The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space. We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed. We are at a moment, I believe, when our experience of the world is less that of a long life developing through time than that of a network that connects points and intersects with its own skein.
Category: life
Some plans for 2009
Things I intend to do:
- Travel outside my home state of Georgia at least once every month. This was my official New Year’s Resolution, probably the first year I’ve ever taken the resolution thing seriously. So far I’m 3 for 3 (January February March), and I’ve got #4 lined up for April, and a few other flights under consideration, along with the obligatory driving+hiking trips just over the border.
- Run an ultramarathon, i.e. any distance greater than the standard 26.2-mile marathon. I’ve been thinking about this for a good while, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for a decent 50K or 50M this year. I doubt I’ll be in shape to run the whole distance, but walking a bit is normal for these things. Or I might ignore the official races and tie this goal in with…
- Hiking from Blood Mountain to Amicalola Falls. I’ve been talking about this one for probably 6-7 years. It’s the southernmost stretch of the Appalachian Trail and the AT Approach Trail, about 40 miles. I’ve done comparable mileage on somewhat more forgiving terrain, so I know it’s doable. I just want to get it out of the way. I gave it a shot with a friend of mine last year (I think? or the year before?), but had to pull up short. Since then, I can’t help thinking, if only I’d done X and Y and Z differently. Failure always brings up a new strategy.
- Buy a house. Actually, let’s put this down as a “maybe.” I do want a porch, though.
In which a metaphor is discerned
I’ve just started reading the so-far excellent The Lost City of Z, about exploration in the Amazon jungle. The central character was a member of the Royal Geographic Society, and the author goes to the London headquarters to do some research…
In a corridor of the Royal Geographic Society’s building, I noticed on the wall a gigantic seventeenth-century map of the globe. On the margins were sea monsters and dragons. For ages, cartographers had no means of knowing what existed on most of the earth. And more often than not these gaps were filled in with fantastical kingdoms and beasts, as if the make-believe, no matter how terrifying, were less frightening than the truly unknown.
As in maps, so in life.
In a section later in the book (that I also interpret more broadly to relate to bold striking-forth and unknown futures in Life), another explorer describes the typical reactions he got to his plans:
There were the Prudent, who said: “This is an extraordinarily foolish thing to do.” There were the Wise, who said: “This is an extraordinarily foolish thing to do; but at least you will know better next time.” There were the Very Wise, who said: “This is a foolish thing to do, but not nearly so foolish as it sounds.”
Last weekend I enjoyed a little trip from Atlanta to Winston-Salem. If you find yourself in the area, I recommend a stop in Reynolda Gardens and maybe Mary’s Of Course Cafe. Old Salem was neat, but I’m glad we didn’t linger too long.
(This is actually a running theme in my life. See also: song database but no new recordings, exercise plan but no new muscles. The only time it works in my favor is when having a plan inherently leads to the plan being success, as with a budget.
AnywhoĶ)
You didn’t miss anything. I was only gone for a long weekend, but felt the same way. It’s a nice reminder.
And now for a long weekend on the other side of the States.
A road trip to hang out with my grandparents, with a friend en route.
It’s just so damn easy to look upon someone else and jealously think, “Wow, he sure got lucky.” Real people did not have great opportunities fall in their lap. Mostly, crappy opportunities come along, and in the meantime, you make the best of them.
—Po Bronson [via powazek]
My favorite part from Randy Pausch‘s book, The Last Lecture:
I’ll take an earnest person over a hip person every time, because hip is short-term. Earnest is long-term.
Earnestness is highly underestimated. It comes from the core, while hip is trying to impress you with the surface.
“Hip” people love parodies. But there’s no such thing as a timeless parody, is there? I have more respect for the earnest guy who does something that can last for generations, and that hip people feel the need to parody.
“Most normal persons are now taught to neglect far too much the sort of excitement which the mind itself manufactures out of unexciting things.” —G.K. Chesterton on the Joy of Dullness
The history of the weekend and how it’s changed our culture of leisure:
For many people weekend free time has become not a chance to escape work but a chance to create work that is more meaningful—to work at recreation—in order to realize the personal satisfactions that the workplace no longer offers.
[via link banana]
Austin’s post about the new house has some of the more poignant, sweet, mind-blowing ideas that I’ve read lately:
I wonder about this proximity of bodies. I wonder how we will grow in a bigger space, with an upstairs and downstairs. How our changing spatial relationships might alter our storyĶ
Strange as it may sound to many people, who tend to think of critics as being motivated by the lower emotions: envy, disdain, contempt even… Critics are, above all, people who are in love with beautiful things, and who worry that those things will get broken.
From an interview with Anthony Bourdain, a passage on those beautiful moments and how they feel kind of sucky at the same time:
IÄôve talked elsewhere about there are times in your life… IÄôll use the example of youÄôre standing alone in the desert, and you see the most incredible sunset youÄôve ever seen and your first instinct is to turn to your left or right and say, ÄúWow, do you see that?Äù Okay, thereÄôs no one there, what do you do? Next, whereÄôs the camera? Look through the viewfinder and you realize you know, what you see through that little box is not what youÄôre experiencing. There comes this terrible moment when you realize well, this is for me. There is no sharing this. Worse: if you try to share it with old friends or someone you love itÄôs almost an insult. “How was your day?” “Well, we did three hundred covers tonight, somebody sent back a steak…” “Well, in the Sahara there was this sunset and you wouldnÄôt believe it.” You know?
It’s been really wonderful to keep an eye on A House by the Park, “a first-hand chronology of the design, planning, and construction of a modern home in Seattle.” I’m not in the market now, nor do I plan to be in the near future, but it’s cool to watch and learn from a safe distance.
Vacation
I’ll be back next week. Iceland beckons.
Noticing… curating… caring
This cool dialogue about noticing made me think of three connections.
The first one came before I read it. The idea of noticing reminded me of a passage in Anne Fadiman’s book, Ex Libris, that I quoted in my review and will quote again because it’s funny:
The proofreading temperament is part of a larger syndrome with several interrelated symptoms, one of which is the spotting mania. When my friend Brian Miller, also a copy editor, was a boy, he used to sit in the woods for long stretches, watching for subtle animal movements in the distance. The young John Bethell was a whiz at figuring out What’s Wrong with This Picture? Proofreaders tend to be good at distinguishing the anomalous figure–the rare butterfly, the precious seashell–from the ordinary ground, but unlike collectors, we wish to discard rather than hoard. Although not all of us are tidy, we savor certain cleaning tasks: removing the lint from the clothes dryer, skimming the drowned bee from the pool. My father’s most treasured possession is an enormous brass wastebasket. He is happiest when his desktop is empty and the basket is full. One of my brother’s first sentences, a psychologically brilliant piece of advice offered from his high chair one morning when my father came downstairs in a grouchy mood, was “Throw everything out, Daddy!”
The second thing it made me think of was Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People. In the book, the first way to make people like you is to “become genuinely interested in other people.” Authentically give a shit. It’s so simple. That’s seconded here in the noticing interview:
Portigal: Super-noticing power really is a strong cultural idea. The enhanced human with awesome noticing and synthesizing powers crops up regularly in science fiction…
Soltzberg: Right, sort of like a super-charged version of William Gibson’s Cayce Pollard character in Pattern Recognition. Noticing definitely draws on a set of skills that these kinds of characters embody and amplify, but at the heart of it you have to genuinely be interested in the world around you and in other people.
The last thing is the idea of curating, just being open and attentive to influence and where it leads you. Curiosity and curating share a common root, which is… CARING.
Vacation
I’ve got about two weeks and 3 hours to get my act together.
Mark Larson 