as usual, i'm amazed by the obvious. who would have thought i'd spend my first full evening with a new ipad going through my friends list on facebook. stumbled into it, just like everything else i've done. and i had revelations, expected and surprising. for example, i missed certain people out of the hundreds, mostly their quirky attitudes, insights, and conversation. we only have a few people who've had our experiences or can relate to them.
and of course, this business of having children. quite a few on my list former students i met from 1995 to 2009 while auditing theater and choreography classes. the team-work rubs off, easier for me to relate. blew me away how many have been busy creating kids. one said, if you haven't seen a child take her first step, what a lot you've missed! and suddenly, ah, that's it, those miracles that happen before children turn eight. most parents seem to remember their children at that age, to recall the three-year old when the thirty-year-old going through her second divorce, her offspring part of a heart-ache.
yes, all my close friends pretty lucky. a few have lost children early, to car-accidents and cancer. they experienced a tragedy i can only faintly imagine. partly their own mortality gone, mostly they'll never experience the full cycle, whatever good or bad it brings. one friend felt so guilty for his twelve-year-old son's death he gave himself diabetes in atonement. these early deaths seem so outrageous, so out of order, so unfair. and again, the meaning of life is lost.
oppositely, the new grandmothers simply gaga over their new grand kids! now they can have the fun of experiencing those early years all over. and it does feel like the quest to be remembered will be fulfilled. i don't mean to diminish the pleasure, the immediate experience. they plunge back into the present moment as though it hadn't left them years ago.
looking on a tablet at this parade of a familiar humanity much easier than on a big computer screen, more intimate, it's sitting in your lap, you can pick it up, lay it down, and most of all, flick through the pictures with your fingertip, almost touching the crowd out there, spread across the earth. i invite you to look through your own history. and if you branch off into a friend of a friend and then a friend of theirs, you'll perhaps experience how close all of us ultimately are.
yes, for me life a circus, where i'm a clown. a few of us have to be left on our own to teach and entertain the masses. http://www.pbase.com/wwp/cyrk
okay, it's not a new concept. that said, on a personal level, the internet gives me the whole of the past, including art, science, religion, etc. i've caved into this fact, buying a new, fast laptop and the updated ipad this week, and i'm eligible for a new smartphone. you say, you, the world-traveler, how can you do this to yourself? yes, i sacrificed a trip to paris, a walk in kyoto, all for virtual adventure. luckily these tools arrived after i'd squandered my youth.
and speaking of that glorious, miserable time, i ran across this modigliani painting on my tablet:
okay, it's a pleasant picture, how does it relate? this reproduction, large-size, pinned above the bed where i first got laid, fifty years ago. i won't be too indiscreet, but i simply couldn't get it up the first night, rising to drink coffee and hiding my shame. does the event exist out there in the universe, replaying itself, time no longer of any consequence? seems like it. we certainly remember the anxious moments vividly, for whatever reason. this story had a happy ending, for her too, her first time, though ignorance doesn't necessarily bring bliss.
here's a photograph from an earlier era, my first year at an advanced educational institution, valparaiso unversity, where they allowed dancing on campus for the first time, never at a loss for lust, i'm sure. yes, i began my girl-watching in earnest that season.
this dorm next to the railroad tracks. every time a train passed, dust rained down from the ceiling. i did at least complete one campus tradition, kissing a coed on the bridge over the tracks as an engine thundered by underneath. yes, life not really linear, merely a collection of episodes.
at one point many moons ago, polish circus posters fascinated me. in those days you couldn't find many reproductions. suddenly, last night, i felt inspired and looked them up on the web. there they were in all their glory.
my god, what a feast! i downloaded over a hundred of them and began drawing big-top drawings of my own.
you can see more: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/cyrk we've found eternal life, even if it doesn't last that long.
well, i've certainly been out of the loop. here i am, finally living with my own generation, and i didn't even know it. damn, all i had to do was look around the room, i mean the classrooms where i audit classes, listening to lectures over and over, hoping to learn by osmosis, this the fifth time with the history of photography, and with three different teachers. and now i've stumbled upon a welcome truth.
on the same day, drinking my coffee at the bookstore cafe, i browsed two technical magazines: howdesign and the british version of wired. lo and behold, articles in both explained the same issue, the habits of the millenials. jeez, i must admit, i'd never heard the term. as described, this the generation born between 1978 and 1999, exactly the kids i've been sitting beside, thinking all the time i understood them. as usual, i entertained a fallacy.
evidently, these very students the group of which they speak, described as multi-taskers, those who believe what they read online, more devoted to their private life than work (they've caught up with the french), seeing work as a series of experiences and not a career, hopping from train-car to train car, not afraid of change, and liking to work in teams. lord, where have i been. most of this obvious when i think about it, which i obviously hadn't.
that last paragraph describes myself. you could throw in their 'feeling of entitlement' and 'readiness to leap onto the latest, greatest thing.' previous generations advised 'not to try to hard to realate' and 'understand the social consciousness and commitment of these budding souls.' not rebels against their parents in the old sense, they like their parents' taste in music and movies. take the latest oscar winner the artist, a silent film. now that's going back some!
yes, they may very well drop out. why wait til you graduate to change the world? they're inspired by the TEDD.COM talks, like me, and though i'm certainly not a 'futuremaker', i can understand the thrill of being one. hey, folks, the world may be in better hands than we think. i certainly hope so, since i'll be soon skipping school permanently.
if i may coin a phrase: life is one long improvisation. for example, last evening i took my camera to the park. on the way i noticed knot-holes in fences, which have always fascinated me. i snapped a few pics and found a common thread when i arrived back at my computer. here's eve and the serpent: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/eve
http://hbr.org/2010/05/mentoring-millennials/ar/1
what makes this so difficult? i mean, i've always wandered cemeteries and read the notes on tombstones: in life she was anything but an angel, now she has a chance. hey, i could written that about myself. better to be witty than too serious about the whole subject. after all, the world won't exist once i'm gone. poof, vanished, lost in space. as my friend randy said before he died, 'when i retired, i thought the forest service couldn't go on without me. in the fall i visited the office and i overheard some kid ask, "who's that old dude?"'
somehow i care what people might say, all the conversations in the world 90% gossip. yet i don't expect to be mentioned at the water cooler all that often, though i'd like the lazy bums to use one of my aphorisms now and then, even if they don't know where it came from. the mother creates the poet (and kills him). i could talk about that for awhile. she puffs him up and then he explodes with drink or an overdose, leaving a trail of lovely lines behind. shall i compare thee to a summer's day? poor guy, they were lying on the beach as she watched the oiled and muscular guy play volleyball.
i could go to the other extreme. in airplanes he always assumed he'd be the lone survivor. of course, being the last human being on the planet can't be much fun. imagine adam before eve, bent sadly over his grape juice and petting a cougar. god realized his creation needed lots of trouble to wake him up. yes, the sexes enliven each other. and when they discover what sex leads to, the murder of abel by caine, it's too late and they have to deal with the divorce. no wonder 41% of babies born in america today to single woman. they've realized though they might miss a bit of alimony the guy will probably be a dead-beat.
born into a world of war, he tried to be at peace with himself. unfortunately, that one doesn't apply to me. in my philosophy you have to suffer if you want to be like other people and relate to their lives. sitting for years under the bo tree like the buddha good for some people. i'd rather ride a bus through the costa rican jungle, even if the road be bumpy. alas, self-deception the reason we have so many conversations with ourselves, to find agreement on just about every prejudice we have. yes, we're not alone. and i'm not getting any closer to the objective, an unvarnished statement of the truth.
hmm, the only thing i can say for sure, 'he encouraged other people to be independent. no wonder he passed away in solitude.'
here's evidence of his obsession with funerary monuments. he always read the dates to see how long the permanently reclining had lived:
http://www.pbase.com/wwp/marble
http://www.pbase.com/wwp/marble2
nothing makes me break out into a sweat like wrestling with this fact. i'd rather be a machine with replaceable parts and the know-how to do it myself. alas, i'm basically a flowing river held together by the banks of my skin. to understand the brain a two pound sponge mostly full of water, how does that help me keep my feet on the ground? and with my blood flowing fifty thousand miles a day, can i really be expected to control my thoughts?
for a contr0l-freak like myself, this the issue. to actually experience my body during a colonoscopy, to smell a kiss, to wash my underwear, is that really all i can do? so much is literally out of my hands. why have friends so much younger died? am i suffering from survivor-guilt? (unlikely) i wish i were somehow separate from nature. for instance, it's spring, lots of sunlight, warm days. my body bounces like a cork on the sea - and that's the key to being an american, walking with a little hop.
or if i listen to smooth jazz, i can feel myself flowing slowly over the walls, to the moon and back, a part of the liquidity of life. if i weren't so susceptible to being hypnotized, could i really write poetry or fall in love? and to my horror i find i'm the living proof of change, enjoying feeling good lying around, rather than charged up by the sites of a foreign shore. comfort, i know, is the great enemy of creativity, yet these gorgeous mornings i fall asleep over my tea and dream of heavens not reachable on earth. yes, the memory of the journey much more enjoyable than the sand-fleas and train-crashes of the actual.
i'm a little frightened. this very drop in adventure marked my friend berta's exit days. her last trip to some island in the south pacific to see an unusual sculpture left her unsatisfied. she'd rather read a book or go paint out graffiti than visit another alien place. and then she died, at sixty. true, her sister sat her down with a world map and they stuck pins in all the places she'd been. the earth looked like a porcupine. maybe she needed time to relish the prospect of that final journey, though she hated leaving the pack she carried everywhere behind.
we are a journey. perhaps this is a better way of saying it. you can find pictures of my travelling companion as she circled the earth like an albatross, never lighting too long: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/berta
many, many, many years ago, a lawyer friend said, women not making it in business, they don't act as part of the team. in those days, i expect the ladies mainly had motherhood as a model and learned to be ruthless - as we know a mom will tear you apart with her teeth to save her child, this the reason human beings have survived. not really a good basis for team-play. i'd argue soccer leagues and olympic basketball have toughened up those who in olden times could lift a wagon out of the mud.
yes, through the modern magazines, the female of the species learned she had to be decorous to get the house and kids. when i first came to town, all the college fraternities and sororities participated in the pioneer day parade. the guys would be outrageous, over-the-top with parodies of cavemen and taxi-drivers. the gals, alas, couldn't break loose, had to look pretty, no face distorted by a disdainful laugh or bold gesture.
and what a shock it was when once in high school, i walked by a kitchen door to hear the girls inside swearing like sailors! today, walking down the street at noon, i hear four-letters words come out the most beautiful mouths. when women started buffeting each other in roller-derbies, all pretense ended. and i maintain their sports the most fun to watch, the most emotionally expressive. by comparison men appear well-oiled machines, it's either gorilla looks or high-fives, way more stylized by comparison.
and it doesn't take watching margaret thatcher in the iron lady to see there's been a seismic shift - though her end came when she lost the ability to play on a team, going off into the mother-hen syndrome. at home things have changed too. the boys used to be filled full of hot air and probably still are. no wonder they collapse in a sodden heap after forty. the girls taught to be real, even if having to hide their toughness. with the change in economies to electronics and detail and personal communication, this founding in their own being paying off.
if you don't believe me, watch the video. yes, a woman in boots alarms me! historically, only the dominatrix in comic books wore them. now the pounding behind me and not the click-click of high-heels says to me, move over.
volleyball shots: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/voll
admittedly, i'm watching my body to see what's going to give out first. with my grandfather it was hearing, though he lived to a few days shy of a hundred in otherwise vigorous health. for my mother eyesight, she'd measles at five and kept reading under the covers with a flashlight. for my father his heart, collapsing at fifty-three from high strains like war and divorce. i just hope it's not my feet, walking my main physical pleasure.
okay, the research comes tumbling in from mri's, brain waves, reevaluations. for example, i've just watched two long lecture series from the great courses dot com. why anybody would enjoy sitting in from of a talking head for so long, i don't know. in school, where i had no control, they bored me. as i can pick and choose my attitude has changed. on memory by a professor from toronto canada taught me i'm still too afraid to look at Alzheimer's, i skipped those talks. otherwise, i kept on course to find out startling new findings.
sounds like i'm going to sell you something, doesn't it? every pill company advertises a cure for your man- or womanhood! however this has nothing to do with a medical miracle. rather, a new study. supposedly our memory collapses as we grow older. hurray, no true. motor memory continues though the body itself may malfunction. and semantic memory where experiences have turned into words remains quite high. ah, but you ask, short-term memory, what about where i put my keys?
well, at six in the morning you can probably can find them, at two in the afternoon it's questionable. you see, our body (circadian) rhythms change. turns out former memory tests done on the aging in the afternoon by younger people. the former had to bow to the latter. then, a researcher got suspicious and started testing the ancient and the inexperienced early in the morning. voila! the parents defeated the children. that's why you like to go to bed at nine and get up at six, and your offspring sleep til noon and get lively at midnight. we truly live in different worlds. and if you want to win at chess with your sixteen year old overachiever, challenge her before breakfast and you'll win, hands down.
here's a video:
.jpg)
