blog (June, 2008)
myriad
There's an old man sitting in his car on my street. Lights off, engine not running, windows up, and club across his steering wheel. I dropped off the plastic plant pot in my driveway and u-turned to ride by again. I had to give a nod for looking at him, and he had to mouth some greeting.
My plastic mailbox had let some rainstorm in, which made my Bonus Eligibility Miles offer harder to tear in two. I had forgotten there was a hunk of cornbread left, and ate it with leftover stir-fry, then finished the fake ice cream that I was going to save for tomorrow's breakfast. I'm wondering, again, where these house flies are coming from. I was wondering the same thing before leaving the house this morning and before going to bed last night.
Sometimes ideas bounce around nicely as thoughts, but don't hold their shape when you take them out and stand the words up.
On the way home, I had reminded myself to look up "velodrome trackstand" videos and send one to Frank. So YouTube collected much of the waning evening. I guess that Google made some money for me doing that, but I don't know how.
I don't think the old man's out there anymore. I didn't want to walk too close to his car, in case he was there, (maybe for fear I'd have to nod again,) but I didn't see a head or any white hair. I looked stupid walking half a block and turning around. Maybe he got tired of feeling sorry for himself.
layers of paint and mystery
And when, after long centuries of slow forgetting, migration, and climatic change, the knowledge of the mystery was finally lost, we in our anguish traded partnership for dominance, traded harmony with nature for rape of nature, traded poetry for the sophistry of science. In short, we traded our birthright as partners in the drama of the living mind of the planet for the broken pot shards of history, warfare, neurosis, and -- if we do not quickly awaken to our predicament -- planetary catastrophe.
As the layers of paint and mystery are pulled away, it becomes apparent that unpredictability, chaos, and madness are some of the most important cogs in the city's machinery. The deck is stacked with jokers. There is a ghost in this machine, and it appears to be stupid and/or drunk. This situation will not change, because the human condition is its source.
-- Robert Hurst, The Art of Urban Cycling
cultivating freedom
The cultivation and expansion of needs is the antithesis of wisdom. It is also the antithesis of freedom and peace. Every increase of needs tends to increase one's dependence on outside forces over which one cannot have control, and therefore increases existential fear. Only by a reduction of needs can one promote a genuine reduction in those tensions which are the ultimate causes of strife and war.
The point of an economy, even a dynamic economy, is not to have more and more; it is to liberate us from the economic--to provide a material platform from which we may go on to build the good life. That's the alternative American dream.
-- Jerome M. Segal, Graceful Simplicity: Toward a Philosophy and Politics of Simple of Living (found via No Impact Man: An alternative American dream)