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  CROSSROADS WALKS

Walking down the street yesterday I finally realized what had been bothering me. It went like this: I got to a busy corner where I had to step around these two old bums, one black, one white, both in what would have been nice suits 25 years and several hundred wearings ago. With silver-white hair starkly sticking out of one's afro-beard and the other's well trimmed bald-fringe, wrinkles which trapped all manner of ambient microparticles and complementary dental defects, they were nonetheless equal parts handsome and ugly.

They were the type that seemed always, whenever I saw them, to be happy and genial, generally pleased with themselves, comfortable with the nature and evolution of the world. They retained the better part of their dignitity and charm to spare. As if, of course smelling so terrible and being subject to sores which won't heal was a fair trade for a life of drunkeness. As if homelessness was an acceptable by-product of the best of all possible lifestyles. I admired the sprezzatura with which they did nothing in particular.

No doubt their good-humoredness was not perpetual and they suffered more than they enjoyed, but while I edged around them I was envious and well into the crosswalk I imagined myself joining them in the cheap bars, abondoning everything, staking out a claim to a nice piece of alley off of Main Street somewhere between Hastings and Terminal. Carefree and happy-go-sour, picking up tiny ends of stepped-out cigarettes to produce triple-tar drums and bathing with water from the public toilets in Victory park.

It wasn't until I got to the other side and my walking companion tugged me back into the conversation that this desire struck me as odd, or at least indicative or something other than what it appeared to be. And then it all came into focus at once. The reason success makes me apprehensive, the cause of that unease every time something goes my way: unlike them, I now have things to lose. And I have lots of responsibilities. And these come together, neatly bundled, pretty much every time I acheive something I set out to acheive. And the cross-product of responsibilities and things-to-lose is anxiety. Now I just have to figure out how to cancel it out without giving everything up. I've seen it happen, and goddamn it, if anyone can do, this ol' championship cherry-enjoyer can. God bless us all.

  Cooked. Beach. Sun. Book.

And on the way back, I picked up some near-perfect cherries. I felt like no-one in the world could understand how much one can actually enjoy cherries. Like I was a professional cherry-enjoyer and the best in the world at that. Like kids who were just discovering how delicious fresh cherries can be would seek out my autograph after cherry-enjoying tutorials. Like I fucking invented the enjoyment of cherries. Oh, they were delicious.




perjantai, heinäkuu 14

  Today I was sick and tired all day. Did nothing (except for finally remember to move my car which was parked for two days in a two hour zone without a ticket, further confirming my unnatural blessedness). Yesterday, however, was a great day for postal mail. Lots of those $5 gift certificates for a store I've been asked not to mention, a box from McSweeney's (which contained another issue of #4 and two T-shirts of the wrong size, but we're getting closer anyway) and a package with all the recent publications of my good friend Ethan (impressive list). He is who I went to go visit in . . .

  San Francisco, USA. An example of something I meant to write about a while ago.

I had just a super-duper time. First, there were lots of non-urban activities which provided hours of fun (picnic on Mt. Tamalpais, climbing up and falling down the cliffs between Baker Beach and the Golden Gate, hiking Muir Woods — which, by the way, if you're from BC, is pretty unimpressive — leisure time in calm ol' Berkeley, a drive out Napa to the Culinary Insititute of America for dinner, etc.). Perhaps most importantly, it was several consecutive days of hanging out with non-web people (surprisingly).

Sure, I got to go party at Peterme's house (thanks!), and finally meet Judith and Matt and there were lots of impressive, interesting people there. (All of whom I apologize to for being so basically incapable of conversation on account of only a few hours of sleep plus flying resulting in a splitting headache, with one particular in mind.) And I got to see Prya's office, which is so small that I thought to myself "holy shit, that is one small office" and "boy, you can work some magic with a web cam w.r.t. making your office look bigger".

But I went out there to visit a vacationing friend from New York who is doing a JD/PhD at Yale and we hung out with various people: a law student at Berkeley (who has a summer gig at the EFF, close as we get to the web), a staff writer for Mother Jones, a med student at Mt. Sinai, a marine biologist/nautical engineer. Then there were a few dot.commies around, but mainly they weren't and I went a whole day without talking to anyone who had an opinion about XHTML or methods for interaction design. But we could talk philosophy or politics or history or economics or theatre or music.

Just interesting that there are happy, sucessful, interesting people who have nothing to do with software or the web. For whom computers are just tools. It sounds stupid, but I forget sometimes.

From a nice meal. I always get the good fortune. I always get the good fortune.

  I now have a long list of things I've been meaning to write here. I wonder if I should keep the list and cut out the hard step?

But I should probably tell this letting other people into your apartment building story:

Few nights ago, about 1:30am, I walking along the sidewalk up to my building about 10 paces behind a really tall man in drag (evening gown, heels, the whole bit). He's carrying a large purse and something else big like a box or some flowers or something (I don't remember anymore). Anyway, while he's futzing in his purse, trying to find his keys, I get mine out, walking past him, unlock, open and hold the door.

Man: Oh, thank you so much.
Me: Not at all.
Man: Mmm. You look like the type of person that Carol [building manager] would rent to.
[Pause]
Me: Huh. [Half side-nod-smile] You look like the kind of person Carol would rent to.
Man: [Elevator closing as I head up the stairs.] Touché

Maybe that's only funny if you know Carol.

- - -

Bing bing! Ahem, "got it all" now includes a new haircut. Lookin' sharp and feelin' fine.




keskiviikko, heinäkuu 12

  Metafilter | Community Weblog
Metafilter, after a serious bout of self-referential and 'weblog community' meta-gibberish seems to have settled down again into being fun to read.

I just found this site called Fireland there, and I like it: good looking and a nice and flow-y resizable layout (resizable text and it'd be good to go, whatever that means in this context).




tiistai, heinäkuu 11

  Perhaps more importantly, from the same album (song: Springtime In Vienna).

We live to survive our paradoxes

  The beautiful lull, the dangerous tug
We get to feel small, from high up above
And after a glimpse, over the top
The rest of the world, becomes a gift shop

— Gift Shop, Tragically Hip, Trouble at the Henhouse




maanantai, heinäkuu 10

  Look at me, look at me! I'm (was) right at the top, undisguised and extremely excited. Nothing oblique about it.

  What is it like to be me? Have a listen to »»this«« little number and then dance around your living room. That's pretty much what it's like (except also, sometimes, the next post).

It's Tom Zé of course (the song is called "Vai (Menina, Amanhã de Manhã)"). Go buy that CD (as a reward to Luaka Bop for having reissued it, which is what I'm assuming happened even though they still list it as sold out). Want a partial translation?

Girl happiness
Is as full as a city square
Smells like mildew
Smells like a tin can
Is full of grace

  "Business owners do not normally work for money either. They work for the enjoyment of their competitive skill, in the context of a life where competing skillfully makes sense. The money they earn supports this way of life. The same is true of their businesses. One might think that they view their businesses as nothing more than machines to produce profits, since they do closely monitor their accounts to keep tabs on those profits. But this way of thinking replaces the point of the machine's activity with a diagnostic test of how well it is performing. Normally, one senses whether one is performing skillfully. A basketball player does not need to count baskets to know whether the team as a whole is in flow. Saying that the point of business is to produce profit is like saying that the whole point of playing basketball is to make as many baskets as possible. One could make many more baskets by having no opponent. The game and styles of playing the game are what matter because they produce identities people care about. Likewise, a business develops an identity by providing a product or a service to people. To do that it needs capital, and it needs to make a profit, but no more than it needs to have competent employees or customers or any other thing that enables production to take place. None of this is the goal of the activity." [Emphasis mine.]

[I am keeping my mouth shut.]

The passage is quoted from Disclosing New Worlds: Entrepreneurship, Democratic Action and the Cultivation of Solidarity, MIT Press 1997. A book which begins thusly:

This book does not present a theory of entrepreneurship, democratic action, and solidarity production. Nor is it a manual that will tell you how to succeed in these domains. Rather, we hope that this book will help you develop a skill that is essential for being an entrepreneur, a virtuous citizen, and a solidarity cultivator — that is, for regularly and as a matter of course seeing yourself and the world anew.

  Now I am able to say that Eric Costello of Glish.com has pointed out Harry Frankfurt's wonderful paper: On Bullshit. There. Phew.

  Sylloge Experiment. This allows for some serious self-reference.

Here are some of the other things on this site:

The 5k contest
Someday to get its own home.

Stephen Toulmin's 1979 Ryerson Lecture at the University of Chicago, The Inwardness of Mental Life, reprinted with the kind permission of the Author & the University.

An excerpt from an interview with philosopher Donald Davidson, which I find complements the former.

Some pictures of Illuminares, Vancouver's annual latern festival.

Some pictures of The Symphony of Fire, Vancouver's annual fireworks competition.

A video from my second trip to Vegas in the year 2000. Sad, that.

And more, to be dusted off.