quiet fan pushed the perfect amount of air around and I fell asleep instantly. That all rarely happens.
When the earth’s average temperature rises to the point of pushing populations to cooler climes, will we have to create climate controlled cities? The environmental costs for the energy required to power cooling stations would be huge. Perhaps our short term destiny is a return to the sea. 10 feet under water it’s cold, 20 feet, it’s always very cold. Everything encapsulated. Motorcycles become little torpedo pods, buses become submarines. There’s never any major turbulence and the weather is always the same. Parascopes can bring direct sunlight down into chambers and fashionistas compete for fancy water suits. The temperature is always perfect, and you can move your whole house.
Subterranean, submarinean. Perhaps our first migration will be down and in rather than up and out.
No morning post. Late wakeup.
The simpler things get, spatially, the better, for me. I’m in danger of going overboard with clearing out at home. But the more things open up, the more I like them. I have an entire wall without anything infront of it now, just one big empty wall with one giant painting on it. It’s nice for now.
Clearing house. Trashing the nicknacks. It’s weird to think about that little thingy that was there for so long, now joining the container of leftovers from last night on a trip to the dump. You know the thing I’m talking about… that little thing that sat there, watching, being watched, for 3 years straight, for no reason other than to be there.
Its fixity was accidental, its presence was routine, and its removal was volitional.
I don’t usually have big groups of people over, do I need a couch? I don’t usually have big dinners, do I need a dining room table?
I guess too bare leads to creepiness when I do have guests over. If it’s too sparsely decorated, it might appear like I might not really live there. I wonder what that implies for personal decoration. That, sparse enough with the threads, the oddness might convey to onlookers that the person in that body might not actually live there.
There is something uncomfortable about sitting at a dining room table alone and eating a meal. I have a projector in my bedroom, as of about 2-3 months ago. It just suddenly felt like the right thing for that space. But now I’m not so sure. In the same way sitting at a dining room table alone to eat is odd, so too is watching a moving in an empty “theater”. Until you’re so into what you’re watching that it doesn’t matter. But when that happens, you might as well be watching on your iPhone.
It’s odd to watch netflix on your 3 inch iPhone (under your covers) when you have an HD projector that creates a 120inch image. Yet I do it all the time.
I’m at the uptown office today trying to make sense of some changes and challenges on the public health simulation project. It’s gotten fairly convoluted and if I’m not careful, senior management is going to want to peak in on these meetings to make sure we’re staying within the realm of what is possible to actually build. I would hate for that to happen.
Simulating reality isn’t the overall goal. Learning about reality by modeling parts of it is the goal. We seem to have some trouble sticking to that story for very long. We each have big ideas.
I made my own coffee this morning and it’s still with me, in my thermos. I’m wearing a new collar shirt that is quickly my favorite. My jeans smell a little like hay. My limmers are bored. My neck and shoulders are sore from training. My father is dead. My mother is alive. I am slightly hungry but not enough to move. I have aesthetics class at 4-7 and my group is going out to drink some beer and design our final project afterwards. There are four people in my group, two guys and two girls. One of the girls, a redhead who just finished undergrad, is an alum of my college. It’s rare for that to happen because the total school population has hovered around 1600-1800, which amounts to merely 400 graduates per year, worldwide. So that was a surprise. Since we learned of that connection, she’s texted 6 times for no reason other than to say hi. I’m not used to that and am never quite sure how to respond. The last time she wrote, “hey!” I just wrote “:)” She wrote that it was a great evening, wasn’t it and I didn’t respond. I wonder what will happen at beers tonight.
I can’t wait to go to my next dentist appointment, three weeks from now, because I’ve been flossing like a motherfucker.
Back to a usual routine for a while.
“Routine”:
Noun routine (plural routines) A course of action to be followed regularly; a standard procedure A set of normal procedures, often performed mechanically A set piece of an entertainer's act A set of instructions designed to perform a specific task; a subroutine
Surely one of the great hazards of a life. It produces a kind of mindlessness that is especially dangerous because it’s unacknowledged. When in a routine, a person feels comfortable because of the familiarity of the event or practice. That can lead to what seems to be a state of emotional well-being, but is in fact a null state. In a routine, it’s actually the lack of mental involvement that produces the easiness, the comfort and the disengagement. In this way it is like sleeping.
Routine creates opportunities to sleep through life, and although it might feel “happy” to do so, the happiness of sleep is the lowest form, and thus so with routine.
Ever get the sense that time has screamed past, that all of the sudden a week, a month, a year or years have passed and “where did they go?” Perhaps you were not awake for most of that time.
Perhaps you’re barely awake now.
Check your routines. It begins with morning coffee and leads to everything else.
Take a different route– a pattern of no pattern, a routine of no routine, see what it’s like.
Rejoining the pattern in a few days so don’t fret. Curious little monkeys.
