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Two faces burnt
Author: artwells
often wrong
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I suppose that’s a ‘do that’
For a long while I was posting gutter study, the meaningful trash I find, to Instagram, but my hate for the interface was the last straw on a very weak back.
So I thought I’d use this old space.
I was thinking how to get that back in my life. I installed the WordPress app on my phone, hooked it up to my old blog, pulled out a recent photo, and did a test post. I was thinking about how I might integrate it into Instagram and Twitter and whatever while I was walking. Time was when I fed my family on building social media integrations so I bet I could something useful.
I saw this on the sidewalk and I don’t expect anyone to believe me. One of the foundations of my gutter study is photography of cast-off gloves. I’ll do a post about that sometime.
Anyway expect more. I’ll find a way so you don’t have to follow this blog directly.
This was a glove, as far as I could tell from a casual glance at five paces. It snapped into its reality at about two. When I read the backwards “Get In Touch’ and realized the fingers were tear-offs I started to feel like I was in a bad script.
Anyway, I will just likely post a picture and a title, and maybe a thought, but mostly not the latter. I think. And I hope to find a way so nobody has to follow this blog. It’ll be the propagation node to phenomenally mundane photos of garbage.
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Horns of Strange Places
My family recently visited Chicago, as we have done a couple times before. Our Portland ears are always stunned by how frequently and aggressively people honk there.
I remembered one early morning walk when my son was young enough to be strapped to my belly. He kept asking ‘what’s that?’ with increasingly frequency and curiosity. It took several long walks to realize that he was confused about horns, and had probably never heard them before.
This time we talked about how some people probably use the horn regularly at the first hint of delay or frustration. Some probably do so and forget about it a block later, never having their pulse increase or attention diverted significantly. It’s just part of the ride.
I remember all of the times when I was honked at this trip. I’ll likely remember it for years – how nervous and angry i got. It isn’t part of the ride for me, but it should be.
Part of respecting others is respecting their intent. Holding on to unintended harm is empty weight, something no one gave and no expects me to keep.
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conflate
I went to the highway like I used to go to the library in the pre-Internet days. I would walk the couple of miles reviewing my headful of questions, and go over my notebook so by the time I got there, I would be ready to research answers for the weeks’ questions.
I got to the highway thinking about what I needed to change to help ease the mid-life-crisis feelings that had been growing over the years. Â I could have looked for symbols and oddities in the wooded roads to the highway, but I don’t spend a lot of time in the woods. I spend a lot of time looking at trash on the side of the road. So I was going to the highway.
When I got there I looked South and looked North. Â When I looked North, right near what used to be a cafe where years ago I registered nshrine.com in a fit of vacation inspiration. Â I saw a white lump in the grass. “That’d be it.”
As I got closer I got disappointed. Â It looked to be directory, maybe even a phonebook. Â Those can be inspirational, but nothing that could really get me going, nothing right for something like this. Â I decided to go with the bibliomancy method. Â I would think of the question in very precise terms, pick a random section, and pretend the contents were some confused person’s answer.
The paragraph I chose was a definition of “conflate”. Â Now the challenge is to wedge this into the problem space. Shouldn’t be too hard.
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BusinessWeek and a Free Lunch
I was recently written about on businessweek.com. In the main article, my situation is introduced as exceptional.
The next day, I went to a Lunch 2.0 and met a lot of very enthusiastic, successful and positive people.
My success always feels so tentative. I honestly don’t know if I will have any work in April. In February, that’s how I felt about March. In January, that’s how I felt about February.
I’m learning to take credit for my success, but I think I’m doing about enough of that now. I’ve been very, very lucky. I’ve worked hard, to be sure, but I’m very, very lucky.
My allergies tell me it’s officially Spring, even if the calendar doesn’t. I’ve got some great creative professional opportunities coming up, stalling, turning around, running away, then coming back. I’m trying to keep patient, but not too much so.
I saw this when I was wondering if I had chosen the right profession, and if it could keep me properly challenged. It reminded me that inviting creativity isn’t the role of my profession. I’m responsible to remain creative. I remembered working in factories and having my head full of ideas all day and writing all night.
My professional choices don’t give me creative opportunities; Every moment does, if I’m creative enough.
I’ve been on a strong atheistic kick lately. I’ve really lost most of my patience for my impulsive defensiveness about this too. I’m here now and pretty happy.
I got caught on a funny loop on a walk the other day. Being wholly atheistic makes me love people more. People are mostly theistic. I become more tolerant of religions thereby. But wait, if I care about people I should care that they believe in the truth. That last step is escaping me no matter how many frothy, militant atheists I listen to, but it is a conclusion I take, but not to heart.
Confused, I look down and saw this. It’s hardly dropped from heaven, or satori, or whatever, as there’s a temple across the street that has been the source of fantastic litter in the past. Nonetheless, my own absurd religion caused me to contemplate its possible meaning for an hour or so.
Years ago (more than three years at least) I guessed that Google would be moving into the augmented reality game and make it an e-commerce tool. I was in the 3D-for-e-commerce biz so it was hopefully thinking at best, but I kept seeing signs that this was the direction they were heading. When Google bought SketchUp, I knew I was onto something, though still only steps ahead of the hopeful thinking.
As Google’s 3D warehouse started to focus on city architecture, as Google started to send out QR code stickers to businesses, as Street View, Goggles and Navigation is added to Android, as rumors fly of Street View going into store interiors, even as they jumped ahead with the well-killed Lively, my guess can now be played up all like knew what I was talking about. The way Buzz just debuted with huge potential, I suspect that Google is looking for social media to accelerate the adoption of their future tools. They will have an at least adequate response to Foursquare and Twitter, even if it never gets to their level of adoption or interface. Grouped with Navigation, Maps, Calendar, Street View and eventual Google Earth, 3D Warehouse and Goggles, these products may become a complete and popular integration of e-commerce and bricks-and-mortar retail. Wave too will have a great place as online conversations and social interactions become more and more location-based.
I’m now convinced that Google will buy Layar, or release a better-than-Layar product within the next calendar year. Within two years they will have an Android powered device that will be ad-driven and insanely cheap, if not free, that will have all these products together. I think I might be ready for that. Will you?
My recent experience of listening to audio books has made me more focused on the location of thought. When recalling the material I heard, I was more apt to recall its place in the work by remembering where I was in my walk when I heard it.
I remember the exact locations where I was when I had thoughts important to me decades ago. I’m sure we all do. I remember hearing that Homeric storytellers would hold a path, or a mansion, in their minds as they told the Iliad. Each door and corner unfolded the verses and held the plot. Our thoughts lay a map upon the ground we’ve traveled and our past best follows a familiar path.
Lately I’ve been bringing everything back to some lost commentator’s thoughts on hunting and tracking. We became storytellers and scientists in order to make sense of the evidence on the ground. We ate by how well we could create a good story, tell it to those who could help, and follow it through to the prey. We speak hungry steps.
The years in this town has created a topography of memory for me. That corner holds a stack of dream interpretations. That alley is where I find confidence. I’m humble near the tracks and happy near that vacant lot. There’s a block downtown that is more sacred to me than any church.
I’ve been doing a lot of looking into geolocation and augmented reality lately, not as a technology I’ll bring into my career, nor as a scientific curiosity, but as a mode of expression my mind has always had, and poetry we’ve always sung. Could be fun.