I’ve started a podcast for some of the things I’ve discussed here, and elsewhere.
The second episode is already in production.
Available at:
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
YouTube
Pocket Cast
I’ve started a podcast for some of the things I’ve discussed here, and elsewhere.
The second episode is already in production.
Available at:
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
YouTube
Pocket Cast
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.
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.
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.
I was trying to get past a difficult decision that would direct my career and could mean serious risk/success. I saw these.
I see a lot of old shoes. I see a lot of old shoes with their laces tied together. They are usually hanging on power/phone lines. There were a lof of power lines here, as can be seen in the background. But the shoes were on the ground.
I started thinking about laces tied together, and how that could limit reach and pace and balance. I thought about how someone probably flung these up, attempting a high step, and failed even here where there were so many power lines. Then they gave up, or were chased off. The old shoes were left in failure. Among too many goals even a simple achievement fails.
A lot of homeless/car campers hang out around here, and the shoes weren’t that bad. I imagined someone who could use them finding them and putting a few more miles on them. The attempted vandalism takes part of a new path.
There’s also the alleged meaning that shoes-on-a-wire may take on that has become meaningless by the frequency of the phenomenon. Tired steps become a tired semaphore.
This substation, or whatever it is, became an alternate context for the symbol. Trying to step high near the transfer of power failed.
Walking by the failure to step over the wire, I had dozens of new approaches to my contemplation. It was the best oracle I’ve found in years and it changed my life by changing my thinking.
I’ve made the decision with a confidence I don’t think I would have had otherwise. I did so not because I’d seen the future, or peered into an arcane perspective, but because my thinking was so suddenly and rapidly expanded past the troubled perplexity I had had a moment before.
This is why I look down.
I saw this while walking through some worries. I have to choose between some good choices. Instead of comparing the various virtues and qualities of the choices, I was compulsively weighing risks, using long passed and irrelevant injuries as measure. Everything was incommensurable and awkward. I started feeling more and more inconfident, almost certain that I would choose the wrong path. I became lost. I saw this.
The reflex to cling to fear and apprehension outlasts not just the injuries, but the fear as well. I gave the barrier a nudge with my foot and kept walking.
Where and how I fit in has been in a swirl lately. I’ve had plenty to think about, too much to think about.
Normally I look for signs to provoke new thought and to think differently. The most striking things I see now are those that stop thought. A light pole on a freeway bridge next to a bus stop has a twisted, half-painted ground wire. It’s home enough for a cluster of moss. It’s home enough to say ‘shhhhh’.
I was wandering around, waiting for the phone to ring when I found a great place to talk. As soon as I saw the bench, I saw the coyote. It walked by the bench and then into cover and turned to look at me. I was able to get the camera out before it left.
The space others leave behind by others can welcome us in ways solitude can’t. Knowing that the coyote had been there seconds before made the phone ring clearer and my greeting stronger.