Aperiodic update ... 


This posting was composed over a couple of days - interrupted by the rest of what has become my non-stop, busy, life. This post spends a few paragraphs describing some recent observations and a lot more on some completely random thoughts about life, the universe and everything. It's just over 3.000 words - modest by my recent standards but certainly long enough to give an inside peek into what I've been up to lately and what's been on my mind. 


I probably should come up with some Lewis & Clark or Charles Darwin or Jean Luc Picard approach to labeling these - like Aperiodic Update 1 - or something.  I can't say "Captain's Log" since I'm captain of no ship, even if I'm pilot of my destiny.  And we haven't agreed yet on how to use or calculate "Stardate-nnnn...".  In some way I really enjoy the chat world's contribution to the language because it allows us to use phrases which may/may not be okay in polite society but which are "OK" as their abbreviated alpha-numeric selves.  Such things as "wtf."  I'm saying this in anticipation of your response to my concern for some form of regimen in the subject line.

Ptou!!  

I am and continue to increase the number of tasks which draw my attention.  I've recently moved toward becoming one of the "noted" yard managers in the neighborhood.  No particular reason except there are two complimentary forces at work here - one is the local peer pressure from a handful of truly outstanding yard-house combinations (mostly these are on corners, alas I'm on a corner (or, great news, I'm on a corner)) nearby; and the other is the complete visual pleasure this provides at street level, inside the house on ground level, upstairs on the second floor looking out and down, or from the observatory level in the tower looking way out and way down.  This past week I spent over 45 cumulative hours in the yard.  It looks like it was swept through by a team of roving garden professionals (removes hand from patting self on back).  Now, when I look out I see even more things I like to do.  I had to go to the supermarket this weekend in search of a quality nail brush to clean out the dirt and whatever else was beneath the nails on both hands.  And, mind you, my nails had been clipped at the beginning of this project and were nearly non-existent in terms of having an overhang.  That's getting one's hands into the dirt!

I've gotten pretty decent after four recent mobiles I've made, too.  I'm now reasonably practiced in the use of continuous-form brass rod shaping, in the use of heavy-stock three-dimensional Origami-style shaping, in the use of sheet aluminum and sheet brass three dimensional shaping.  I've played with an incredible array of miniature super-low-friction articulated attach devices and along the way discovered some other useful materials in both outdoor/fishing outfits and hardware stores.  I recently found a roll of copper sheeting, about 10 mils thick with a tacky hydrocarbon backing layer.  It was/is intended as flashing around chimneys, above drain spouts, and other odd angle areas of a house or structure.  The hydrocarbon backing - I don't think it's real tar but it's a darned close manufactured equivalent - comes off easily as a whole set of sheets, leaving behind very little residue which naphtha (lighter fluid) handily removes.  This is a fantastic new art material.  It comes in rolls of 10 and 12 inch widths in lengths of from 20 to 50 feet.  The best part is that the ten-inch, twenty-foot roll - which would be "tons" of art material - costs about $20.  That same material, albeit minus the slight inconvenience of having to remove an easily-removed "tar" layer, would cost several hundreds of dollars as bought as sheets from an art materials outfit.

One of the things I think that Americans really do have - as a set of citizens representing 50-state and various district, commonwealths, and other unique localities - is what we ourselves call "ingenuity."  I honestly believe - only 'cause I've met so many smart types from so many countries and travelled somewhat around the globe - that Americans can think outside-of-the-box not "better" than others, but that it seems to me that a plurality of our populace are people who can do this.  How many times in how many different situations have you and someone else been pondering a solution and you or the someone else comes up with something completely unconventional, but which actually works.  This happens all the time in this country.  This is a characteristic which is independent of how we vote or choose to spend our dollars and time or how we choose to view others.  It's something which has become part of the native culture and which we encourage.  Maybe not through active things like in school or in clubs, but in the subtle ways by which a culture tells you something about itself.  Our history is filled with individuals who created something new and useful because they dropped all previous bounds of common knowledge and went in a direction - or a different direction - until they found something which worked.  And that's something even the least of parents does instinctively.  We can all hear parents we know, or even ourselves, saying "well, figure it out for yourself."  That's an open invitation to new minds to "think outside the box" because the box is saying - invent something new.

There are certain known paths to certain areas and common techniques and tricks we can use to get some "particular" thing we want.  But when we're faced with something we want and there's no previous history of any successful technique or short-cut, it's not that daunting for us - any of us - to give the situation some considerable thought and fantasize any number of "possible" fixes.  It's a formalized invitation - as I've been saying - for humans to use their imagination - to think for themselves.

You may lament and believe or think that we don't do this here - in America.  But, my friend, I have evidence to the complete contrary.  I'm not always proud to be an American and I probably am always dinging my government for something - usually deserved I like to think - but I don't think for a minute that we're not a true "country" in the sense that there's something universal about "us" as people and as citizens that's true for us but isn't true for, say the French, or the Russians, or the Japanese, or any one else.  I'm not saying that no other place has it's share of creative types.  I'm just saying that the "on the fly" engineering or inventing or solving or scrambling that is such a common characteristic of life in America is the end result of a culture which subtly and maybe inadvertently encourages and rewards ingenuity.  On the negative side, we're pretty vicious in terms of being energy and resource consuming monsters.  But, hey, everyone's got their ups and downs.

So, don't ever think that I have a low opinion of my fellow Americans.  I don't.  I do individually, but not collectively.  

I'm never sure whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, but I'm constantly finding myself in situations where the visual scenery could be, literally, "anywhere" urban America.  I've been driving back and forth to Orting of late.  My senior year high school - first year college best friend and his family live down there - within 16 or so miles of Mt. Rainier.  I've been going back and forth using one of three main north-south arteries.  These are all limited access expressway systems.  One's the interstate, one's the major US highway, and one's simply a local major state highway.  If Interstate 5 is the I-95 of Seattle (to compare with my former DC home), and Highway 99/Pacific Highway is the equal to US-1 back east, then SR 167 (Valley Freeway) is the equivalent of US-29 / Georgia Avenue between DC and Baltimore - or, even worse since it's a phenomenon apparent in other areas too, the equivalent of I-75 between Dayton and Cincinnati.  Arrrgh!  That's why I said I don't know whether this is acceptable and I should move on or whether I should complain.  The differences are simple geography and native vegetation.  The congested, suburban, built-up factory-office park-shopping center landscape of US-29 is backed up with rolling hills and a lush green but bright green drape of trees and fields.  The same exposition of human activity in Ohio is backed up with rolling hills and a more meadow-like drape of fields and forests.  The Valley Freeway here in metro Puget Sound is backed up with cliff-steep hills on both sides which are anywhere from 400 to 800 feet higher than the valley floor - but, hey, there's buildings hanging off the cliffs and houses lining the ridges and factories and warehouses and office parks lining the valley floor.  It's the same landscape just draped over a different body part of the planet.  

It's like some form of "urban American cloth."  Anytime we need this type of "clothing" we simply cut an appropriate amount of this urban American cloth and drape it over whatever geography we've got to contend with.  Sometimes the fabric must be split to cross a wide cleavage - say a river - but taken from slightly further away it's the same cloth.

I've now been to about a half-years' worth of Ballard art walks and maybe two-thirds that number in Pioneer Square.  I feel much more comfortable in some galleries than in others and with some artists than with others, but I'm continuing with the expression of my personal interest in these arts and artists.  I am just acting on my curiosity and desire to learn more about something I like to do and want to do myself.  It's always a somewhat odd feeling since I'm never sure whether the position I'm taking (or assuming) is that of an acolyte, a "student" of the genre, a nosey busy-body, a dilettante stealing ideas, or just a plain yokel.  I don't necessarily back off and sometimes it takes me more than one visit to a studio to talk to the owner or the artist because I'm acting on a perception that my presence might not be taken for what it is - honest inquiry.  Maybe it's just me but I do get different feels - or vibes - from different artists and different galleries.  There's a great deal of pretension being played out by humans in this arena and since I'm a relative newcomer to this variant of that game, I'm going in a little more gingerly than I might in some other areas.  I have a lot of experience with whole legion of human activities where arrogance and pretension are a major element of that genre.  Science and engineering are their own little soaps filled with armies of competing players, all of whom have and use their "position" to personal advantage.  I mean, why not, it's a human thing, no?

There is some fascinating and talented exposition of the arts going on in this town and every time I see these folks and their work I'm inspired again by how unique and fascinating each mind is.  There's one collective with about thirty artists split mostly on one huge, rambling, floor with common areas and single and shared-studios, Building C.  The artists in that collective seem to be feeding off and inspiring each other in ways which are incredibly visible if one visits them on a continuing basis.  Except that it would be a full-time job, I think one of the fun things for me would be to follow a couple of these artists around for - maybe - a year or two and journal their ideas, expressions, success and interactions with each other and other artists in the area.  That would be a short time slice in the evolution of a human aesthetic idea and expression and what happens as that gets spread around and others pick the thread and add or modify things.  Almost like the old game "telegraph" where you say something to someone and they say the same thing to someone next to them and on until you complete a chain and the last person tells the originator what the "something" is - almost invariable the result is completely different from the origination.  To follow something like that in an active art world would be a fascinating study and would probably produce some fantastic images and tales.

I'll try and be more communicative - i.e., I'll try and put some specific comments into specific posts because I've been doing a lot of things lately which have added ideas to my existing stew and I've learned a huge number of things, an awful many of which are in the category of human sociology and anthropology - a favorite love of mine.  Think about it, what could be more fascinating to someone who likes people and humans than the study of people(s) and humans?  The things we make?  Yeah, that too.  I love things like historical essays on bridge-building technologies.  I will always stop on a trip to see what something is that's called a "National Monument/Building/Engineering/anything" or a "Historical Marker."  The kinda cool thing to me about having all these interests is that I can travel around and imagine the places during different times because I've read up on things which happened there and what the prevailing society and technology was like.  

One of my continuous visions is of being a brave or scout for a native tribe in North America (wouldn't really matter where, frankly) during some period maybe between 1000 and 2000 years ago.  I'd really like to see what it would be like to have to invent everything from scratch.  To learn the weather by experience.  To have to make my own tools and catch or grow my own food.  I'd like to do this because I'd like to see how well I made it and for how long and whether I'd be as fascinated and drawn towards the "new" and "different."  Somehow, there'd have to be some kind of temporal link between the "me" self who was the native scout and the existing "me" in this time.  I need to work on how that link would come about - what metaphysics do I need to come up with for that to be a possibility.  What new twist on quantum mechanics and relativistic physics do I have to look for to permit this to occur in the "real" universe.  No easy  task, but I'll get right on it.

I'm also one of these folks who happens to believe that some of who we were is inside of us and that we can have experiences in places which we might have never before been in this life but which evoke feelings of great familiarity and consciousness.  It's almost a form of species history.  This is more than simply calling oneself "Irish" or "Afrikaner" or "Aleut."  It's a real feeling that part of you has been someone else and there is no direct thread genetically that you are aware of.  Here's where you get to facetiously ask me if I can remember swimming in the canyons of the Pacific as a fish.  No, but there is a fascination with water, rivers, lakes, the ocean which most of us have and which some of us are natively tuned to.  There is the aesthetic and the curiosity or intellectual component, but for some (if not all) there is also a "heart-felt" draw - as if being directed.  By what?  Maybe this internal genetic link we have but can't trace and can only intimate at.

For me it's always been mountains and water - by each other.  I like to climb things.  When I'm resting standing up I sometimes like to use one hand and grab something and sort-of half-way lean my body weight on this hanging hand.  Which I guess means there are times when I relax like an ape or chimpanzee.  It feels natural.  To others it might not or they might think it odd but then they would have their own inside link to some past incarnation that they were drawn towards but couldn't understand.  

I guess I've also been pondering such things as the physics and metaphysics of evolution - both in the near context of us humans on Earth - and in the somewhat larger scale of still trying to imagine what the "other" people will be like and what their anthropology would tell us when we finally meet another form of intelligent life in our universe.  I spent too many years working on and with the SETI project to have any doubt that there is an ample representation of "humans" throughout the various galaxies.  It's always only been a question of the time factor - are we concurrent and can we communicate?  Guess what!  I've now seen maybe too many alien encounter movies to suggest that I'd do anything other than observe from a distance the first meeting.  Then I'd probably be in the front of the line to meet any aliens myself.  Heck, they might be rude or have what we would call bad manners.  And knowing us (humans) I'm nearly positive that we'd somehow manage to severely insult them.  

I'm trying to let my finances settle down a bit before I go diving into more electroluminescent wire and mobile projects.  I have gotten hooked, though.  I've also got a new art project that I'm trying to get underway but since I believe it's in an untried area I'll defer any further reference and only note that it's yet another - to me - exciting opportunity to meld science and art - body and soul as it were.  And I didn't even "think" of this.  An opportunity arose which I interpreted as an opportunity for art despite the fact that it was an opportunity for something else.  In that regard I'm tickled that my mind works in strange ways but it does sometimes surprise me when I suddenly have a new perception or idea whose execution requires an entire new field of learning and practice and yet I'm up for it.  In the Jungian world of psychology it's as if there are parts of me competing for my time.

Potentially that could represent the downside of having a solid link between one's conscious and subconscious self.  The various elements of self would then be introducing enough new and solicitous expenditures of time that one could become completely occupied doing nothing but pursuing imaginative longings.  Ah, the virtue of not working for someone else.  In those days, I could never say "no" to a good idea or project and, hence, was used by the system for major chunks of my life for up to 18 hours a day - seven days a week.  Now, I can always say - f**k it - I'm taking a walk, going for a bike ride, catching some zzzz's.  

More musings and observations later - don't want to abuse your patience or interest. 

Posted: Tue - May 17, 2005 at 10:46 PM          

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