Wonder: in the city

Where does wonder live?

Does it live here in the Yosemite “Fire Fall” where the setting sun spectacularly engulfs the horsetail waterfall for just a few moments? Of course. Does it live in the same setting sun when it’s spread across a commuter’s daily ride home? Sure, if we choose to find it there. The problem with the fire fall - and similarly breathtaking moments - is they can set a standard for what we define as breathtaking, spectacular, or wonder-inducing. What a limitation! If we can find wonder in the everyday, isn’t that worth the investment? Why not enjoy the small-but-strange and the common-but-beautiful? It’s always around us, we just accomulate little layers of smuck that harder to see as we settle deeper into our daily routines and patterns.

This is because our “auto-pilot” will build an auto-pilot if we let it. We can’t help it; the brain is a biological system that is driven towards efficiency and if given the chance to automate some task, it will. That’s great because it allows us to multitask, allowing the millennial to safely cross the street while face deep in a phone. But it also gives us the power to gloss over. “Yeah I know how this street looks”, “Yeah I know what she’s going to say”, “Yeah I know who this person is”. And to an extent “Yeah” you are right. But not totally, and in that gap lies the beauty, lies the change, lies the wonder.

There are no constants in the human world, just close approximations. The urban landscape looks unchanged hour to hour, but it’s not. It may feel like you’ve walked down that hallway at work a thousand times, but you haven’t. Your partner seem the same to you as when you met them, but they aren’t. In short, if the world looks dull, it isn’t. It’s our perception and attention to it that looses it’s edge. There is never the same moment twice, and while you’ve heard that before, you’ve also forgetten it’s true.

It is woven into the mechanics of physics and fluidity of ecology: change drives life and cannot be separted from it. Instead they are united as hot is to cold and dark is to light. You cannot speak of life without change, and since we are along for this ride, we too are change. From relationships to work contracts we should not just embrace change as a part of life, but use it as a tool to empower us in the face of the mundane. A tool that can be used to see something different within something familiar. A tool that recognizes these differences as fundamental to being engaged and fighting off monotony. Utiliing change as a tool in this way can bring wonder into our lives when we need it most: today, tomorrow, and so on.

The next few posts will explore what this tool that converts change to wonder is exactly. It will be based on my experiences of life in a city, but isn’t limited to the concrete jungle.

Seasonality

Sitting on a vent in the bike car of the Caltrain, the sun of a March afternoon settles in. Spring is waking up and I can feel it on my face and in the air, something just smells different. Maybe it’s evoking past waning afternoon sunsets and freshly minted grass stains. It can be hard to find the seasons in San Francisco, where good weather and great weather are blended together 10 months of the year. 2019 has been rain’ier in the Bay than in Portland or Seattle, so maybe this clear day reinforced the incoming diet of sun and temperate conditions. Regardless of it’s approach, the season - and particularly spring - is a strong reminder that we are living in circles. For example, take weather from a year and wrap the ends (Jan 1 & Dec 31) together and you’ll have a seasonal circle. Stacking the seasonal circle from 2017 and 2018 together and you’ll see the obvious fact that the major trends of colder weather in winter and warmer weather in summer are consistent across the circles. It’s also not surpising then, that changes in weather throughout the year is the definiton of a season. What may not be as intuitive is our lives have inherent “seasonality” trends that shape our experiences.

Peeling back the layers of our basic human habits, we unveil neat patterns of waking/sleeping, weekday/weekend, hungry/full, and so on. These repeating themes weave a mosaic of experience that we come to reflect on as ‘our lives’. They may change in frequency and intensity, but we are sure to find ‘history repeating itself’ at scale from society to our daily energy levels. How boring, you may note, human beings are destined to chase the tail of time around and around. Well, that is one way to interpret the rhythms that constitute our existence, but as the The Dude himself said “Yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man”.

Reflect a moment on why we are drawn to nature, to instinctively call mountain peaks ‘beautiful’ or crashing waterfalls ‘breath taking’. It’s not because of some “result” nature has, there is none! Only patterns, only a process that continues to change and flow in a nearly cyclic pattern. So then, something doesn’t match up. Like the mountain, we are not built as a result but only unfolding processes. All of Earth’s inhabitants are drawn into this: nearly overlapping , but never the same, repeating experiences. Some happen in milliseconds (neurons firing) and some are geologic (the breaking and forming of continents). This is our groove, this is our beat, and we must dance with it; like the trees, like the seaons. Our concrete jungles give the impression of permanence - see “Static Illusions” below - but seeing through that reveals a space for us to find peace in. It can be damn hard (see the commuter suffer) but it is our responsibility to do so. For only in seeing the impermanence and unique quality of any given ‘circle’ can we lift the burden of “the daily trudge”. This burden only exists as a concept that we have learned. The stream is just about the same everyday, but we don’t look at it that way. So look at nature’s beauty, look for it’s result, and when you find none, turn that view inwards and find the beauty of the process that has been within us all along.

Static Illusions

I can see a pyramid from my desk. The Transamerica Pyramid isn’t Egyptain, but in a way it can feel just as eternal. Everyday, rain or shine, it stares at me, permanent. If I threw my desk back in time 20 years to the same place, it would have seen the same pinnacle. Many faucets of modern society give this static, unchanging atmosphere. For practical purposes - a city constantly crumbling would not work - it makes sense. But it’s also comforting to know that 5th street will be there even if you haven’t seen it for some time.

When we turn this permanent state-of-things inwards, we start to accumulate illusionary debt. The debt of self-doubt, of self-criticism and the debt of confidence “this is how things are”: I am X, this person is Y, this commute is Z. By believing in a unchanging world we constrict our conscious attention to broad strokes of generalizations. We are forced to square our unchanging views against a constantly changing world, the pieces don’t fit. In this way, we lose sight of impermanance, which is the true reality of the Transamerica tower, along with all experiences and physical forms. These debts - according to Buddhist philosophy - arise from a incorrect view of reality, which is clear of our filters we overlay on perceptions, and is by nature constantly in flux. In fact, you can verify this at any time. Look closely at anything you feel is stable, whether it is a skyscraper or idea about a loved one. It is not static, it vibrates and shakes and dances. Some cases this happens extremely slowly (e.g. a mountain), but take 5 minutes to track your mood, emotions and thoughts and you’ll feel the futility of constraining our experiences to some unchanging idea or view we have.

There is freedom in letting our static debt go. By seeing the impermenant nature of all things - the 2nd law of thermodynamics agrees here - the importance of our thoughts and attachments lessen. Just like when we are lifted from financial debt, static debt frees resources to use elsewhere. To use in gratitude, in appreciation of passing moments, in the shared cycles we are all a part of.

Meet-me

Pizza, again, ribs, again, meetings, again. In two weeks I was in about 90 hours of meetings/conferences in San Francisco and New Hampshire. For some executives, this may be the norm. Not for me. By the time my return flight touched down I was ready to hibernate. Some days felt harder than others, and some meetings I simply could not “attend” due to the lack of attentional fuel in the tank. But going into those two weeks I had an intention and goal for myself: to be as present as was realistic.

What’s “realistic” in how many hours of meetings we can push through is biologically grounded. That is to say, our brain power limits how much information we can take in over a day of meetings. “Attend” with rapt attention, all systems GO, for several hours non-stop and you’ll find yourself cuddled in the corner with lukewarm coffee and a headache by 3pm. Well, that was my body’s reaction when I tried that strategy. Our brains have an amazing ability to switch between tasks and context’s, however it is taxing and over time burns up all our fuel. To keep this analogy going, imagine driving across the country and not looking for a gas station until the car has stopped. Doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it also happens quite often. My goal was to monitor my fuel gauge, MPG, and where the damn gas stations were.

Attending meetings and conferences can feel like a highway of information transfer. You’re moving fast, with an intention and direction that is unhindered by stop signs and stop lights (for the most part). Similar to highway driving, we can get lulled into unfocused meetings, and end up on full cruise-control. In my experience, the limiting factor to avoiding this vapid-eyes-to-space state is not as much the length of the meetings as the breaks allowed.

Breaks in both the car world and meeting world are meant to be restorative. My intention on breaks were to refuel as much as I could. Turns out, going outside or event viewing images of nature can help restore our attention. So into the snow I went - or onto my phone to gaze at the Olympic mountain range. This may sound silly but a growing literature of research backs it up. I won’t dive into the details of why natural settings can restore attention that our society so efficiency drains, but I do find it useful (and fascinating).

Aside from taking intentional breaks, what got me through the two weeks were breathing, and exercise. These are foundational tools to help ground me and give me a larger perspective on the day. To breath/meditate is to give myself the space to feel beyond the incoming thoughts rattling around my head. It’s easy to get sucked into the moment and work being discussed and just-how-important-it-is. The most practical technique I’ve found is a 5-second in, 5-secound out breath that helps activate the parasymtetthic nervous system. This is our “rest and digest” branch of the autonomic nervous system, the other (sympathetic) branch being involved in “fight our flight” behavior. Tense meetings and prolonged discussions about the details of work and why every-little-thing-must-be-like-THIS can lead us to lean on the fight or flight response if we aren’t aware of it. This too contributes to burning up our fuel faster, and in general leaves us irritated and tired by end of day. The simple 5-in, 5-out breathing steps in and helps break up the momentum of tense or tiring tirades.

I’m not going to say I was a perfect attendee - I got tired, frustrated, and ready to leave plenty of times. But that wasn’t the goal. Instead, I felt aware and accepting of those negative moments, along with the positive ones, throughout. I’m convinced it was because I was able to use tools to keep my fuel gauges in check and my perspective grounded. But for the love of god I hope this week I don’t have another catered lunch.

Life is rough

The glow of the setting sun flows off from the cloud’s gnarled fingers and into the windows of the Caltrain, right above the monstrously rectangular Hillsdale shopping center. We’ve all tried capturing a gorgeous sunset, only to find the miniature sensors in our phones always pail in comparison to the real thing. But what is it about the “real thing” that draws us, instinctually, to awe at nature? To awe at sunset clouds, yes, but also the forest creek, the mountain peak, and the ocean’s coast. What characteristic does nature reveal in it’s beauty? Roughness.

Rough, shockingly, is not smooth. Reflect on nature’s bounty, how many straight lines and smooth surfaces come to mind? A forest floor is smooth when viewed from the canopy, sure, but examining closely reveals an infinite variety of landscapes built of soil, bugs and plants. Just like a coastline is impossible to measure as it’s length increases as our measuring devices get smaller, so too do all of nature’s “natural” beauty contain within it an inherent roughness. A stream has no edges, for as soon as you define it, it’s motion has shifted the edge somewhere else. Same goes for a mountain - it’s iconic singularity is actually a bunch of little mountains (rocks) - or a tree, whose branching structure embodies this rough, natural beauty.

My question, then, is where is the boundary of roughness in nature? Do it’s fingers reach out to us, or pass us by? Looking around a city, we are reminded of certainty: straight lines and unchanging structures. Streets don’t shift and change as we move within them. A city block is a block today and it will be the same block tomorrow. In this way, human structures are very smooth in comparison to the buildings of mother nature. Of course, this is largely for practical purposes, and I for one and glad my plumbing pipes always guide away from the walls of my room and towards an organized collection.

But we cannot hide from the facts: life is rough, and so are we.

Why is it that The Hero’s Journey has built into it, conflict? Moreover, why does every story which contains a message for us, also contain some bumps and imperfections for the character or plot? We can’t help our nature; roughness is inherent in the building blocks of physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy and anywhere else we look. So why then, is it difficult to embrace our roughness? It may be a fear of the infinitely shifting tides we call experience, self, consciousness, and reality, that, as soon as we feel cemented in them, have shifted. We desire the straight lines of downtown buildings but are again and again given the dance of the forest. Sometimes harmonious, sometimes on fire, always changin.

For me, it is seeing the roughness in nature that let’s me feel at home in my self. That is to say, that makes me feel connected to the ever changing, unknowable rock hurdling in space and everything else within it. This does not make me feel solid in a unchanging way but strong like a mountain against the wind. I am changing, now, tomorrow, and on, sometimes slowly, sometimes quick. But that is not scary, it is in fact a truth. Deeper than our genetic code and more mysterious than fried ice cream, roughness is a byproduct of existence as we understand it. In this way, we are no different from the rest, from it “all”, but we are acutely aware of the ride. From this view on the cosmic roller coaster, at least for a moment, there is solitude. Solitude in the un-know-ability of it all and the know-ability that here, in this rough state, we have now, and that is - and it better be! - enough.

Mind reader

I am fascinated by the lack of tools and language we have for describing and sharing mental states. We have encompassing words like sad, happy, confused, and angry. They are crude strokes, painted onto language with bricks and pillows. Without finer brushes, we can never relay our experiences to those around us in a meaningful way. We can do better. The tools we most often use are words that live on language islands, unable to connect in any real way to the vernacular highways of daily life. Indeed, when it comes to the important, subjective experiences that span our lives, our tools are insufficient. We can do better.

There are many questions that emerge from this: why is it this way? Is there a benefit to sharing experience beyond how we do so now? Would it make us happier? Would it drive innovation or make societies more money? The answer to the last one may be a major reason as to why we lack the quality of tools we have for other economic and industrial endeavors. Human society has relied on industry and innovation as a common goal since the industrial revolution. Maintenance and description of internal states? Not so much. However, with the explosion of technology and automation, does that still need to be the case? These questions don't have simple or straightforward answers, but demand more attention. It also be that the motion of the mind is vastly more complex than an economy. As it currently stands, we have seen across galaxies, into depths far beyond atoms and yet are just peering over the ledge of the dark and swirling pool of the mind.

Before getting carried away in that direction, I want to ground this discussion in the body. Modern culture is somewhat obsessed with bodies, which provides a good counter example to the mind (however these are in fact two parts of the same system). The benefit of our interest in the body is the scaffolding we have to build for relatable communication. While gaps will always exist, we quickly give diagnosis and empathy to others in physical pain and triumph. It is easy for us to do so because: a. we have experienced something similar, b. we are confident that the other is suffering in some way, c. other people confirm this, and d. we feel comfortable in our empathy. Take for example an athlete that rolls their ankle during a championship match. We have all experienced physical pain before; we can see in slow motion the moment of injury; medical professionals are there to assess the situation; all in attendance - regardless of team loyalty - praise the athlete when they are taken off. We clap for them when they are injured. Imagine clapping for a friend or colleague when they take leave for depression or discuss their struggles with anxiety or some personal issue. The same prerequisites are not met and most importantly, we do not feel comfortable in our empathy.

While it feels contrary, I truly believe the gaps of experience between physical and mental systems are quite similar. Fundamentally this is the case because we share experience across these domains. Humans are connected by what we have in common, on this rock, in our genes and chemicals and muscles and neurons. These variables shape and limit our experiences, confining us to see a section of the light spectrum and hear a subset of frequencies. Similarly, our experiences of mind have limits that connect us all. If my blood was made of nitrogen and my eyes filtered infrared light, things would be different. However, while some of us can jump higher and run faster than each other, no one can jump 30 feet straight up or run 100mph. In the same way, we may be predisposed to feel brighter or darker than others, but overwhelmingly we share the brushes that paint the human experience.

The difference in tools for describing physical and mental expereinces, is in large part attention. We have spent the majority of human attentional resources - limited as they are - in discussing the body, and not the mind. It's quicker, cleaner, and more directly related to industrial and economic benefit in the short term. A broken body cannot run the saw mill but a broken mind most likely can for a few hours a day, at least. In school, did you learn about the mind and how to talk about experience? Did you have physical education classes, biology, health, or related classes? Of course, that is because in the US at least it is required material. It doesn't frustrate  e that we have discussion and tools about the body, it grounds us and is our vehicle. The fact of the matter is both are important, two sides of an inter-folded dynamic system.

We can no longer as a society sustain our ignorance of experience, our envelopment in the ego, and lack of tools to make change. What we can do is build better tools to create scaffolding for experience so we can share in more detail the goings on of the mind. Better tools for tracking and putting into context various experiences and the open dialoge to make that okay. We can do better and we can be empathetic like we are for the athlete, and more importantly, for ourselves first. That's what I want to be a part of, in some way.

Time to start writing again.

Recently I moved off away from major social media platforms after multiple years - a decade with one of them - not because I was bored, although that was also true, but because they failed to inspire. I'm not looking for inspiration in any big or flashy way, just something to keep me curious and engaged. Once I can start scrolling on end, I am going to get a case of the 'museums'; after some time (this varies based on my interest and the variance in the museum) of walking through gallery after gallery my attention becomes kind of numb to the art and I am unable to feel inspired or deeply connected to the pieces hanging in front of me. The posts and photos and videos and advertisements made me numb a long time ago, and I was staying on the platforms mainly to message friends. But even that started to weigh on me in some way, like I was holding responsibility to all these people in some indirect way. The costs outweighed the benefits, it was time to move on.

Another part of moving away from social media (for the time being at least) is to focus on creating more meaningful work. Again nothing flashy here, just a place to catch passing creative impulses and see what happens. I'm not sure what form my writings will take, but i'm looking forward to it.

Green light, red light

The sharp refection of a downtown 'scraper's glass panels bounce off my closed left eye as I wait for the light to change. Click - for some reason I always hear a click in my mind - the light goes green and I go off. I already know my fate: I'm not going to make the next light. Yet I rush towards it, pedalling against the timer I see next to the blinking red hand on the corner. The car which was impatiently waiting to pass me, squeezes by and through the yellow light that I am forced to watch click red from several meters away.

I take the same route to and from work everyday. I'm learning which lights are run on timers and which aren't. The ride back from work in particular feels straight out of some version of groundhog day, with the San Francisco perma-temperate climate assuring me I have been here before. But have I? Jack from today and yesterday are pretty much the same, but also not. Yesterday I may have been occupied with whatever issue was going on at work, or today I may be fixated by a cheeseburger I plan on having later. Or I may be just taking in the sights and sometimes strange smells of the city. Regardless, the Jack experiencing the bike ride home today is not the same as the one yesterday nor the Jack of tomorrow. 

We set our lives by cycles, adapting to the climate, commute and circumstances through them. Without them, we are tormented, tossed, and torn to pieces. While dramatic, imagine eating and sleeping at completely random and unscheduled times. Cycles are boundaries in which nature sets its roots. The basis of our human cycles is repetition: The routes, the sights, the people, the thoughts. I'm barely into a work routine and I already see this so clearly. Or maybe because i'm starting I am aware of the patterns forming. In some commuting veterans I can see the metaphors in the faces on the train. He is the canyon carved by thousands of years of flowing water taking the path of least resistance. She is the tide to a moon that will rise once more. Like the gravitational pull of some large and mysterious body, our cycles can slowly drag us into an inevitable fiery end. Or they can remind us that the fundamental nature of mother nature is cyclical.

Indeed happiness, curiosity and suffering are the same as seasons, the forests, and the oceans. None of them persist unchanged, none of them are the exactly the same twice, and none of them exist without each other. That's the rules: No repeat button. It may seem like your spouse or partner is slowly turning into cement, or that your job never changes or the light will always turn red before you get there. However, fundamentally this cannot be true as uncertainty is constant. Human perception and human construction team up to wrap much of this uncertainty in nice shiny packages, like Christmas presents hiding a mess of circuit boards and plastic that make up their content beneath.

Incredibly, we've developed tools of great power that we can pronounce once rarified physical laws - if I drop a ball from my hand, gravity will take it to the ground at 9.8 m/s^2 - to be merely approximations. Evolutionarily, our brains need to process whether or not that shape in the dark is a lion is approaching. A rough shape, color, and sound are enough information to scare the shit out of our proverbial ancestor. Past our perceptual wrapping of the world, however, is uncertainty in it's purest form. More specifically, physicists have shown that you cannot know the exact location of the smallest bits of information we have observed. Think of a tiny cloud instead of a tiny point. Taking this up the elevator to the human scale, it's hard to say of it's impact on the brain and behavior (yet). But it does tell us this: that nothing is ever the same twice.

No matter how much we want the world to be certain and clean and cut into discrete pieces, it is not. While this may be scary on the surface, this fact can also be profoundly comforting. There is no pressure for perfection or certainty because it does not exist. You can never know why something happened because it can never be known in a literal sense. We have great approximates, but don't let that fool you into the burden of certainty. Yet we often do, and by doing so we carry the weight of every little action with us: Each of us a David with a personal Goliath strapped to our back. Why carry it? We have precious little conscious resources to start with, the last thing we need is to strain our attention with such fine grain control and analysis. So why not give up that desire for certainty and control?

You never had it in the first place. 

Cambridge 101: be hard on yourself

It's been a while since I've maintained a blog. In part it is due to the whirlwind of graduating/job hunt/travelling and related activities. But more than that it's the remains of a Cambridge standard: you should be working more, you haven't done enough, you could do better. In short, it's normal to be overtly self-critical. So yeah, i've found it hard to write creatively or freely when there is a sense something more 'serious' that I should be attending to. 

Apply this to that and that to this

This is a nearly universal phenomena in the PhD community i've been a part of. We aren't competing with each other, but some ephemeral image of ourselves that has no flaws and has published in every reputable journal within our field of study.

We navigate our days through a set of ever-sharpening analytical tools but forget to put them away, ever. It's as if we were all F-1 drivers taking our race-day-monsters down the narrow, cobbled Cambridge streets. These tools we develop are far too powerful to be applied on ourselves, all the time. We need balance, and that means time away from laser focused thinking and nit-picking for each and every imperfection. In other words, we need balance between the analytical and the light and airy. Balance for the sake of the silly, the fun, the flow and the un-thinking moments that if left unattended, like the tide, slowly move away from us but are never lost.

It's not enough to talk about our frustrations over a beer. Students should be uniting in the name of lightheartedness. Completely disengage for just a bit. There is movement of putting our phones away and interacting with each other. The sentiment is to foster person-to-person interaction and enjoy daily activities more fully. But let me tell you, this has no impact if we continue to dance with our thoughts and latch onto self-criticism. 

Unfortunately this is not a quick processes for two reasons. We've never been taught about self-compassion, mindfulness, or other eastern-oriented practices to ground ourself, and like a train pulling a load of coal, years of repetition in self-criticism produces massive momentum to keep being hard on ourselves for any reason. 

But there is hope; we can start to pull ourselves out of the mist at any time.

It's pretty simple actually: be curious, be aware. If we can do these two things we can catch our self-critical thoughts and break the cycle. Critically, this requires us not to be critical of the criticalness of our thoughts. No this isn't a paradox, it's the foundation of mindfulness practices sweeping the west for the last 20+ years. I would recommend being in nature of any kind, the words of Alan Watts, the texts of Thich Nhat Hanh, and most importantly, the curiosity and compassion to make change in your own experience.

Travel: Barcelona September 1st

Square by square, Barcelona pulses colour, movement, life. People are out, they are in the parks, in the tall, skinny alley ways and with each other. OId women drag along their colorful shopping bags and young families tot their toddlers around the parks. The sun is full and hot, and the children are happy. Paloma has told me about 'square life' before, it's where childhood memories are made and where parents catch a break. Where old people play Petanque and love birds take their first awkward flights. It's not a British thing, where those able prefer to stay in with a 'cuppa and generally avoid public contact with strangers. Nor American where we stake our own damn land and drive our kids to others well deserved damn land. Freedom. It is a lifestyle derived from close quarters and hard times, from local communities and large families.

My five days in the city were spent wondering between two worlds. One: organised, air-conditioned, and academic. Two: busy as hell, hot as well, and cool as hell. I didn't go to any of the major monuments - although I tried several times - I didn't go to any museums or movies. I walked and even talked with some locals, bought a few little things, and ate like a southern european (to me this = king).  The rest of the time I was walking and taking pictures. Some of the environemnt. 

But really this trip was on people and how they interacted with the city, in detail and at large.

Everyone uses a moped, even the businesmen

The markets and big and bustling.

Looking back, I am somewhat mixed on Barcelona. There is something essential there that grabs me, the livelihood and colours, the people and the food. But it is so busy, even in the quieter neighborhood I was in there was a constant flow of mopeds and cars and trucks and people and bikes and so on. While this a main contributor to what I like about the city, it's that compromise that has always kept me away from the big places. Back in Cambridge, people are indoors, and that's OKAY, at least while I'm writing my thesis.

Travel: Barcelona, Spain August 31st

Dotted laughter of young children play in the background of a jazz band echoing across the green-ized industrial ruins of Parc del Clot. Pausing to take in the music, I notice a stable figure amongst the turning over the busy street. A man, seemingly alone, leans against a tree and smoking a little cigar, his face, body, and intentions seems against everyone else. I took the picture.  

I immediately scanned the image to make sure it was alright and walked off with a smile. I'm not sure why the photo resonated with me but the ephemeral nature of getting that moment, that feeling as I see it is what it's all about. 

About 10 minutes later I pulled out the camera and the screen displayed the darkest nightmare of the digital age: "card read error". There were no photos, poof. My first reaction was pain and frustration. However, pretty quickly I had let it go. That ephemeral moment is just that; you get it or you don't. Most of the time you don't and to be a photographer you must accept that. Lose a roll of film before it gets developed or printed and there is no going back, baby. Capturing an instant will never return, that's the game. I got home and the error was gone, the photos returned from the other side.

I'm here for a conference, but I will be exploring the city more with two pocket cameras (1 digital 1 analog). I hope they save it all, but I'll take what I can get, the process moves on.

Whispers of experience: August 20th

On the floor beside my desk is a box as dense as the sun. I'm cleaning out my room, getting ready to move, and the sun is sitting next to me. Should I save these memories, or let them go? What is meant to be saved? Is it some personal choice, or an approximate list we must follow? Are letters from old relationships, drawings and postcards weighted the same? Christmas wishes from friends and family? If we keep them, how often to do we revisit: once a month, a year, or only when we move? What started as a cardboard box is now the sun. 

When someone writes to you, talks to you, or expresses themselves in some raw and real way, in that moment it is to be cherished with all the capacity one has. Attention is one of the greatest gifts we can give, and in those intimate moments we must devote them all. When it passes along with the essence of those relationships, do you retain their relics, bound to be buried under the current of everyday life? Ultimately they serve as a reminder, a flashbang of events now awashed many times over. I would rather be in a place to create a thousand more experiences raw and personal than have a tho usand memories of them. The aim should not be to collect memorabilia from relationships past but live in a way that manifests them. In that moment it was real and true, and that is enough to let them go. That is the vulnerability that we all fear and which we must accept, unknowingly or unwillingly, to forge lasting relationships. But ultimately, that is the vulnerability that makes life on this lonely rock worthwhile at all.

Whispers of experience: August 15th

Hair follicles on the back of my neck rise up and spread down my arms to my fingers. The pistons of frustration rotate the air around me and get sucked up into my nostrils as I take a sharp breath in. More than anything else I want to yell. 'I AM STUPID. SHIT STUPID!' I also wanted to throw an object, really anything. But I was in Haddon Archeology library, and the only object in reach was my laptop, so I restrained myself on both accounts. I was so frustrated with myself, overtaken by it. The moment when momentum has control over an object and physical laws are bringing it toward impact, I felt myself flung towards the ground.

I had mixed up the date and we had missed a concert of the BBC Proms in London, which we had both been looking forward to for some time, not to mention the now sunk cost. But it doesn't matter what it is, when I am hard on myself every fluctuation or blip adds momentum to the critical 'story'. Like a train, the ego thrives on this momentum when allowed to be perceived as central to things that go right - or go wrong - in the happenings around us. As if we have some special ability or responsibility to ensure everything goes right, so when it doesn't we are WRONG. This is BLACK, that is WHITE. Steam was billowing out the rusted ole train and the horn was pulled down; I wanted to me to scream and pound my fists. What I didn't realise is the train I felt so a part of was fuelled by my attachment to it. Simply, giving attention to frustration makes it grow. I was shovelling coal into the fire, then surprised when I built up speed. This cycle is strong as a ocean current, and just as dangerous. 

The critical mind is the academic mind is the logical mind is the successful mind. Or at least that's how I remember learning it, and to an extent that has been true for the industrial era. But unbounded, the critical mind becomes a very human- and ego-centered mind, taking personal blame at any given chance. It seems in Cambridge we all feel this weight more, like a family of catholic mothers brooding in the guilt of our work whenever we can. It's a good lesson and in retrospect I feel silly about getting so upset, but in the moment it felt tactile and present. It was startling. We all fuck up, and that's okay, as long as we know it. Put that shovel down, buddy.

Whispers of experience: August 6th 2016

While a group of teenagers behind me complained about 'young people' not having an emotional response to the latest Finding Nemo film - which they were certain indicated a grave future for us all - I stared at a tree. It's roots ran under the anxious group, and I imagine they ended just beneath me, spreading out in every direction. I was staring at the leaves, which shimmered in the slight breeze and stark sunlight, releasing a wave of sound built from small leaf-to-leaf interactions. Like neighbors greeting each other all at once. The sound reminded me of photo where the subject is set out against a noisy background, relaxation washing over me. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.

 This only took 10 seconds of full attention, and in return I was gifted with a moment of peace. This seems meagre, but in the world I feel we're living in at the moment, it is significant. There were people walking to and from a shopping center nearby, bike's passing by, and the distraught teenagers babbling onwards, but I found a slice of escape, of presence. In one way it's hard: to let go of the bubbling engine of our mind. In another it's easy: there is always a reminder of something solid and changing around. Bee's wrapping around a branch of lavender, a sprout of grass on the sidewalk, leaves in the wind. We need these moments, to remind us of our own roots on this rock rotating in vast-nothingness, and to appreciate our awareness of it for no reason in particular. We don't need a lifetime of monk-ish training for this, just a re-direciton of attention; a flashlight shone with intention.

Whisper of experience: August 1st

Air crackles across my ears - breath, step step step - it reminds me of early mornings staring into a fireplace. The infrequent bursts of sound - breath, step step step - light exploding and fading away. Gazing endlessly the flames would lull me into a warm trance - breath, step step step - I try and find that easy place once more. Watch for cars, watch for bikes - breath, step step step - thinking about how much is left doesn't help. I don't run to think - breath, step step step - I just run.

I've always found basketball to be a great mind-cleanse. In the heat of a game or practice, I can't think about emails or problems or anything, just what is directly around me. Slowly, the paint chips of built up thoughts and ideas get chiselled out, shown their fragility that was there all along. By the end, I am exhausted, but cleared in a way that birds must feel after a migration. I never found running to induce these micro-migrations, to really take me to away with it. Lately, as I've begun pushing myself and intentionally setting that time not to think (a fun paradox if you've 'tried'), it's starting to happen. Every time it gets a little bit easier - breath, step step step - the trick isn't to think about, just give it a shot.

Whispers of experience: July 29th

Marbled stairs echo against my Vans, pressing carefully against each ledge, as if the volume of my steps equalled my respect for this place. A serious looking man behind a desk examines me, searching for a phone or camera I'm sure. Later, I wonder if he speaks beyond 'shhh' and 'put that away' while he works. The bookcases stand a couple meters apart, but within them are hundreds of years of work, thought, innovation. Looking at my guests from Seattle, I can sense the palpable desire to take a photo they are resisting. Slowing folding back the thick red cloth, I take a look at the oldest book there, nearly 600 years old, a couple feet tall, and lined in a gold, flowing script in some language I don't understand. 

I've never been to such a dense place. You can feel it; the original Principia Mathematica, a work form Carl Marx, even Winnie the Pooh. Each nook of the Wren Library is heavy with knowledge, filled with wisdom, and a longing of times well past. Between each stack is a desk with modern computers and scanners, leaching material bit by bit, extracting sap from a forest of Redwoods. I couldn't create in there, it would feel like carrying a bucket of water into the ocean everyday, hoping to change the tides. I realise I'm walking with my hands behind my back, like a monk doing laps in a monastery courtyard. Breathe in, breath out, this place is where I study. Inspiration comes at unexpected times, even if it is in a expected place. 

whispers of experience: July 25th

The orange coils hanging from the top of the oven starts to glow and the expanding red heat flows down atop the bubbling mozzarella and salami. The pizza on the upper sheet was put in 5 minutes ago, the bottom one 3 minutes ago. The next two dough balls were put out a minute ago, they should be stretched in a couple more. What about the toppings for the bottom pizza? Is there enough sauce and cheese? What about the veggies; the onions and mushrooms should be cooked before going on the pizza so they don't get the whole damn thing wet. Oh shit is the top pizza burned now? 'Guys, don't wait for me, start eating!' Really they should start, this is more fun anyways.

The process of pizza making leaves no attentional landscape untouched. When the oven is blasting and there are hungry mouths, it's go time. A loud, guitar heavy blues track; get this moving, get that going, heartbreak! A burned pizza, a great pizza. Onto the next one, how I love to see you go, how I loathe it so.  Don't forget the last pizza for Paloma, the parmesan and egg, perched atop the final smashed dough ball, destined for destruction as we all are, recycled stuff.

Really, egg on pizza is amazing.

whispers of experience July 24th

Something building up, there it is. In the corner of the room, staring through my lens, fogging the view. Can't place the feeling, covered by a vague and familiar residue. Like holding bags for someone who isn't coming back. I stare at the wall, nothing has room to grow, walls are closer now. 

Not wanting to do anything in particular or much at all. So I don't, not running away, not distracting, but letting the wave come. It too will pass, if I let it. The wall is crumbling. I know it's foundation is built on puddy, on thoughts of thoughts and not cement, not the real stuff. Being with it is like sitting at the top of a slide that winds underneath and all about. I know that once I start the movement, I can let go and allow natural force to guide me back some intricate path. There it is, finally realising grip for a few moments. For no reason, bare. Nothing was in the corner, just a mirror from some place long passed. There was room to stop, and I am thankful. Afterwards, a feeling of relief. A feeling of having done something that was needed; blowing your nose. I can breathe again.

whispers of experience: somewhere in 2003

'hey cracker, get over here'. The strong rubber scent of the brown school bus seat has normalised into the upper crevices of my nostrils, leaking into my brain. I look over and see Jim looking back at with a big smile. His eyes have that edge of uncertainty; is he crazy, energetic, or unstable? We're on a way to some small town middle school for a football and he's beckoning for our pre-game ritual: calf massages. I don't know how this started but I can't back down at this point. Although we have mutual respect for each other as athletes and friends, he still has ~30 pounds on me and when Jim feels he should have something, he isn't shy about enforcing that whatever way possible. 

Another time, going to lunch with him and a few people, I sat in the back while he drove. It was my first time in the car with him driving. Winding down a big hill into town, unannounced, he pulled out his phone, took his hands off the wheel, looked down, and started texting. Sitting in front with him was Alicia who didn't have a driver's license. Luckily, she reacted, squealed, and grabbed the wheel. I asked Jim what the fuck he was doing, and him swung his head around with a bright smile and said 'texting a girl'. He laughed, no one else did. He knew exactly what he was doing. It was a game to him, and he was testing us. Would we respond and take control, potentially saving ourselves from a serious accident? If we didn't, would he let his car crash? Many of my experiences with Jim were like this, really pushing the edge of what was appropriate. It was never dull. I never had to answer those questions of what if, because someone reasonable was around to wrangle the situation in. I found out today the life of cutting it close and living to the boundaries caught up, and now he is gone. RIP Jim, see you on the other side. 

whispers of experience: July 22nd

Afternoon light floods the bullet shaped room, two laptops sit across from each other. A wasp weaves around the open window but ultimately decides to stay on his side of the glass. A company of similarly dressed and similarly lived gather below, their hum fades with the insect, crossing paths back and forth. The musky summer air is broken with a breeze, the sound of birds, the movement of blinds across the window. A slice of silence is made in this place, for as long as it lasts.