heathervescent

Our Co-Perceived World

We had an extraordinary Los Angeles sunset a few days ago. The sky was a combination of vanilla peach and pink colors. The lenticular clouds over the city were highlighted pastel pink contrasting with the darkening blue of the evening sky. 

Los Angeles has fabulous sunsets and those of us who live here enjoy them. Just look up from our palm tree lined streets into a pink swirled sky and you'll get the feeling, an LA essence, a palm tree shadowed, behind a changing rainbow sherbet of colors. 

This sunset was better than usual. I noticed it on my dog walk, stopped to enjoy it and took a few camera photos. Minutes later, I started to see friends and colleagues tweet and instagram photos of this very same sky from all over the city.

We don't necessarily realize that we are perceiving the same environment - and in our current paradigm, often documenting it. What does the sunset look like from Hollywood? Silverlake? Venice? It's the same sky, viewed from many perspectives. Our digital mobile devices make it easy to capture our perceptions, our perspective. Instagram filters act as thesaurus for our images that we share with our networks.

Our capturing and sharing activities today are innocent, undirected and unintentional from a collective perspective.

What will the world be like when it's easy to access multiple perceptions/perspectives of the same situation/experience/landscape? Through a timeline - I am reminded of Richard Misrach's Golden Gate series of photos of the sky above the San Francisco Bay, but also of place, like the sunset view from Venice, Hollywood or Silverlake. 

I am reminded of the radical performance theatre, Sleep No More, where the audience is let loose in a 5 story set, in which the actors move from space to space performing/embodying the character within the confines of the set space. No more is the audience limited to rows in front of the fourth wall; the audience becomes part of the performance. Is threaded through the performance space. Each attendee (is responsible for) and has their own personal experience. 

I have trouble with absolute truth. 

I want to believe there is absolute truth, but I just can't see how it could be. Absolute truth would have to include all these various (and potentially conflicting) perceptions.  I see value in being able to perceive. 

Perhaps Absolute truth is a continuum, encompassing perceptions as sub-variables, explorations. There are infinite perceptions, and who is to say which one is "right" and which one is "wrong?"

But back to the long term impact of digitally capturing our co-perceived world. How does the world change when we have "user-generated" content capturing the same scenes from various perspectives? How do we as humanity change in our way to interact with others? The world? Our experiences? And how will the content we've created today (take these many pictures of my beloved LA sunset) be used and for what purpose in the future?

I think we're creating/collecting the raw materials today, in these digitally collected snapshots - documenting our co-perception, that will become something awe-some and transcendent.

Life is but a dream...

The final scene from my favorite film

Taoist Futures

I'm having an on-fire day today. Things are converging. The universe is sending me love letter from all sides and I'm sending my own share out too. I feel good. Stupidly happy. I enjoy the chemicals flowing positively through my body. Feeling these emotions. Knowing, that with the flow, there is the ebb.

Washing up after my morning coffee, I remember previous days. (Not necessarily the immediate preceding days.) The days of funk. Of feeling out of the groove. Not getting the love from the universe. Not making progress.  As I rinse my wine glasses, I remember that many great days, follow funk days. Months of activity, follow years of quietude. Feast follows famine. 

On these up days, I try to remember that this what I have, will change. A partner of years ago, the old prospector, always said, "you want to be approaching perfection, but never attaining it." I've never forgotten this. Good luck, bad luck, who knows. The tao knows no judgement. And I strive (and sometimes don't strive) to be one with /a vessel of the tao.

So my mind thusly primed, the dishes clean, I started thinking about that which I love thinking about these days: the changing state of our economy, money, currency, transactions. And right now, I think we're all in agreement that things are BORKED! But, it's not like this is the first time things have been borked, or the first crisis - and were still alive, here, transacting. (B. Lietear mentioned an amazing number of crisis's tracked since the 1600s in his talk on Monday at Compass Summit.) Then the tao flowed into my mind.

The only thing TO happen is to adjust the direction of the flow (I'm not talking stock and flow diagramming flows here). Things _are_ borked. So when things get to be completely borked, the only next step is away from complete and utter borkdom. (Ok, I realize this whole bork thing is getting out of hand, but stick with me.)

I'll translate. The only place the current financial economic global system has to go - is to get better. I realize there are still some doom and gloomers that will say it can get much worse, but I'm not talking rationally here. I'm talking taoistically. And with that, I hereby coin the phrase, "Taoistic Futures."

;)

 

On Change and Adaptation

The landscape in which we live, to which we are adapted, will also change; and that any one adaptation leaves the truths of the others outside its domain. - Rob Tow on Neo-enlightenment

 

The Unknown: Fireflies and the Rain

(another one, from another time)

I was driving the N. Virginia back roads. I'm stalking the battlefield I recently visited. A technique I've found myself doing is going back to places twice, but never from the same route or necessarily the exact same place.

It's misty. Been raining. There is the misty fog on the road. The pavement is black. Slick. Sleek. Inviting. The lights from my car do not penetrate very far into the darkness beyond the mist. I have the windows down. The mist and rain is flying into the car and my hair is flying around. I can feel the power in the air. The wind. The moisture. I drink it in.

I'm backtracking and I don't know it yet. I follow roads and turn onto new ones at the slightest flicker of direction. I find myself pulling into a parking area. It's very dark. The sky is that cloudy grey. The trees are black against the grey. I get out of the car. I hear the rain falling from the trees, yet it is not falling from the sky. The field is open and I hear creaking noises (almost like branches rubbing together but deeper) coming from it. I peer into it. I see flickers of light. I realize they are fireflies. 
The strange creaking, the mist, the black outline of the trees, the flickers of lights. I walk out into the field to be surrounded by it.

 

On Death

"Death is very likely the best invention of life," he said in the speech. "All pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure, these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important." - Steve Jobs, RIP

An encounter with Death, circa 2002

(Note: this was written almost a decade ago, before this blog existed)

Last night the Virginia back roads coaxed me away from my glowing liquid display and conditioned air into the moist pleasure of evening. I found myself on two lane roads. I didn't know where I was, how I got there, or how to get home. I followed the nudges of infinity. To turn here or there. I found myself at the end of a dead end road. The tarmac was crumbling into the overgrowth. There were two dirt tracks that went on behind a vehicle barrier. I parked the car. I was wearing my work clothes - business casual pants and shoes. The forest called to me. I was drawn to a path near the vehicle barrier. 

I got out of the car. As I walked towards the path, I looked down and saw a spinal column set of vertibraes. I stopped. I was surprised, shocked, a slight wave of fear went through my body. I looked at the vertibraes. They were beautiful, bone white, they fit together perfectly. My eyes followed the line and I saw the skull still attached. I realized that it had been a deer. 

As I looked at the spinal column, I thought about how crazy it is what I am doing. That it is crazy for a single woman, all alone, unfamiliar with the area to go randomly driving, stop someplace where she doesn't know she is, and walk into the forest. My brain is churning with how crazy it is. I know it sounds that way, but that doesn't stop me. The spinal column is a reminder of my death. That one day I will die. Perhaps it will be this night in this forest. And if that is the case, then I must go to it with courage, curiosity but no fear. 

For a moment, my brain creates a view of the world where I am getting back into the car and driving away, and then I realize that I am walking into the forest. The air is calm, moist. It is just after sunset. The light filters through the trees. There are bugs humming in the air. There are fireflys flickers orbs of light here and there. It is magical and I feel the power. The light is that of my dreams, I call it the darklight. 

At the end of the path I find a reservoir. The water is calm. There are a pair of fishermen out in a boat. I can hear their voices across the water. I sit by the edge on some rocks and become enveloped in the silence. In the dream of this place.

 

My Possible Relationship

Sometimes it's the possibilities that do not become reality. 

A dream. A possibility. The pathway to make it a reality, clear - not so difficult to walk down, yet unwalked. I see possibilities. I see the pathways to make them reality. Sometimes, I want them to pass from the veil into this reality. To become. Possibilities that could change my life. A set of dreams come true. Real-ized.

In the space of a moment, the possibility passes through the veil. No longer possible. It's here. In this reality, with the certainty that comes with a choice made, an action, selection. Possibilities evaporate. I pass my hand through the veil. I grasp at the possibility. I pull it close. I feel it's hot breath on my body, pulsing, writhing, taking form. Possibilities growing stronger, weaker. A momentary embrace, puissant, before I open my hand and release. The moment has passed, the possibilities remain. 

Anything could still happen.

Non-Visual Designer

Today was the Association of Professional Futurists (APF) montly #futrchat. I'm currently a student member (but soon to go full Pro) and I love being a part of this community of professional futurists. Earlier this year, Cindy F (@urbanverse) and Jennifer Jarratt (@jenjarratt) started hosting the #futrchats, an hour on twitter where anyone who wants, can join in on the conversation. There is topic for discussion, like the Future of Money, or Disasters or today's: The Future of Design. 

I don't focus too much on (visual) design, because there are already so many people doing it and although I'm a visual person, I don't create visual things. So I never really considered myself a designer - but this #futrchat changed all that.

I very quickly became aware of a very big assumption: that by design, I was meaning visual design. I don't do that. I don't do graphic design or make pretty pictures. But I do design experiences. I design my life. I shape and re-shape. So the moment I released my pre-conceived definitions of design a whole new definition of design just flowed out: the non-visual designer. Maree Conway asked me to define this further, so I did: (from my tweetstream)

"As a non-visual designer, I design experiences to shift mental mindsets, the way people see the world.

Sometimes the non-visual design is expressed in a user-interface that includes visual design, sometimes it is theatre. "

When I think back to the events I've co-created (barcamp, geek dinners, cacophony events, mash-up performances, zombies without borders) they have all been to shift the mental mindset of not only the participants/performers, but especially the "audience." For a while I even described what I did as "unforgettable ephemeral experiences." I know, a bit flowery, eh?

So much of what I do, who I am, the life I live has been consciously designed, created with specific experiences in mind.

How did I do this? 

I took my professional experience as an Internet/Software product manager and applied the methods/processes I used to define, build, manage, launch and market internet products to myself as a product. Heathervescent, the product of me. My life, the product of me. Heathervescent, the brand of me. I wasn't content to let my life happen to me. Life's too short and I want to do too much. It's not about expressing/developing ONE potential - but to explore, express the many possibilities of potential. The Expression of Possibilities.

Uthur Doul's possibility sword deeply changed the way I thought about the world - and myself. After seeing him master the possibilities (in my mind's eye) I was no longer content living a limited linear life. I became aware of my possible lives - some predestined, some experienced, parallel lives, echoes from the past, foreshadowing future lives. Here, in this one, this reality, I try as much as I can, to leave the possibilities behind and with utmost intention, create, express, a life that never existed before, that can not be copied. A life that diverges from the expressed possibilities, because this one weaves pieces from those worlds (talvez donos de barcos no Caribe, meu amigos do passado no Fortaleza), creating, sometimes patiently, sometimes explosively a life impossible. A life that could only be created with conscious (self) design.

Level 5 to Infinity

"The battle is not here with your fellow men; but out there, in infinity" - Don Juan

"The only person worth competing with is myself." - moi

Competition. *Sigh.* I know it's suppose to motivate you to do your best, but when it comes to me, I just wanna walk away. I don't care about winning,  I don't want to be the best, when it means that someone is the loser. We don't have the same skill set, levels or perceptions, perspectives, worldview.  I'm interested in yours. Especially if you disagree with me or have a different perspective from mine. I'm already the best Heathervescent.

Competition can make one stretch. Competition can be the fuel for the midnight fires. Competition strips away the fat. Competition is full of pain (to get to 1st place or if you don't). Competition is divided. Collaboration is united. (If you have a very different perspective of competition, pls share with me.)

My favorite collaboration example is the work of Kaliya Hamlin and her work with user-centric identity. I've used many of her methods with the Geek Dinner and LA Barcamps with great success. If you've had a chance to participate in an event Kaliya has influenced, you'll see that it is just slightly different in the activities, but worlds apart in the intent and energy around the event.

At the WFS this past weekend I was disappointed with the use of competition in a couple sessions. Tom Frey announced his DaVinci Institute's Prize Competitions. Usually I love radical audacious ideas, but these rubbed me the wrong way. I didn't see anything in them about fixing the economy - or making the world better for people in the 8 prize competitions. I left the session distressed, confused at the non-practicality.

The next day, the morning session of the WFS Dev Seminar opened with a competition between groups with point scores and a "winner" to create the best scenario with specific data, variables, etc. Yuck! I know the people putting the session together weren't looking for that kind of reaction. They probably picked the competition metaphor to engage and excite people. I sat in the room, with sickness forming in my stomach, wondering if I had made a huge mistake pivoting my career and going into futures work. 

I watched the groups form and work beginning. I sat watching, thinking, this is not that different from what Kaliya does. But why do I want to leave this room, whereas with her sessions I'm signing up to lead and participate? The difference is very slight framing and intent behind the structure.

In Kaliya's sessions, people are working together for a bigger goal, which includes competing businesses, products, architectures, philosophies. Much of this competition falls away when they come together for conversation. It's a group of people with the same long term goals: a vibrant ecosystem that supports many companies, technologies, products. The space is not about competing with each other, it's about working together to create the ecosystem so all can participate. There is no one winner at IIW, if you show up, you win.

Maybe that sounds all pollyanna, let's get along, we're all winners, yay! But consider that maybe some people don't care about winning at the expense of others. 

But the zero-sum competition peppered the experience in the room at the WFS ProDev. I used the law of two feet and eventually left the seminar to check out the Surrealist Art Exhibit at the nearby Vancouver Art museum, which was phenomenal and mind-blowing. I got what I needed out of the session after all.

We're not gonna save the world competing with each other for million dollar prizes. But we could save it by working together.

Hands and Eyes, My Critical Interface

People talk a lot about user interfaces, designing good interfaces, testing interfaces. I've had my own share of user interface discussions during my career (having done usability testing, product management and reading Jakob Nielson since 1996). Despite the focus on software interfaces, the most important interface is not on a screen, it's the keyboard.

As a creator with words, the keyboard is my one-way input device. It is the human-computer interface where the electrical signals in my head turn into the electrical signals in the computer. The software of language is used in my brain - as well as mimicked in the computer.

Touchpads are on almost every devices today. My laptop has had them for, I don't know, 10+ years, and I've always ignored or disabled them. I tried to switch to a Mac 5 years ago, but the crummy keyboard and forced touchpad sent me running back to my ThinkPad. And here I will state my opinion: the ThinkPad has the best keyboard/human interface hands down.

Before I switched to ThinkPads exclusively, I the keyboards and mouse interfaces physically debilitated my body. I ended up with a problem in my right shoulder, arm and fingers. I went to 10 or 15 different doctors, physical therapists, massage therapists, acupuncturists, chiropractor, etc. Finally, someone was able to make it go away. My point is that the keyboard interface was really bad. The tool maimed the user. I wasn't about to stop typing, so I went on a mission to find a good interface. 

This is when I found the ThinkPad. From the moment I put my fingers on the keyboard, I felt like they were sliding into a moist, slick, organic interface. It's something about the shape of the keys, the response of the them. IBM (the original owners of ThinkPad) were known for making excellent keyboards - and it shows.  The red button (which is my mouse) is navigated by by right pointer finger - as an extension of my finger on the screen. When I put my finger on that red button, it becomes the mouse on the screen. My (finger) self becomes the cursor on the screen.

Recently the boyf surprised me with a new ThinkPad. I was ready to upgrade from my T61 and had been watching the new ThinkPad models. The T420s showed up one morning with a major improvement: a nubby touchpad. 

From the moment I saw this improvement, I knew why I hated touchpads of the past, and why this one was very different. The problem with touchpads (and smooth as glass interfaces) is there is no feedback. Smooth as glass is a one way input device. It can not respond to you like a key popping back to an unpressed state. 

But the feedback from nubby touchpad? As your finger moves around, you know where you are on the flat space. On a smooth surface, there is no context. The nubby touchpad reminded me of a research report I read several (10?) years ago, that reported that men prefer a smooth surface to touch perhaps because women's skin is smooth; while women preferred a rougher surface, maybe because men's skin is rougher. 

I always watched the user interface for gadget device manufacturers with this in mind. I certainly prefer a rougher surface, in my mind to recieve feedback of my input. I recently switched to an android touchscreen phone from my Blackberry. I must admit the smooth touch screen is very disconcerting. I don't like my finger slipping and sliding all over the glass. And I hate typing hunt and peck with my pointer finger. I learned to touch type 20 years ago.

Perhaps I'm showing my age with my preference to well made keyboards and interface mechanisms that give you feedback. I do know, that a well made keyboard interface can be a pleasure to interact with - and for me, there's no more important interface that quickly allows me to transmit the electronic signals in my brain, to the electric signals in the machine - for easy replication so that you can receive these same electrical signals in your brain, via computer-human interfaces.

San Francisco Reflections

I knew it would be true. San Francisco_is_ a great city to come back to. But her streets, although burned in my neural pathways, are faint, forgotten except for muscle memory. My car, as extension of this muscle memory, surfs the pavement, my body leans in the curves, even as I strain to read the street signs. My objective, the ocean. Revisiting a place. A lookout. A memory. The divergence of life from ordinary to extraordinary.

I sit on these high stones. It's a gorgeous day. A cool breeze comes off the ocean. I watch the waves in their green and grey. White effervescence paints uneven horizontal lines on the sand and in the sea. I remember this same place, dark one night. I was cold after riding Lady Knight through the fog, chasing something ephemeral through the streets. A glimpse of something unknown. I caught it here. (Or perhaps, it lead me here to be caught.) In this space, I stood facing it. Facing my fear. Opening the crack, stepping through, and into a different world. A world of my own making.

Sometimes I reminisce of that world. The one I left behind. All around me, untouchable, unlivable. It was the choice I made. A choice to choose. Never undone, as much as I might forget or deny. I had forgotten. But the memory is fresh now, in my mind.

The Future of Collaboration

Collaborating can be one of the best things to experience and recently I have had some new mindmelding group borg collaborative experiences - mostly due to technology.

Google Docs: The collective editing experience

My colleague and I were editing/creating the same google doc. We were exploring/creating/clarifying a project/article we decided to work on. We're on different sides of the country, three time zones apart and yet when were working on the document at the same time, I felt closer, able to collaborate more effectively than had we been in person.  We were interacting fully online - with a text chat/discussion and the document editing and creating. Our places in the document were identified by different colored cursors, but there was not change tracking mechanism. We also did not stick to certain sections of the document. We skipped all around, I working on one section for a bit, then him jumping in (reading) commenting, editing/wordsmithing. The end product was one of the most collaborative documents I have co-created.  And I might mention, this is with a colleague I have never met face to face.

 

Barcamp: Ad-hoc Do-ocracy

Myself and a team of ~8 co-organizers have been bringing back this favorite technology un-conference to Los Angeles since late 2010.  What has been interesting to watch is the changing group of active participants.  Although I feel there is one person driving the team (with a light hand) the experience I have had is one of "picking up the balls." Meaning, whatever needs to get done, ends up getting done by whomever can do it. Everyone has contributed their skills and expertise when it was needed. This has been a great experience in ad-hoc do-ocracy.

 

FutrChat: The fastest hour on Twitter

I had not participated in many Twitter Chats before participating in #futrchat. Futrchat is was started by Cindy FrewenWuellner and Jennifer Jarratt for the Association of Professional Futurists (APF), of which I am a (student) member. Each month a new topic around the Future of ____ is chosen. Some framing information is shared before the chat to set the stage. Then the firehose is turned on at a specific pre-scheduled time. In 3-5 minutes, my twitter stream goes from it's usual ticking of random information to lighting up across the globe. Futrchat participants tune in from Australia, UK and all across the US.

Then the hosts begin to pose the questions. (Each chat has 3-6 questions we explore in the hour.) And then the 50 or so conversation participants begin to answer them. In the answering, people respond to each other, chasing down an idea or querying for additional information. And all this is done within 140 characters.  If this was a verbal conversation, it would be cacophony, everyone would be "speaking" at once. And online, in text, everyone is speaking at once. But because text has the ability to be linear and allow multiple responses in the same timespace, no one "interrupts," no one has to be silent to allow others their turn. Your turn is always, if you choose to take it.

Of course, one is not always "talking." There is the time needed to read (listen) to other's answers. To see who is responding to you. To think about what your response is to what you are reading (hearing). (And yes, I hear these people's voices in my head as I read their tweets.)

Although, it is generally just me, in my home office with my favorite furry companion during these #futrchats, I feel more stimulated than going to a conference. I'm in the comfort of my home, with high speed connection, able to quickly type, with my dual monitors to have various screens open to slice and dice and display the chatting data in various ways so I can follow and track the "radiowaves." This is ebonding. The intense human interaction that causes you to learn, understand and share more of yourself and others. For that hour, I am in an auditorium, that is can be filled with the voices of many people talking about things I find interesting. 

And then the hour passes, and the energy and space dissolves, the twitter stream returns back to it's usual bubbling. The channel has closed, for the moment, but it always accessible.

A quick note about participating in these chats. There is no specific location we go to to have these conversations. It's not like we go to a specific chat room, or IRC or private label login. Yes, we are all on twitter, but besides that, the only thing you need to do to participate is to use the hashtag: #futrchat. It is like tuning into a radio station, but instead of only receiving, you can also send.  Additionally, the technology of twitter, allows for both the sending and receiving of the information being sent on the wave (the hashtag #futrchat). 

 

In Closing

Technology is facilitating a way for the individual, completely and fully as an individual - I, to participate in a collective activity - a community - WE - if only for moments. These collaborations facilitated by technology are profound shifts in how individuals and communities form each other and participate with/in them.

Bad Habits of the Technologic

Technology has generally improved my life. But there is one activity where it has definitely screwed me up. Since using communication technology (specifically mostly text and voice without video) I have seriously increased my interrupting. I've been watching it increase significantly over the past 6 months, floundering, not knowing what to do. I hate it when I am interrupted, and even more so, hate it when I catch myself doing it. Sometimes you have to on a conference call, since there are no non-verbal cues. But more recently... I am bulldozing into conversations and sentences without a concern for who is talking... and I blame it on (well besides myself) my significant use of text communication. 

Yes. Increased text communication has increased my interruption of people, even when I am face to face. The text communication has shifted the way I communicate on a core level. Here's how. (And why.)

Background: I spend a significant amount of time in text chats on Skype. I would say, at least 10-20 hours a week. (That's probably an under-estimate.) Since I am in a geographically dispersed team. I spend another 10+ hours communicating in extremely clear emails or email conversations. These are not dissimilar from the skype chats, except that the conversations take days.

In both these situations, I am in control of when and what I communicate. I do not have to wait my turn to write and send an email. There can be 3 people texting in the group chat at the same time. Sure, I have to wait to get my answer, but if someone asks a question, we are not limited to one response at a time. Two people can respond (or in the face to face world, would be speaking) at the same time. However in the speaking world, you generally notice your error and someone stops. One can't parse two voice streams at the same time. However one can parse two (or more) typed streams.... and we are doing this more and more.

Threaded, nested and parallel conversations are not out of the ordinary. Many of us have these all the time. On our cell phone, smart phone or mobile device, text, twitter, email, gchat, work email, facebook. We are all getting very good at parsing and following multi-level/threaded stories and conversations.

<Reminds me of the time I was having three conversations with two other people. I was in Brasil and my broth was visiting me. He did not speak any Portuguese. We were out with a friend who didn't speak any English. I was have a conversation in English with my brother, in Portuguese with my friend and translating the conversation between my brother and my friend into the appropriate Portuguese or English.>

Back to my interruptions. Being exposed, living and creating the environment where it's all text, there are no verbal cues, where there is never an interruption (or alternately, it's all an interruption) has completely fucked with my ability to wait to hear what other people say. 

It's not that I don't want to hear what they have to say. I'm just used to not having to wait to hear them. That, I can say what I want to say, while they are saying (typing) what they want to say. This breaks down in verbal words, where one must wait for another to finish speaking.

This is exacerbated by the soapbox. Once you get on a roll, and no one is interrupting you, well, it's hard to stop. It's like being stuck in a traffic jam and then suddenly all the traffic went away and you have the clear, wide open road.

I don't like interrupting people. But I don't know how to stop. I know how and why I got sucked back into interrupting. (The technology re-programmed parts of my communication methodologies), but.... how to get back. How to show the respect to those who are speaking, those who I _want_ to hear.

It's a problem of switching mediums. Of switching the accepted communication methods. The primary method become the default. And unfortunately for my verbal conversations, that has changed.

Coyote Fear

I am constantly amazed at how resilient we humans are - and yet so fragile. How beautifully contradictory.

As the boyf was out of of town, I decided to take the opportunity to spend some quality time in the desert at LoriLisa, my little scrap of Mojave wasteland. I knew it was going to be hot: 90+ degree hot, but I was not dismayed. My plan was to work in the evenings and mornings and lay low during the hot afternoon. 

I headed out early afternoon on Friday in time to arrive for a spectacular combination sunset and moon rise. Truly only planetary bodies can compete with the expansive geological scale of the desert. Mountain ranges eroded into prehistoric effluvial plains. It was over one of these ranges a blue-ivory moon rose from the desert haze. I was racing the clock. Flooring the pedal that flogged my combustion engine faster. I could not reach my destination fast enough.

Behind me the I saw the red-orange rays of the sun setting behind a past range. In a moment, the pavement gave way to sand and my tires kicked up a line of dust as I headed to the far edge of this sparsely populated civilization. We were bumping and jumping through the washes and fish-tailed the back tires a bit just for fun. 

The tires stopped, the radio silent, I stepped out into the cooling desert.

 * * *

We sat in my front yard, splayed out on a retired bedspread watching the planets shine and the moon rise, getting smaller and whiter as the night progressed. That's when the coyote's started their howling. I had forgotten to pack my pistol and had only my small knife on me. When packing for the trip, I had considered exit strategies for mere human (redneck/meth-head) predators - and had completely forgotten about natural ones. It was a lesson in city living. It's gotten to me. I felt tamed. 

Out in these places I have heard the lone or two coyotes calling out his brethren, often far far in the distance. Not this time. This was a large pack - I would expect at least 7 or more. And it sounded VERY near. Intertwined with the coyote's barks and howls, I could hear a dog. It was easy to hear the difference. I expected the pack to visit LL any moment. For hours the coyotes barked in the near-distance. We watched and listened to the desert, no safety of the firelight. (I had opted against a fire because the moon was so bright.)

The planet set and the moon carved an ecliptic pathway across the sky, outshining the milky way and all but the brightest stars. The howling subsided and that's when I noticed the strange rasping sound of the wind in the creosote bushes. My vision was shifting and everything took on an underwater illuminated pointillism.

Moonshadows lept from my fence posts, my house, my legs. I was not quite brave enough to do my midnight walkabout - one of my plans for the evening - with that pack of coyotes and my pistol left at home. So I strayed not far from my land. 

The wind caressed my skin - soft warm and comforting. The upside of an unbearable desert day is a warm night. What does one do out here, I pondered? What can one do, but watch and think and see and listen and be silent. To be present. To feel the wind. To see the moon shadows. To hear the coyotes. To smell the air. To taste fear and comfort. To be present in the moment for hours.

Future of Space Travel Analogy

The breakthrough came this morning:

Birds are to the Earth as Humans are to Space.

The analogy is not as simple as it may seem. There is a new Nature report out describing a type of internal GPS/internal avian magnetic compass that birds use to navigate their migrations.

Wouldn't it be cool (and perhaps it is necessary) for humans to create/develop a similar sense to navigate to cosmos?

What does the World Want?

Do you know what the world wants?

How about the earth?

How about the United States? What are our goals as a nation?

I've been thinking about these things since I started my first grad class, World Futures. People have so many assumptions about what they think is right or correct or the way to do things. Today I read an article about biofuels that posited that increased focus on biofuels would increase poverty and hunger.

The only reason global warming is a problem is because it might be a problem for humans. It might make the earth not optimal for the human race (and possibly a bunch of other animals). But in the scheme of the universe, does this really matter?  I mean, what does the earth want?

Let's assume that the earth wants life on and around it. If that's that case, then it really doesn't matter in the long run whether or not an animal (human, plants, etc) is extinct now or later. Everything dies. The human race will cease to exist at some point in the future. Life will continue. But what kind of life does the earth want? What kind of intelligent life (if any)?

I often think about pollution and destruction of the environment in the same frame of mind as ingesting drugs or other "poisonous" items. To much drugs of any kind can often kill you, or do irreversible damage. That sucks for the person who damaged themself, but if they survive, they will still live, still have experiences, life. Life wins. If they kill themselves by drug usage, well then, their life transforms and lives on another way - sometimes that energy lives on in their stories.

Recently I have become obsessed with economics and have started reading copious quantities of financial reports and documentation. I started wondering, what is the goal of our nation - the United States. And I sadly could not identify any goal. It made me think that perhaps our past goals (set by our founding fathers) have been achieved, and we are in the state of confusion, waffling, figuring out where to go and what to do next. We've gotten our priorities confused, gotten bit by the hierarchy bug, forgotten our values, taken drugs.

This makes me very sad. And I wonder, is it possible (yes, of course the possibility it there, but how high the probability is it) for a country, a nation, to have goals?

And if a nation can, what about a world?

Fun with your perception

Seeing is not believing, but it's all we've got. These two videos about optical illusion and the attention of your perception are astounding! Thanks for the pointers Marcel.