April 2008 Archives
Shine Your Shoes
By on April 19, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)
I spent a total of nine hours in traffic yesterday. Alone.
I cannot tell you that I hated the experience. There is something about driving alone that is very nurturing, sitting very still and being carried for long periods of time without having to look into another human face. But rather, like looking into your own eyes in the mirror, it is this neutral brain-space that allows a kind of brain detox. (And by detox I mean every part, including bad symptoms.)
Don’t get me wrong, that amount of time doing one thing seriously wear away at this positivity. By the last hour I thought I might be driving forever and that I would no longer have a physical body or a destination. I felt like I would never be able to do anything ever again because my body may have forgotten how. I might have to jump start my system (following the detox comparison) and slowly introduce interactions and just plan old actions back into my life. I could hardly keep up conversations at work after the first four hour block, let alone after adding the one and a half hour lunch block. But getting home after the last stint was just too much.
The reason I am telling you this is because of what greeted my arrival.
But first, some context. My parents went away for the weekend on a married couples retreat. I am watching my younger brother who is ten. One of my Dad’s students, we’ll name them Josh, picked my brother up from school and hung out with him until I got there at 9:45 p.m.
So I pulled up, beat and zoned out, not looking forward to having to appear coherent and talk to a stranger. YOU GUYS! He was the kindest, most genuine student I have ever met from the school where my Dad is teaching right now. I brewed us some tea and we had wonderful conversation littered with interludes of laughing at the movie my brother was watching. Later I found out that he had made breakfast for dinner (i.e. pancakes) for the two of them.
It was too much for me. It was all I could do to crawl under the covers with a big fat smile on my face and sleep like a baby (please excuse the unabashed literary reference). These kind of crippling experiences that keep me up at night all jittery and confused. People like the young french guy who makes world class croissants and scones every morning and whistles to himself, or this guy. They may as well ask if they can bring me a tangerine.
How can you prepare your heart for something like that? People are just too beautiful.
Web Videos and The Other
By on April 30, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)
I have been watching a great deal of web-exclusive videos lately to familiarize myself with the content and vision of my new employer.
As I edit different interfaces on the website, the videos begin to play before I press the edit button to edit the post. I keep thinking about the psychological transformation that takes place as the web page morphs from a static window to a container of time and experience as a human begins to move on the screen. It is as if an actual human is present, sharing a story with the viewer. This makes me feel guilty pressing edit to leave the page, thereby quieting the person.
What makes us love so much? I am beginning to think it comes from spurts of desperation, regret from being too critical to the people we love. These regrets cause us to gratefully cry at the site of poppy-covered hill-lined freeways, have visions of bathing our parents in small kitchen sinks, or overwhelming gratitude for the young man at the coffee shop for making flawless warm scones every morning (no, I won’t let that one go).
Were I to communicate properly, as my best self, I do not think I would be as shocked by the motion and presence of the awakened web page human.
Yes, I am saying that an inability to move from inside out, from our internal architecture to common space, causes a person to become more and more shocked by everything that moves outside of the mind, that uses and builds upon, even changes our language and context. These kind of changes often dismantle our logic and create a sense of panic and stress.
I would not trade these intense, full-body climaxes of tenderness to avoid the (sometimes terrible) shocks of the other. Not even for consistency, stability, and what could be considered greatness. I think those virtues might relieve us of the heavy feeling, the beautiful weight of existence.
May we embrace intersection, even when it tears us apart.
