Collaborations of Abstraction

http://collaborationsofabstraction.wordpress.com/

One of my goals in the past year was to visit Europe. A friend and I made plans to fly to Ireland as well as Spain. Along with great photos and 10 pounds (damn that Spanish wine and ham!), we brought back the email address of some Welsh dude.

Fast-forward about six months and I found myself with another friend from across the globe. And this one happened to be inspired by my blog -- so inspired that he started his own.
http://welshtramp.blogspot.com/

(I'm still very flattered by this.)

There have been times when I've wanted to post something on my blog, but it really didn't suit the theme. I know it's hard to believe, but there are times when the pessimist comes out of the basement and I just want to rant. Or sound off on politics. Or let the inner conspiracy theorist have the reins. And Iain had similar feelings about his blog.

I've been trying to find someone to co-write on a blog with me for quite some time. But not everyone fancies themselves writers, and a lot of people just don't feel the need to put it "out there." So after watching my friend blog like a maniac for the past few months, I decided to ask him. And he was soooo down! Sweet!

So check out our new blog Collaborations of Abstraction. It's full of all sorts of interesting discoveries and thoughts from all over the world. At least interesting to us. Comments are encouraged. Suggestions are welcome.

http://collaborationsofabstraction.wordpress.com/

We'll both continue our individual blogs. So don't worry. My ridiculous optimism will continue. How could it not? There are so many beautiful things to consider and appreciate!

"No, impassible. Nothing's impossible!"

Jim, a 78-year-old man, showed up at my door today to say hello and that he grew up in what I now call my home. I invited him in and he told me about a secret room behind my closet (exploration time, anyone?) and where he buried his dog. His parents had the house built. He said he lived here during World War II and when there were blackouts, they would eat by the light of the refrigerator.


I'm a sucker for good stories, so it was a welcome intrusion, to say the least.

Today also happens to be the 20th anniversary of the Loma Prieta Earthquake, which shook (literally and figuratively) much of California to the core. I've seen monuments to the catastrophe here but not being local, mostly I remember it as something that happened during (of course) playoff baseball.

Perspective and time are such amazing things, aren't they? One person can look out a window and see empty fields where he dug caves and hid coins, and I see a neighborhood full of people going about their business. To me, a closet holds clothes; to him--secret meetings with the neighbor kids. In my world, the earthquake was pictures and newscasts. To others, it seemed to be the end of the world.

I often wax poetic about different planets and dimensions, wondering when we will be able to travel to and from and through them. But doesn't that already exist in the world we live in today? If we open our minds and look through other people's eyes, Mount Everest doesn't look so tall. And the oceans seem only a pond.

Perhaps our version of time travel is too narrow. What if we simply listened and lived through other people's stories. I mean really listen without our own experiences coloring theirs? Could we travel back in their memories? Can we exist somewhere else simply by letting go?

If this is true, then maybe we can do whatever we want to do. That looming project at work might not seem so taxing after swimming the English Channel. Writing that book would seem less daunting after witnessing your plays performed on stage. For those times when we'd rather not get out of bed, we could remember a life where we could not walk at all.

I'm not proposing we don multiple personalities or lose our own. I'm suggesting that maybe if we let go of our egos and allow our souls to truly listen and move, we can accomplish anything. We are all connected, and wouldn't it be wonderful if we could learn the easy way for once? I think it's very possible.

What would you eat for a last meal?

There are certain questions I like to ask that I feel tell a lot about someone:

--How do you like your eggs?
--If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
--Do you have a criminal record?

These questions don't have a right or wrong answer. They're just telling, y'know? And this weekend I was speaking to some people about my adventures of late, and I realized, I basically answered the question "What would you take to a deserted island?" Oh, and here's a picture of my answer.




Watermelon (for hydration, of course!), my bread, wine (man can not live on bread alone), Henry David Thoreau's Walden, and well, a cigarette. (I know, I know. Dammit!)

Most of us really don't need much. In fact, I like to remind myself that I don't need anything. But oxygen is good. And I really do dig sunshine. And I'll begrudgingly admit that gravity has its benefits. Maybe the things we need are what we cannot capture.

Laughter, happiness and love are the oxygen, sunshine and gravity of our lives. They're impossible to capture, and the science behind them is mind-blowing. So, although I really like my cigarettes, booze and literature, I'm certain I could make it on a deserted island as long as I had some good company.

Goals are like the roadmaps to life

My friend and I were chatting this afternoon, and he was waxing sentimental about a certain girl. It would be a year ago (in 11 days, 15 hours and 32 minutes) that she had left for Australia. It was sweet, albeit a little sappy, and it made me smile. I was getting all misty. Then he asked, "What were you doing at this time last year?"

Holy Jesus. Stop the show. Go back a year? I did. Thought about it. Talked about it a little. And the conversation flowed again. But what was it about that question that caught me off guard?

The topic of goals has been coming up in conversation a lot lately. (Probably because the season of death is almost upon us, and we're doing the natural assessment of another cycle's passing.) So I started thinking about the goals I had for the last year and what came of them.

• Travel to Europe--actually going to make it there twice. Damn! Not bad at all!


• Move to another state--California resident? Check!


• Write a book or screenplay--not quite, still working on it...that may be on the list for awhile


• Go boyfriendless for awhile--single for almost two years!


• Go for a solid motorcycle ride this summer--3.5 hours in the mountains and along Hwy 1. Couldn't ask for a much cooler ride than that.


• Surround myself with people that make me want to be a better person--Yup!


• Pursue balance--working on it!


• Go to a baseball game in California--looks like this one might not be a reality unless I can get down to L.A.

I'm going to pat myself on the back for this list. I did almost everything I wanted to do this year. To be honest, I just learned the power and magic of setting goals. I had never really done it before. I mean, yeah, I had the occasional New Year's resolution, but I always made those really easy: floss every day, eat 3 fruits or veggies a day, etc. This was my first attempt at sitting down and making some reasonable and not-so-attainable goals.

I think the reason I was so nervous about answering my friend's question is that I used to dread shit like that as a kid. Remember being in high school and all the adults would ask, Where are you going to college? and then it's When are you getting married? and then it's Where are you thinking of buying a house? And this pattern of questioning continues until we have children and then they can start badgering them instead of us. Anyway, I always hated those questions because they were based in assumption. And god forbid we should say, Eh...I don't really feel like going to college.

The cool thing is though, once you start having your own goals, questions like my friend's are much more fun to answer. I wonder if some "adults" had stopped asking the assuming questions, if adolescence would have been easier. Ha! I doubt it.

I think the more often we set goals, the easier they are to attain. And they keep us moving forward. But it's an active process. We must participate in our lives, or we'll end up waking up one day with a spouse, house and kids and say Woah woah woah! When did this happen? Not that there's anything wrong with said things--I'm just suggesting we make sure they're our ideas and not the product of someone else setting our goals. If we actively set and work toward goals, I'm fairly certain we can do anything. That's why that screenplay goal will stay on my list!

My hypotheses may not hold up in California

My friend told me about her bus ride home today. An older guy with a fake Jamaican accent was fighting with his girlfriend and declared to the entire bus: "I bring you fruit and you throw it down the stairs!"

She said it was quite the dramatic production. She was convinced it was fake. And that got me thinking about something I haven't considered in a while: The Social Experiment.

I'm a big fan of seeing how people react in situations where the unexpected happens. Or when they're forced to be uncomfortable by proximity. I've traveled across a continent to visit someone for 11 hours just to see how they would react.

One of my favorite ideas was going to lunch in front of the courthouse where everyone (read: judges, lawyers, the real suits) eats when it's nice out. I would show up in my business casual uniform with my lunch, strip down to a bikini and sunbathe on the fountain bench. I wanted to get my photog friend there to document the event, but even she was uncomfortable with the idea.

I guess I haven't really considered doing a social experiment in a while. Probably because the last three months of my life have been a giant one on myself. But now that I'm a little more familiar with my surroundings, it might be time to start brainstorming.

The thing is, people in Minnesota are different than people in California. (Insert "Duh!" here.) So how do I come up with new ideas? And I can't very well experiment on my coworkers or roommate. That would be downright unethical! So where do I start? Perhaps the transit station.