this is actually yesterday.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<< written yesterday (though edited today to some degree)

I decided earlier today to walk from Capitol Hill to University District – a three-and-a-half-mile escapade I have done a few times before, though never on the particular route I took today and never when I actually lived here. Peter spent the previous weekend in Portland, so I hitched a ride back up to Seattle with him on Super Bowl Sunday. It amuses me immensely that Super Bowl now creeps up so suddenly; I find out about its existence a few days before, and it always comes as a complete shock. Not that I was ever extremely gung-ho about it, but I can appreciate most sports – baseball being the only real exception – and do find it interesting to miss out on such a huge part of American culture now, when I had at least some sense of it before (that sense shaped as person who was throwing a Super Bowl party or even more than a handful of people attending a Super Bowl party). Now, I don’t even have a party to attend even if I wanted to (and I would rather want to) unless I went up to Seattle and asked my Seattle friends if they knew of one I could attend, I guess! Perhaps even more interesting than that, though, may be going to a bar and watching it, given the recent hobby of visiting the most random bars ever and the fact that I’ve never done that before but nacho-eating huddled around a television is probably more or less the same no matter where you are or who you’re with…

As I was saying, I walked to U-District and was certainly more or less over the walk by the time I got there. It was nice to retrace my steps to my old workplace at the Experimental Education Unit, though; over the course of one summer I walked to and from work daily and lost an exorbitant amount of weight doing so. I would be so sweaty by the time I got to work that it was the kind of sweat that soaked through parts of your shirt you didn’t want it to soak through.

Losing weight is no longer such an easy feat, even if I do walk for miles at a time. I know this because I do that. I am curious what the difference is; is it really as simple as metabolism and growing older? It may also be the fact that I eat way more now… pretty sure that is a truth. It’s a mystery.

I walked through the University of Washington campus to the University District post office, making a couple of pit stops along the way. The first was stopping near the fountain by the Architecture building. The last time I was in Seattle, Troy and I happened to be in the Suzzalo Library – a true beauty, with one hell of an amazing reading room I had never taken the liberty of using when I went to school there – when I ran into Tammy and we came across a series of posters describing a Cultural Fair they used to have on campus. The heart of it was around the Architecture building, and it looked fucking incredible. While doing research to find photos of this, I also just came across this awesome blog of University of Washington’s historical photos. This article tells more about it as well (written in 2009, it celebrates the 100-year anniversary of the event). Am I getting school-sick? Seattle-sick? It seems that I am, big time, and I guess it’s pretty appropriately timed considering some things I will mention later on in this post.

Back to where I was. Walking through the UW campus, there was just one lovely stone bench that wanted so badly to be sat upon, the sun just slightly having been introduced to a corner of it. I granted it my ass! And faced slightly east and sat cross-legged upon it, welcoming in the morning sun with eyes closed, long my favorite way to meditate. Something about the rays upon your eyelids and turning everything an equalizing red, while highlighting patterns of eye dust, really just feels cathartic and radiant. (I also vaguely remember someone telling me once that looking into the sun in that way gets rid of some cells you no longer need and ultimately makes your eyesight or something better. Who told me that, and is it true? Who knows.)

I distinctly remember one meditation session in the backyard of the 716 house in Greenlake when I still lived there. It dawns upon me now that I may not even have purposely been meditating, as I’m not sure it was a practice I did then; it was just an appealing thing to do. I remember opening my eyes for the first time after an extended session adoring the sun in that way, and the world was not the world as I had seen it before; it was tinted blue, or green, but all things were visualized as they were in comparison to the sun’s strength and color. This tinting gradually subsided, but it was powerful to me then, a type of inducement of hallucinogenic states through doing nearly nothing at all. Today, meditating in front of the fountain, I expected difficulty; I expected that those passing by would distract me, that I would get lost in their footsteps and chattering and not be able to focus, similar to what had happened to me the other night with the Shamanic Mysteries. For the most part, though, I meditated for perhaps twenty minutes and many passed by, but none were chattering, save for a man who burped right towards the end of my session. And because I was out in the open, for all to see, I figured that some were looking at me while passing and wondering what I was doing, while others were perhaps not at all curious. As distracting as those iterations on human reaction could have been, they were a minor aside, small notes considering what I was actually thinking. The meditation thoughts were more worthy, rising to the top while the other portions sank down. I was proud to have been influenced so little by the thoughts of them, more interested by the thoughts of them inside me. It was a self-back-patting moment, the non-barrier to meditative entry always a graceful and satisfying moment.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<< written today

I have been reading much of Henry Miller’s Tropic Of Capricorn, and quite pleased to say that after putting it down for months I am now nearing the end of it (note: my copy does not nearly look this awesome). This book was purchased by he, one named The Unmentionable Other, back in January 2011, and it was gifted to me by Rose when she headed off to the East Coast. He had left it at her house, and she knew not who better to give it to than me. But of course, the book’s existence was of eerie timing, similar to how Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea had been, and I can’t help but think that the silly Unmentionable has some sort of magical ability, akin to what I have developed, to manifest wishes desired into reality. But the difference seems to be that he wishes to manifest tragedy, imposed tragedy, inexplicable tragedy, where I desire for more peaceful, soulful, constructive things. I suppose our romance never would have worked. I suppose the place we are now is the perfect place – and I do not doubt this, have not doubted this, but it is always popping again as the type of reminder that might never die or dispose of itself, that pigeon-pecks seeds of reality. But more fitting, though, is that one sir Mr. Henry Miller writes like me, or more I write like him, though if you take the logic that he subscribes to of there being no time but only present – we both write like each other, quite mutually. But not always. The writing is mutual when I am feeling poetic and down in the dumps, when my internal monologue is strong and rambling and stream-of-consciousness rather than analytical and exacting. The writing is mutual when my roots are, as Miller says, rooted in the ground rather than in the brain – when the brain is in the heart rather than in the head. Of course, unlike Miller, I think I find value in both, whereas he seems to find value only in the one, in the heart-in-brain…

I am here, right now, in Albina Press in South Portland. I am playing catch-up on yesterday’s activities, as they are more of note than today’s. Yesterday, I was in Seattle, and after my morning meditation which I previously described, I happened by the set of lecture halls I previously had known so well – the ones which seated hundreds of people for General Ed courses, the ones which I fell asleep in innumerous times…

I passed by at 10:15am or so, and classes were just letting out. It had crossed my mind many times to visit one of these halls again, to barge in on a random class and let fate decide what I would learn that day as though I were some Freshman or Sophomore once again. But every time I return to Seattle, I never follow through with this plan because to actually plan the plan takes away from the magic of the plan. This particular morning, however, was ripe for my education! In I walked, decision made in a matter of seconds – straight into Kane 130, site of where I failed the hardest in college (Linguistics, Dinosaurs 101… I’m serious…)

I sat down, the same college awkwardness I had once known so well once again rearing its ugly head. Am I sitting in the right place? What if I’ve taken someone’s seat? What if I end up making conversation with a college student? Wait, what the hell! I’m almost 30! Shouldn’t I be over this shit?!!! But it seems not, as in this case, I am worried I might somehow be caught and that my imposter, education-gold-digging ways might be discovered, leading to ostracization – or probably not ostracization because I don’t think anyone would have that extreme an opinion – but misunderstanding, yes. Definitely misunderstanding.

To my chagrin, the class was a Communications class. I suppose in some way a Communications class should be something I’m interested in, considering I run a music and arts publication… but by god, there’s a reason I didn’t do Communications in Undergrad; it’s just not interesting to me in the same way that Sociology was! It’s similar to the lack of magic in planning on going to a random lecture class versus the magic of stumbling into one on a whim; deconstructing Communications not my jam. Making communications more my jam. And anyway, the concept we were initially presented with in this lecture – media bias and objectivity – were ones I learned about in high school Journalism class ad nauseum. Not to say that the information wasn’t valuable, but I was seriously hoping for some information about Linguistics or Dinosaurs (maybe to make up for my previous failures) or at least something I’m a little less knowledgeable in. C’est la vie, though, and the class was interesting in very particular ways, as it was a meta-commentary upon itself (which I will get into in a little bit here).

Some things have changed since I went to school at UW. For starters, laptops are now allowed, though only in the last five rows in this particular class! I suppose this comes as no surprise, but they were never commonplace when I went to University. But I just remember someone telling me recently that students don’t write real words anymore in class, and this is clearly a lie, I’ve now discovered through first-hand knowledge (though perhaps with younger generations this is indeed true).

At one point, the teacher, Randy Beam, put up one PowerPoint slide that asked the students whether M.I.A.’s flipping off people during the Super Bowl (see below) would “fall under the FCC’s definition of indecent content?” along with a multiple choice poll where 1 meant “Probably” and 2 meant “Probably Not”. All the students immediately reached into their backpack – a point of great confusion – and retrieved teeny tiny remote controls with which they punched in their answers! What! My mind was blown! What is this madness! Technology! Interaction! Teachers who actually employ participatory tactics in a class with hundreds of people and succeed?! This is remarkable!

In fact, the teacher did much back-and-forth with the large class, and students were surprisingly responsive. No question was met with complete silence, though I will say that most opinionated students were actually rather lacking in backbone. At one point, a series of cases were presented, and students were asked to decide whether they considered the cases to be news or not news. There were some quibbles amongst the class, wherein some considered The Daily Show news and some did not; some considered an opinion piece about supermarket purchases news, and some did not. A discussion ensued. Beam asked students how they arrived at the decisions that they did, and it was altogether too easy to back those students into corners! Come on, kids! If the professor saying something like, “Why isn’t [The Daily Show] news to you? Isn’t it from the World News Headquarters in New York?” – a clear joke – is enough to notably rattle your foundations, you’ve really got to think through your answers a little more! He in fact played Devil’s Advocate a lot, and almost every time the students gave up their original opinions and some even became confused about what their original opinions were. But I suppose they are still youth and the growth of backbone and well-thought-out opinions will come in time. Or not…!

My favorite response came from the individual who decided that celebrity gossip news (about the custody battle over Anna Nicole’s baby boy – or whatever, who cares) is news, despite the fact that it may not be particularly interesting to everyone. He said, “Just because news is esoteric doesn’t mean it’s not news. Some people wouldn’t consider sports news news.” This was perhaps the most profound and well-thought-out argument in the class. Kudos!

Though I left half-way through the lecture, during the conveniently-timed break (I really needed to leave then, and it would have been awkward if I had to leave mid-lecture!), the teacher hinted at what he would go on to discuss in the second half: how certain stories are picked over others, and why.

“It’s kind of chance [and idiosyncratic] what gets to be news,” he said, “because there is no standard definition of what is news and what is not.”

But the point of mega-meta-hilarity came from Beam’s earlier question. “Why isn’t anyone going to cover Com 201, unless I am doing something illegal?” he’d asked.

Exploding silent giggles to self! I was planning to cover Com 201 the whole time! And he wasn’t doing something illegal! But is this news? What is news? Is a blog post news? Is this too esoteric to be news? Is my opinion news? God, I don’t know anymore! I am reporting facts but my opinion is all over this thing! But isn’t that all news? Isn’t that the Daily Show? Isn’t that NBC and Fox News? Help me, Mr. Beam! What is news!!!!!!!!!?

EDIT >>>

Of course, I wrote the professor. His response: “This is a hoot — the irony of you “covering” a class about news when I was suggesting no one would ever consider it news. I just gotta talk about this tomorrow. Thanks for sending, Vivian. –RB”

These things are fun.

{004} vow of silence – bar hilarity.

(transcribed post barring.)

currently writing this at twilight cafe, a “charming” bar on powell’s and around 12th. perhaps “charming” is not the word most people would choose but it is “real” in the worst of (musical guest and accompaniment) ways, which i actually respect. i don’t know if this is what most bars in this here fine country are like but it is most certainly punctuated by musical guests that grace the (worst) album covers we receive, the kinda thing i listen to two notes of then press delete on instantly. ah, so this is where they go.

there are at least, from this vatnage point, three patron (saints) standing at sympathetic — or possibly even real — attention. there is also a guitarist in the band who consistently ends every song with some meadly notes that are not at all impressive — but their inclusion is incredibly amusing. also they evidently sell ladies underpants (the band, not the bar.) selling line: “guys, if you have any ladies in your lives…” reminds me of when dear old nathan, oh lovely nathan, got me some kind of red hots or some other cinnamon candy underpants (red, yellow string?). snap.

(now updated in the present, which is 12:29am…)

not listening to ssaliva’s “drugged out quest”, though not wholly sure what i think of it, though it is interesting right now…

i have tipped my book this evening into a bunch of ketchup. it is reeking of ketchup presentlyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

sample notes from the bar i took (troy’s in italics):

beer selection is pup
that’s good! and? the napkin
HAS A MAZE

anyway not much more to say.
think i might quit the vow of silence early because i don’t really think i’m learning that much.
we’ll see, though; tomorrow is a fairly social day.

{002} vow of silence: shamanic mysteries of egypt begins.

jesus christ. i’m kind of a bit shaken up still. so i got the shamanic mysteries of egypt book, as i had previously mentioned, and now i feel like i left a part of myself somewhere. i don’t even know how to describe it. so, the first one is barely a visionary thing, as it is only an introduction. in it, one is given a really basic heart meditation to do, where you breathe in from the ground to your heart, then breathe in from the sky to your heart, then both at the same time…………………………………. anyway, that’s the beginning, and then the initial invocation involves you picturing yourself stepping over a cliff, and you turn into a dove flying above egypt, and meet — in passing — anubis and isis, who just tell you that you’re about to start your mission, basically. all that was fine. it was a little weird listening to my own voice, and my reading was a bit rushed, so it took me a second to get into it all. but then by the end, i had basically stopped listening to the shit i had recorded myself saying and then got into this trance where i was lord knows fuck where, but i went there REALLY all of a sudden, like teleportation (though in my head) and legitimately had a hard time getting “back” which really kind of freaked me out. i was wearing an all lights out blindfold that i had used and the “hard time getting back” was so freaky to me that i actually opened my eyes uncontrollably, only it didn’t make a difference because with the lights on blindfold it was still the same shade (that is, no shade). towards the end of it, when i was trying to get back, was the only time i really saw anything i didn’t expect to see. up until that point, i was being nice and easily guided, and suddenly, i found myself with a pretty still image of what i expected / knew to be osiris (though when i finished checking it after i came back to reality, i thought for a second it might be ptah, but i do think now it is definitely osiris, both in terms of his looks and because i remember thinking to myself right away that it was osiris). and then another person, who was more difficult to track down, but which i have narrowed to be — possibly — nefertari, though it could be isis (osiris’ wife), though pictures don’t seem to match isis.

Osiris, similar to how I saw him, though I had thought he was: a) blue; b) facing the other direction.

The lady — the more powerful presence — looked quite similar to these pictures of Nefertari. The sleeves, in particular, seem to be of note, as she seems to be the only Queen and only Goddess with an outfit like that, and I very distinctly remember it being “square” similar to this. But I don’t know what the significance is… she isn’t a god, but a Queen of Ramesses II.

Quick summary of Osiris, which is partially what serves to confuse me more… taken from Wikipedia…

Osiris ( /oʊˈsaɪərɨs/; Ancient Greek: Ὄσιρις, also Usiris; the Egyptian language name is variously transliterated Asar, Asari, Aser, Ausar, Ausir, Wesir, Usir, Usire or Ausare) is an Egyptian god, usually identified as the god of the afterlife, the underworld and the dead. He is classically depicted as a green-skinned man with a pharaoh’s beard, partially mummy-wrapped at the legs, wearing a distinctive crown with two large ostrich feathers at either side, and holding a symbolic crook and flail.
Osiris is at times considered the oldest son of the Earth god Geb,[1] and the sky goddess Nut, as well as being brother and husband of Isis, with Horus being considered his posthumously begotten son.[1] He is also associated with the epithet Khenti-Amentiu, which means “Foremost of the Westerners” — a reference to his kingship in the land of the dead.[2] As ruler of the dead, Osiris is also sometimes called “king of the living”, since the Ancient Egyptians considered the blessed dead “the living ones”.[3]
Osiris is first attested in the middle of the Fifth dynasty of Egypt, although it is likely that he is worshipped much earlier;[4] the term Khenti-Amentiu dates to at least the first dynasty, also as a pharaonic title. Most information we have on the myths of Osiris is derived from allusions contained in the Pyramid Texts at the end of the Fifth Dynasty, later New Kingdom source documents such as the Shabaka Stone and the Contending of Horus and Seth, and, much later, in narrative style from the writings of Greek authors including Plutarch[5] and Diodorus Siculus.[6]
Osiris is not only a merciful judge of the dead in the afterlife, but also the underworld agency that granted all life, including sprouting vegetation and the fertile flooding of the Nile River. He is described as the “Lord of love”,[7] “He Who is Permanently Benign and Youthful”[8] and the “Lord of Silence”.[9] The Kings of Egypt were associated with Osiris in death — as Osiris rose from the dead they would, in union with him, inherit eternal life through a process of imitative magic. By the New Kingdom all people, not just pharaohs, were believed to be associated with Osiris at death if they incurred the costs of the assimilation rituals.[10]
Through the hope of new life after death Osiris began to be associated with the cycles observed in nature, in particular vegetation and the annual flooding of the Nile, through his links with Orion and Sirius at the start of the new year.[8] Osiris was widely worshiped as Lord of the Dead until the suppression of the Egyptian religion during the Christian era.[11][12]

fuck, i am so confused. anyway, this is day two of my vow of silence. it’s 6:00pm and i’m listening to sechskies. i have messed up twice today, one time of which was when i said, “what the fuck” after doing my egypt meditation. the other time was when i woke up this morning and, i think, also said, “what the fuck” because my neck was killing me for the second day in a row and that shit usually never happens. glad to say i haven’t fucked up since, though, even considering i went out for quite a row. i got slightly confused earlier and thought that i had lost my cellphone at stumptown (had to write them a little note to ask, and also had a funny interaction with an old man who was sitting at the table i had been sitting at and thought i was looking for a wall outlet and pointed me in the other direction, but i couldn’t properly charade to him what i was doing so it was just a lot of funny gestures between the two of us and him probably thinking i was a dummy). but the phone wasn’t there, as it was wrapped up in my blankets at home, so whatever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i was thinking it was quite funny that i would lose my main source of communication while i was not speaking. it would have actually been kinda a fun experiment (fun/frustrating, i’m sure).

when troy and i first got to stumptown this morning, i had wanted to buy a flourless cookie (they are soooooo good at stumptown) and had pointed at it for troy to order it, and he was just like, “i was thinking of getting this,” and pointed to some other pastry, and very much not on purpose i let out this crazy squeal and the barista at stumptown definitely gave me the weirdest look and only half-addressed me for the rest of the conversation. ha. it was… interesting.

i was also saying this morning that danny was telling us yesterday that william burroughs or someone did a vow of silence for a year, and then when he started speaking again, just rattled off one super profound poem. i told troy that because there was so much going on in my head that i couldn’t say — i write stuff down sometimes, but when you’re on a walk, or with other people, writing takes too long and is ignored and inappropriate — that i bet when i talk again i’ll have some shit to say. i dunno. maybe. it’s funny because i have to give a speech a week after i stop being silent about redefine, and the future of it, and such. but yeah, after i had “said” this william burroughs thing to troy, he had just gotten to a part in thus spoke zarathustra where zarathustra had come out of a 7-day coma or something and was massively enlightened by the end of it. a funny coincidence, considering he probably read less than a dozen pages while i was sitting next to him (and also, this page occurred within ten minutes of my mentioning the william burroughs thing).

but yeah, other than that, just went grocery shopping today and shit, and no one was really any the wiser. i will report more about the rest of the day if there is anything to report… for dinner, i’m making this cambodian fried rice noodles with pickled carrot and daikon!! STOKED!!! also already made this chipotle salsa which was ooookay. tomorrow i’m going to try making some chipotle peanut butter cookies (or brownies?), vegan basil pesto, and chipotle banana bread. chipotle’s the ingredient of the moment; it can’t be helped…

wait, real funnily: osiris is the lord of love… and the lord of silence. haha!!

{001} vow of silence: beginnings.

Yesterday was my first day embarking on my vow of silence, which will last through February 22nd or so (unless something comes up for which I am required to speak, which is looking possible for the weekend of February 10th).

I must have fucked up almost a dozen times yesterday with talking. Some of the moments I remembered:
- Mini-conversation with a homeless guy selling a newspaper;
- Dammit to myself after I couldn’t figure out some video stuff;
- Hello to Shawn after he came home late at night.

It’s hard. I’m not sure if there’s anything else profound to say right now… just a couple things.

In the afternoon, I met up with Danny and his mom and Gina at Tao Of Tea. Gina and I split a really intensely sweetened roobois chai (I mean, roobois is already kinda sweet; sweetening it with COCONUT SUGAR????? seems highly unnecessary, to me…) Anyway. Danny’s mom is from Santa Fe, and she is a psychic medium, which is kinda awesome. Rad lady, can definitely see the connection. She also kept calling me Van, which was simultaneously kinda funny and unbearable. More on the funny side, though, and Danny had to be like, “Don’t worry, she calls me Chris sometimes.” (Chris being his brother). His mom was funny, though, she was like, “You’re already kind of quiet, aren’t you, Van? So maybe being silent is a cop-out? Maybe you should have to speak all the time, instead!” It’s a good point. I think, though, what I’m learning from this is to be more expressive with my body, which, for me, is, I think, a really good thing because I’m not so good at that. (That was a lot of commas in one sentence.) (Also, it is really easy to write “vow of silence” as “cow of silence” and I almost did just that )

At night, I mostly hung with Troy and he had to bear the weight of the ridiculousness. He is perhaps the most horrible person at charades ever!! He said he has only played two times in his life or something, and man, does it show hahhahah. But it’s funny — after a couple hours, he started charading stuff out just because I was doing it. This is also nice because I am mailing a letter to Jonny tomorrow, and I can tell him I’m doing this! This is swell!!!

Watched a Buster Keaton movie for halfsies last night. That shit is totally fucking awesome! I have never seen Charlie Chaplin films, either, but I definitely want to do it now… anyway, more later.

to fill in the gaps! before the gap!

i’m listening to… little dragon’s ritual union album.

beginning tomorrow morning, when i awake, i will no longer be speaking, for an entire month, until february 22nd.

why am i doing this, why am i doing this, why am i doing this? the inevitable question.

there are a few reasons, but most simply, i’ve been wanting to do it for more than a year now, since i met jonny and he was taking a vow of silence. jonny is in florida now — he moved there — and we have exchanged a message each, and i’m popping one in the mail tomorrow. it’s funny; i had vaguely liked him (mostly cause he is kind of the most attractive dude ever) but anyway, lots of stuff happened, and then i wrote him about all the things that happened, and he told me he had just always assumed i had had a boyfriend though he had never explicitly met a boyfriend of mine. i found that completely bizarre, and don’t really understand why he would think such a thing… but anyway…

as for reasons!

on the more personal end:

{1} i’m curious if i can even do it. it is going to require an intennnnnse amount of self-control, and i’m not *entirely* sure if i have that kind of self-control. it’s interesting, actually, i don’t usually feel like speaking all that much, in general, and very rarely around big groups of people… but now that speaking is actually “at stake,” i keep getting these urges to speak! it’s insane! i woke up this morning and the first thing i wanted to do was talk, but i didn’t even have anything i really wanted to talk about… it was just the act of doing it, now at stake, that called for itself to be exercised, trying to assert to me that yes, indeed, it would be missed!!!!!!!!!

{2} i kind of have a problem, in general, with people speaking too much. i wonder if this practice will make me more tolerant of people who speak a lot, or if it will be the opposite.

{3} i would say it would grow my listening abilities, but i honestly think i’m pretty good at listening, already…

on a more external level:

{1} i’m curious how this will change people’s reactions to me.

{2} i wonder if this will make people consider how much they talk.

{3} i wonder if people who spend a lot of time with me will spend less time with me.

{4} ?????? there are a bunch more; i just can’t think of them right now really!

but yeah. if i do make it, it should be interesting. as far as i am concerned, it’s like an altered mind state… but absolutely free, which is just wonderful!

———————————————————————————————————–

IN OTHER NEWS.

i found someone’s check on the side of the street the other day and mailed it back to the guy whose address was on it. got this back today…

(the top picture also features this awesome cow glass roxanne bought me for christmas. the cow on the handle, man. it’s all about the cow on handle.)

also, more generally, i got a message from someone named daniel. i think it was after he found my social experiments website. i’m not going to copy and paste the whole note, but partially…

i made a new bookmark folder for you. its called ‘fun’. thanks for that. i’ve now added fuckyouverymuch.dk to it which is simple but neat and is kinda the same category but totally not.

pretty awesome. i love random emailssssssssssssss! it is also simultaneous madness and awesomeness that you can hold onto all of your email now in such a concrete manner……………………!

what else. i met up with gabe downtown to try and pitch him an art show, but unfortunately they’re full-up for the year (unless i plan a one-off event rather than an installation). but whatever. i guess i will just make the thing myself and get it installed somewhere after i make it. hopefully i don’t go insane making it and?? storing it in my house?!!!!??!!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?! i need a studio! except i’m too fucking poor!

the oregon jung society has this awesome ass lecture series coming up. february’s events are these, and i wrote them about getting a press pass, because with the way the influences on redefine are turning out, relating that information back to arts with an article seems like a great idea…

February 17 and 18, 2012: Jane Zich
Exploring the Visual Language of the Unconscious
The realm of psyche is immeasurably great and filled with living reality. -C.G. Jung
In her lecture, Jane Zich will explore the “living reality” of the psyche as evidenced in the visual language of the unconscious that emerges in depth psychotherapy, dreams,
films, and extended active imagination processes. She will use paintings from her Vision Journey series — an image-mediated dialogue with the unconscious that has spanned seven years — to illustrate how recurrent cycles and shifts in imagery suggest a purposefulness in the visual language of the unconscious that can promote and support an “I-Thou” attitude of partnership between ego consciousness and the unconscious. Specific psychological tasks that seem required for specific stages or types of imagery will be described, as well as impasses that tend to result when those tasks are avoided or incompletely met. Dr. Zich will illustrate the role of “orienting intentions” in navigating extended dialogues with the unconscious, and will refer to image stages and related tasks for ego consciousness that can be seen in C.G. Jung’s Red Book, in cultural contexts, and in societal impasses. Time for discussion will follow.

Workshop: Opening the Gift This workshop is designed to foster an experiential exploration of the material presented in Friday’s lecture. After choosing a personal “orienting intention” for the workshop, everyone will select a wrapped gift. Before unwrapping the gift, we will take time to explore our expectations, thoughts, feelings, intuitions, sensory impressions, and attitudes stirred by this “unknown other,” symbolized by the wrapped gift. Then, as we each unwrap our gift, we will have a chance to observe our approach to discovering the “other,” including the ways our expectations around the anticipated (wrapped) gift have influenced our experience of the actual (unwrapped) gift. Through drawing, painting, collage-making, and clay-molding, we will explore the visual language of the unconscious, our personal pacing, inner resources, and rituals for honoring what is meaningful to us in such dialogues with the unconscious. Participants’ experiences will be discussed and amplified in terms of Jungian concepts and depth work as applicable to creative projects, psychotherapy, and personal growth.

UNFORTUNATELY they won’t be able to give me tickets to the workshop cause they said it has a max limit of 35 and it will probably be filled up by members, buuuuuuuuuut, whatever. i’m excited just to go to the lecture and see what that creates in my brain.

anyway.
for the last bit i’m just going to post some images of the art i’m working on. i’m tired of writing, for now. i’m sure i will be doing SHIT TONS of it in the next silent month. jesus christ. oh yeah also i went to a naturopathic doctor for an annual checkup and regular checkup today. thought it would be different from a regular doctor, but it was pretty much the same considering there’s nothing -really- wrong with me and all it is is similar measurements and stuff that you will do at a regular doctor. but i will be doing blood work after my vow of silence, so hopefully that will be more interesting (but again, probably the same haha).

oh man i keep finding new things to write about. there was a pie night the other night at gina’s, in celebration of national pie day (no shit). sara made a lemon-egg pie, and jesus christ, that shit was so godamn awesome. here were my contributions. imagine them the size of little muffins ^__^

banana chipotle lime!!!!!!

chipotle cajun yam!!!!!!

so fun to make mini pies! SO FUN!!! i think i might do them all the time. it should also be noted that this was my crust recipe… so fucking easy and so good, and what’s more! did not stick to pan!!!! sourced from meatless monday. i just mixed it with my hands, though. fuck food processors! ain’t no yuppie! jokes… i wish i had a food processor 8[

3 CUPS ALL-PURPOSE FLOUR
1 1/2 TEASPOONS KOSHER SALT
1 TEASPOON BAKING POWDER
1/2 CUP VEGETABLE SHORTENING (CAN BE REPLACED WITH BUTTER IN ADDITION TO AMOUNT BELOW)
1/4 POUND COLD UNSALTED BUTTER, DICED
1/2 TO 2/3 CUP ICE WATER
EGG WASH: 1 EGG BEATEN WITH 1 TABLESPOON WATER
FLAKED SEA SALT AND CRACKED BLACK PEPPER

For the Pastry: Using a food processor, combine the flour, salt, and baking powder. Add the shortening and butter, and mix quickly with your fingers until each piece is coated with flour. Pulse 10 times, or until the fat is the size of peas. With the motor running, add the ice water; process only enough to moisten the dough and have it just come together. Dump the dough out onto a floured board, and knead it quickly into a ball. Wrap the dough in plastic, and let it to rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

okay, last thing for real. here’s where i’m going with art. 3-d sculptures.

only, the new round will look like this — all hand-drawn…!!!!! source material from me. source. just you wait, dudes. i’m going to force this year to be a big art year!

intention, intently.

i think the first time i really knew that i liked troy, for real, was when we were at the shpongle show. i don’t know what we were discussing, but his answer to some bit of perhaps unconventional unselfish behavior was, “i don’t know, i just really care about people.” or something to that effect. it’s too cute.

i just realized just now that our 6-month anniversary just passed, and we didn’t make a deal of it! ah, well. also, unrelated: their next record is going to totally rule…

i am reminded of this because i am going through my things and i’ve found some notices… three “talk to us” signs, one that says, “i want to encourage cross-disciplinary collabz.” (from new york and the whole wall street protest), and lastly, this poem. this is from when i was volunteering at helen swindell’s. i am a bit regretful that i went on my travels and then just stopped going there altogether. i had many people who i felt bonded to, but it just became a matter of whether i wanted to sacrifice my personal time for it. it’s selfish. and i feel bad, now. maybe sometime soon i will be able to start it up again, but at the heart of it was that, while i enjoyed my time there very much, there ended up being like three volunteers at any given time, and it felt unnecessary. i will say, though, at the time, that i felt like i had more real conversation with the residents there… ah, i’m sad. there are a few people i namely miss, which are:

- darcy, a lesbian lady who got stabbed and got her stomach ripped open to the point that they were hanging out;
- chris, the guy with whom i co-wrote the poem below… dude was always happy and encouraging smiles, and was really metaphysical and cosmic and out there and wanted to be some sort of counselor;
- ____, who i often discussed matters of space with;
- j___, who had formerly lived in hawaii and japan for a long time, and would always say konichiwa to me and minor japanese phrases (he knew i wasn’t japanese but knew that i knew some…) and took the only photo of myself at helen swindell’s that there is, and he had me draw an image for him or something which he kept;
- john, who always was teasing and giving shit and looked — strange to say — typically veteran-y, and always wore a cap! man, he gave so much shit, and was always saying how i was a trouble-maker…
- ____, who i somehow forget the face of now, which is crazy…! but he was definitely one that i enjoyed speaking with most… i had referenced him before, as i had discussed many things related to psychedelia and time-space with him…

it was just so interesting… all of them were so interesting, such remnants of the ’60s… i wish i could commit more. maybe soon when the weather is warmer…

here’s the joint poem i wrote with chris:

i can’t wait for the weather to get warmer again; i should really do “talk to us” again… i hadn’t written about this, but there were definitely girls (2) at the wall st. protest who had “talk to us” signs, and i directed them to my website and told them it was something that i did. i should really update i love social experiments with my new data…

anyway, in other news. pretty much been busy planning our sxsw show. here’s my initial teaser flyer for it…

gina and i spent the afternoon today holed up at pied cow, basically just writing letters. the primary aim was to write to caroline casey, the lady who gave us the venusian love ritual that we practiced, but i ended up writing back to a lot of people. it felt good to write, and kinda maddening to realize that man, do the hands get tired easy, simply because that stuff never happens anymore

i have a lot to write about. i was mulling over today that after sxsw — since i am touring with swahili — that i think i want to spend some time traveling or staying in california… since tour is two weeks+, it would be nice to be able to sublet out my room for that month and save that money. but i don’t know yet where i would go; the only place i kinda wanna go is new mexico, but last time, that become rather uncomfortable, so who knows… and i’m trying to save up money for spain and portugal in july, and i guess burning man in august, so it seems unlikely that i’ll be able to do all of the traveling that i actually wanna do. blOorg. i suppose if some cheap ass plane tickets to go to some south american country pop up between now and april, that that might need to be what happens. if not, probably a train or bus from reno to the bay area post-sxsw, for a couple weeks of mad work action. i don’t know, i don’t know, i don’t know.

i was discussing these plans and desires yesterday with troy, and he was apologizing for being a boyfriend that doesn’t have the money to travel. i told him it was fine; i don’t realistically expect anyone to be able to keep up with me in terms of traveling money and time. it doesn’t bother me… i just –need– to nomad life it, though… it’s already been way too long (like half a year… well i suppose it was only since october, so like, 5 months)… but i’m already feeling a bit mad and need to go somewhere really bad! and i guess i have been to california a couple times in that duration, but it’s not the same. the desire to travel is incessant, it’s crazy… :L but yeah, he was surprised that it didn’t bother me that he couldn’t afford to travel and said i am repeatedly “the first” but to me it’s just… it’s fine, because it’s realistic that other people can’t??? i dunno.

anyway…

we went to tao of tea tonight and drank this pine-smoked black tea. dude, it was so amazing. but it caffeinated me to the point of insanity! i’ve boycotted coffee and i feel wayyyy better, but it makes me feel nuts to drink hugely caffeinated stuff now. interesting.

ah, so much to do. i can’t decide WHAT to do. there’s just too much.

i gotta get to recording snippets from this:

it maybe seems a bit ridiculous, but this book “came to me” through a series of dreams, and like we all know, i really trust dreams. the first dream told me that i needed to look into learning about alchemy; it wasn’t so overt, but it was just the notion that i woke up thinking. i don’t remember anything else from the dream. a few days later, i was dream-land told that i should look into egypt. again, i don’t really know anything about it. that was when sherry was in town, though, and i took her to powell’s that day. i looked in the alchemy section — there barely is one — and there was ONE book about egypt. i saw it and thought it was totally incredibly ridiculous and could barely believe that THAT was the book i would “need” to read, but seriously, there was nothing else even remotely calling to me. so i was like, well, fuck, here it is.

what this book is is a series of meditations and visualizations that basically take you to deconstructing and rebuilding yourself. i had originally given myself a loose deadline of “finishing this” project by the end of april, but it has since changed, since troy asked me last week if i wanted to go to portland evolver meeting. legitimately, the evolver meeting we went to was totally fucking whack. however… coming up:

> Wednesday, February 22nd — Linda Star Wolf Evolver talk on “Visionary Shamanism”

linda star wolf is one of the authors of the egyptian shamanism book. it is WAY too much of a coincidence that she is coming, so i’m definitely going to: 1) record all of the meditations by the end of this month, preferably by the 23rd; 2) at least start to do the meditations, and ideally finish them, by february 22nd, so that i can talk to her about them.

i dunno what it’s going to yield. we will see. when sherry was here on my birthday, she was TOTALLY engrossed in that book and spent the whole of the evening almost reading it. yet, while she seems to find those things fascinating, i think she’s scared of them; i bought carl jung’s man and his symbols for her for christmas, and, as far as i know, she hasn’t delved into it yet. i think she’s kind of scared, and i asked her if that was the case, and she said yes. i think that books like that stir up the unconscious in a scary way, but i think sherry is totally ripe for it. i am sending her my book on monday. i sincerely hope that the book plants the seed that will cause her to read jung’s man and his symbols… i dunno what the fuck kind of “work” i am doing, but whatever it is, it feel really, important.

last couple notes, again relating to literature: evolver’s kent had mentioned this book >>>

and that is exactly the kind of mapping work i want to start doing. synopsis:

From a philosopher whose magisterial history of Western thought was praised by Joseph Campbell and Huston Smith comes a brilliant new book that traces the connection between cosmic cycles and archetypal patterns of human experience. Drawing on years of research and on thinkers from Plato to Jung, Richard Tarnas explores the planetary correlations of epochal events like the French Revolution, the two world wars, and September 11. Whether read as astrology updated for the quantum age or as a contemporary classic of spirituality, Cosmos and Psyche is a work of immense sophistication, deep learning, and lasting importance.

i can’t wait i can’t wait! i can’t wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

blahblahblah. what else. man, there’s so much. but seriously, all i wanna do is write books.

but i just recently finally dropped the $45 to buy this fucking book that changed my life (i originally read it from shawn but the book is SUPER fragile and i can’t look at his anymore, especially since it was from his grandfather, and the binding is really fragile… and this book is fucking IMPOSSIBLE to find… it’s ridiculous):

i am definitely wanting to use it as a primer for how to solve the social problems of the world. tis going to require a shit ton of research and effort, but like i said… all i seriously want to do now is write books… sample from ends and means (that has made it into my book):

In the contemporary world there are two classes of bad plans — the plans invented and put into practice by men who do not accept our ideal postulates, and the plans invented and put into practice by the men who accept them, but imagine that the ends proposed by the prophets can be achieved by wicked or unsuitable means. Hell is paved with good intentions, and it is probable that plans made by well-meaning people of the second class may have results no less disastrous than plans made by the evil-intentioned people of the first class. Which only shows, yet once more, how right the Buddha was in classing unawareness and stupidity among the deadly sins.

i can’t wait i can’t wait i can’t wait. i woke up this morning and all i could think was:

LIFE IS GREAT. THANKS, UNIVERSE.

i do declare…

i might be done trying to understand human beings. it’s pretty much impossible, and doesn’t really get you anywhere anyway. may as well just take things as they come. i’ve been assuming all along that human beings are good and honorable in almost all ways. not a great thing to do. but the flipside is just as horrible.

so, i suppose. the assumption needs to come about naturally. i will not assume anyone will do anything! instead, i will hope that they will be willing to talk about their ridiculousnesses, because we’re all fucking ridiculous. this plan won’t work so well for the people who can’t talk about themselves at all, unfortunately, so we’ll see about those people… but for those willing to communicate, anyway…

the only filter we have with which we can try and figure out what people are about is our own. and our filters stem from our experiences, which are so different from everyone else’s… try as we may, we are only interpreting using what we know, and it’s sooooooo limited. i feel that i have lived a lot of life and observed a lot of people, yet the things that happen and people who exist and the behaviors they exhibit are so far beyond my predictability that it is ultimately pointless to even attempt such. so, if possible, i am going to quit it!!!!

also feels really awesome to leave my phone behind and just be freeeeeeeeeee. free to write and make art.

yesterday was a most interesting day. most of it is lived in moments in time and hard to describe in a way that is actually beneficial for recollection. however…

started off jolly go happy lucky woot woot feeling alright. went to sound grounds to work, as usual.

gina met up with me. we had a massive giggle fest about who knows what. lots of funny t-shirts and synchronicities surrounding us, in the form of a joseph campbell book, a jason webley t-shirt, nietzsche shirt, etc.

followed that up with a meditation session with cole and austin which got interrupted a couple times. which is a bummer. the first couple times i was going to really awesome visual headspace. the third time was like… what the fuck is going on? i have no idea what the fuck is going on. the last image in my head was of a key, and who knows. pointless, really, i have no idea…

hung out for a while and then abe picked me up. we were going to go to east bar downtown to do our newest social experiment in people-watching! unfortunately, east is closed on sunday and monday nights. instead we went to 21st street, since i had to meet blake near there, and we went to muu-muu’s (though apparently there are a ton of bars on that street we need to hit up, including one called gypsy’s which seems fairly incredible). twas pretty fucking interesting. will scan notes in later… but we had a jolly good time. i ordered one moroccan coffee drink and got fucking WASTED pretty much, i think because i didn’t eat dinner. it was actually kind of amusing… the waitress was an interesting one. she was really awesome and nice when we got there, and then we asked her ONE question about her job and then she took off her glasses (abe said that was when the transformation happened) and suddenly kind of became a raging bitch. so bizarre. not sure what happened. ultimately, though, she gave us a free drink {?} and it was way confusing. good times.

at 1:15am i met up with blake on his lunch break and we shot the shit at a subway, where there were tons of people passing out. and i was really drunk. it’s so weird that he goes there everyday on his lunch break because that place is trippy as fuckkk. i dunno though, talking about mathematics governing the universe in a subway? what’s not to like.

anyhoot.

people are way more unpredictable than i would have thought in terms of their sexual liberties. haha. and i am surprisingly tolerant conceptually of this. i may or may not be a swinger in my idealized brain. haha. damn you equal parts emotional brain and equal parts logic brain! i don’t know who i am ever! but i do know that man, i can pretty much handle all things — all quirks of humans, cut and dry — if they are presented up-front and in a real ass way. it’s whatever, beyond that. honesty is pretty much the only thing that really matters. i am not the only one who feels this way. why is it that not so many people actually practice such a motto?

driving around that whole night / day — but especially night — tripped me out immensely because i never drive around portland at nighttime and it just felt soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo strange. i don’t know what it was. i had an hour-long walk home. it was fairly amusing. storefront windows are fragging weird.

GOT SCHEMEZ, YO.

force-update.

i’m listening to… tahiti 80′s upcoming album.

trying to force myself to update really quick here, because otherwise i will never. who the hell has time to update this thing these days!! ARGHH! work until i die!! i haven’t even been updating create or die lately because i’m just boned.

did a day of blindness as a social experiment yesterday. i have a whole page of notes but the typewriter i was typing on ran out of ribbon halfway through — of course — so i’ve got to charcoal the whole thing to get down the details of what i did / how i felt. ugh. obnoxious. running into snags every step of the way. and my feet are in a constant state of being FROZEN… like, almost otherworldly freezing… i don’t even understand…

hanging out in the mall.

hung out the whole afternoon in the mall, like a buncha high schoolers. it was pretty fun. place gallery is in pioneer place and it’s, well, a gallery, that was donated by the mall because some of the shops closed down. hung out there because abe and gabe were conducting interviews. johnny met me downtown cause we were going to do “talk to us” — and we did, for a second or something, and it went alright and we had a couple brief encounters which were fun — but i ended up getting him interviewed, and then his friend showed up, and he got interviewed, and then jamie showed up, and she got interviewed, and then rose showed up, and she got interviewed… and basically we were in the mall all day, asides from taking a stroll to saturday (or sunday) market to get johnny a burrito (which turned out to be gross). then rose and i got chipotle. long live the chipotle. viva la fucking chipotle. chipotle my face. i’m too cheap to buy it these days (and it’s a bit far, and people dont like you buying chipotle), but i’m going to say it loud and clear, people: CHIPOTLE IS FUCKING DELICIOUS…!!!!

quick recap of people who actually did talk to us:
- dad with kid who was mostly talking to be polite but didn’t have too much to say. nice of him, though.
- lady saying, “what do you want to talk about? i’m getting hot flashes!” and then started to walk away, and i was like, “wait! what about them?” and she’s like, “you don’t want to know!” but we were like, “but we dooooooooooooooooooooooo…” as she was walking away.
- mexican dudes, one with a kid, who approached johnny and said, “what do you wanna talk about, nigga?” and ignored me completely, but it’s fine. they had dude time, talking about how the dudes were waiting for their wives, who were shopping, and johnny being like, “ahh yeah i know what that’s like, etc. etc.” snarf. dude time.

oh right and then we got back to the place gallery and were waiting for people to be interviewed, and i decided to write on a piece of paper, “what’s up? ** insert some other stuff i forget ** (—> there’s a pen)” and left a pen outside these locked glass doors. people could totally see inside and see us, and we could see them, but it was just a kind of fun project. a couple came by and the guy noticed the sign and said, “did you see that sign?” and they discussed it while walking away and then came back. they ended up asking us, “what should we eat for dinner?” and rose wrote back, “sunset on the beach,” and the guy wrote back, “is that a restaurant?” and johnny wrote, “pizza party,” and they said, “thanks, that helps.” although i’m not sure if it did. in any case, the other people in the room kind of judged them for being happy hour people, or said that they were the kind of people who would ask a question like that… but it’s weird. i’m not saying i’m completely without judgment, but those things didn’t cross my mind. nothing about, “this is the type of person i think they are…” crossed my mind whatsoever. i just simply took their answers at their complete face value… it’s interesting, anyway. the difference.

oh right, and the interview. i guess i’ll post the results here sometime soon, but it was some talk about growth, reliance on self, work, whether your 15-year-old self would be happy with your self at this present moment, whether present moment self is happy with your present moment self, and, in my case, how i respond to affection in public settings.

word.

by the way, i wanted to give a quick recap of the art i’ve been posting on create or die, since there’s stuff i’ve been more or less proud of.

installation in my backyard?

tape designs for cole’s band, holy zombi.

“what’re you thinking about?”

today, in capitol hill, with daniel riday.

—

we began with a sign that said, “what do you think about…” with an arrow pointing at other words.

the first incarnation was “shadows”, because danny had recently went on a vision quest and talked to a “shadowy man” who was in charge of all things bad in the world, including fear, but he only did that so he could ultimately link people together through fear… and so, he was basically both a positive and negative person.

(1) lady: i think she thought the sign was referring to danny, not “shadows”, and said, “i don’t know what i think about him,” as a total passer-by comment in-between having a talk with her friend.

we then gave people a choice between “shadows” and “elvis”, because we found a poster from pike’s place fish fry that had elvis on it.

(2) lady: chose shadows; “i like shadows”; then talked about elvis, saying that the girls were tying up elvis and looking pretty in their vintage swimsuits like they had “nothing better to do”.
(3) dude: “elvis was a cool guy”; “ain’t nothing bad to say about him cept he took too many drugs”.
(4) dude: “how are you?”; we responded with, “good, how are you?”; he said, “blessed, everyday.”

we then decided to just retire the choices and just made a new sign that says, “what’re you thinking about?”

(5) lady: “is this a study?” “getting a new house”.
(6) negative dude from haiti, jean-claude: “if i told you everything on my mind, you’d want to kill me.”; “christians killing the muslims and coming home and praising the lord.”; [politician said] “haitians making a pact with the devil.”; “[americans? westerners?] steal everything”; talk about karma and “this shit isn’t going to last forever”; talk about how all the natural disasters (including earthquake in haiti) aren’t really natural disasters and “i know better”; “wait until jah comes down that ladder”; people will make eye contact when famine finally hits; “nobody knows the hour except the person who forms and molds you”.
(7) dude: “peace”.
(8) cynical seattle veteran whose relatives came in the 1800s, and now he’s moving to thailand: decline of seattle and how everyone used to hang out downtown and now nobody does; talk about how he rarely goes outside of ballard now because he just likes his neighborhood; cops shooting up the totem-pole carver; being hit two times by dogs who are jogging by; refugees taking all the money and getting free schooling so that tuition rates are really expensive for natives.
(9) don’t remember: “good.”
(10-11) two guys, joining our conversation: began with guy two saying that he needed to pee; asked us what we were thinking, and i told them about the seattle conversation we’d just had; they said we probably would’ve had better luck in san francisco; guy one says: “people in seattle are too intellectual,” guy two says, “or they think they are,” and guy one says, “they’re thinking too much, but they’re not feeling.” deep. chatted a little bit til jean-claude started firing up his theories of negativity again, and then they left.
(12) asian-ish dude: walked by and looked at the sign the entire time, then finally said, “i don’t know.”
(13-14) lady with kid: “i’m thinking my ice cream is really good”; i responded with, “lucky”; she responded with, “the samples are free.”
(15) girl: “the sunshine feels nice.”
(16-18) punk rock parents with kid: they had originally passed by and were slightly angry-face because a driver didn’t stop for them while they were crossing the road, but when they came back, they were quite cheery and dad started off by saying, “i’m thinking about what you’re thinking,” and i told him i was thinking about how it was interesting that some people started off by talking about really serious topics and other people said fairly superficial stuff like, “the sunshine feels nice.” (little to my knowledge, sunshine girl was right next to us, on a bench.) danny commented that he thought the parents were probably good parents because the kid liked dad enough to have a similar haircut.
(19) dude: we asked him, “deep thoughts?” and he responded, “usually pretty superficial.” i responded with, “aah, deep thought in a superficial comment!” and he nodded.
(20) woman: the slow pan with no response…
(21) dude: squinted hard at sign and then said, “that’s a good question.”; “wish i hadn’t gotten stoned.”
(22) dude: “food”; smile.
(23) dude: after long thought process, “huskies game”.
(24) chick: smiled, and then we asked her what she was listening to, and she said, “arcade fire,” and i asked her if she’d seen the new awesome video.
(25) lady: “ice cream” (molly moon’s was right across the street).
(26-27) lady with kid: we had just moved down on the sidewalk because we were chasing the sunshine. she had been sitting in a different part of the park for a while, but finally answered our question when we scooted over next to her, with, “truth”; i asked her what kind of truth; she said, “joseph campbell said truth without compassion is violence.”; she studied toltic? shamanism, and told us that a lot of it was emptying yourself out, basically, to make yourself a good vessel for good deeds; “can’t do good for the world without doing good for yourself.”
(28) old lady: had come by previously and then came by again, and this time answered our question, asking if we were doing a school project; we said it was a personal project; she said she was thinking about how she’d just noticed these trees on the roof of this white building; we said we’d just noticed it for the first time, too. jean-claude said that he could tell when people were bullshitting and not telling their true thoughts; i got in an argument with him about whether the old woman was telling her true thoughts or not, because jean-claude’s interpretation of a true thought seemed to be the stuff he talked about, as in, global conspiracy and government failures and stuff, and i said that i thought what the lady had to say was just as much a true thought because she obviously didn’t just pull that out of nowhere; then he asked me what i thought, saying that i hadn’t contributed, and i told him what i was just thinking about the old lady, and he seemed to think my answer wasn’t good enough, either; i then told him that i thought he was extremely judgmental, and that that was my thought at the time.
(29-32) group of four high-schoolers: kind of just busted out random words they were thinking about at the time, including “immaculate conception”; talked to them for a while, partly about the “seattle freeze”; they said they wanted to go to school for an array of things, like art and design, fashion, writing or journalism, and photojournalism.
(33) money dude: pulled out money instantly — which was like, four coins — and *then* read our sign and just held onto his money and didn’t quite answer our sign; i called after him, “were you going to give us money?”; he said, “give you money?”; i said, “were you going to give us money?”; he said, “yes.”
(34) dude: “eating”; we asked, “where are you going?”; he said, “food, probably.”
(35-39) asian guy with kids: asian guy with accent and like, four kids; he encouraged the kids to answer the question; one kid finally said, “oh, i know! soccer game!”; brief comment from asian guy and danny about “living in the now”; the only asian person to stop the entire time.
(40) chick with lay’s chips: “moving”; “bay area”; “going to school at stanford”.
(41) dude: “do you know where i can get some shit at?”; “crystal”.
(42) chick: “nothing”; i asked, “is that good or bad?”; she said, “it’s a good thing.”
(43) dude: “hamburgers”; i asked, “where are you going?”; he said, “dick’s”; i pointed at rachel and said, “she likes dick’s” — but it came out wrong and dirty-sounding, obviously.
(44) drive-by comment: she wasn’t talking to us, but we eavesdropped on a girl that said, “i just found a book of mr. t and chuck norris jokes at work yesterday.”
(45) persian (?) dude: “how beautiful it is today.”
(46) dude: “gotta get to work”.
(47-48) dad with kid: i asked, “you again??” cause it was the third time they’d passed by, and the first time, he told his kid to say hi to us; he said, “we’re keeping our eyes peeled for peoples”; later returned with a whole family of people, including some guy who was pretty much santa claus. pretty much.
(49) older mexican dude: walked by us once and smiled, then pulled out money, then asked me what our sign said cause he couldn’t see that well, and i told him what it said, and then asked him if he was italian; he said he was mexican and came from a small town; danny said he was going to mexico next year, to morelia, to work on a sustainable living farm and then spread it across south america; dude was very skeptical, saying, “what do you have to bring to the table?” and “are you an agronomist?”; danny said that he would just go and figure it out; dude said that he didn’t want to discourage, but that danny had better start learning spanish and such, but he still wished us (guess he thought we were going together) the best of luck and said that you can try these things when you’re young; i ended by talking to him a little bit in spanish… nothing significant, though.
(50) chick: “peace”.