“11 meter-long gypsum megacrystals discovered in caves near Chihuahua, Mexico. The massive crystals were formed over the last 200,000 years due to climate change.” (via)

What technique! What perspective!

Is that a faint sea monster (in the best style of fantastic medieval maps and illuminated manuscripts) I spy in the bottom right corner?

View the rest of the illustrated diary here, and browse the blog for the best of the rest. There are so many gorgeous engravings, sketches, paintings and documents I’m not sure where to begin. I have about 20 tabs open right now, just from the thumbnails of recommended posts. I also have a soft spot for 1700s political and social cartoons, medieval illuminations, and anatomical diagrams, so I’m looking forward to probing this treasure trove.

Harvey Milk set up a camera shop on Castro Street in the early 70’s, and the filmmakers recreated the interior exactly. 575 Castro Street still exists, now as a men’s clothing shop known as “Citizen” — though the interior wall features a mural of Milk with one of his famous quotes.

The film was also valuable in that it provided excellent context for a lot of the assorted city buildings. For example, we frequently went past the opera house while riding the bus; were it not for the film, I wouldn’t have realized the building across from that was the City Hall, where Milk was assassinated.

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative [or creation] there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would otherwise never have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man would have believed would have come his way.

– W. H. Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition

Jey’s sister and her husband are traveling around California this week and next, so we’re going to head over to San Francisco on Friday for our own mini-vacation and to visit with them.

In preparation, we’ve been watching films set in SF and the Bay area, starting with Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

The first time I ever saw Vertigo was on a theatre screen in San Antonio, as part of a weekly classic films screening that I used to attend with my friends Francisco and Denise. It was at a theatre where they allowed alcoholic beverages, and guy in the row behind us got drunk and cackled through the entire film. Especially at parts with dramatic zoom-ins and tortured expressions. So there was definitely a narm element happening.

Less so this time around, though — I was caught up just as much as ever in the classic Hitchcock tension, and was quite pleased to recognize some of the San Francisco landmarks in the film, such as the Palace of Fine Arts (the place where I met Jey for the first time).

Gorgeous.

I also found this excellent Google Map which has a marker for every location in the film. I’d been wondering if the redwood trees they visit were in Muir Forest, but it turns out they had actually traveled to Big Basin State Park, south of the city.

Screencaps via.

Google map via.

Once we dropped the keys in the overnight deposit I felt a weight slipping away from my shoulders. I lived in that apartment for three years or so and learned a lot about myself while I lived there, and I’m glad to move on, though I did feel quite sad when I locked the door for the last time.

It also feels great, though. Like turning the page of a book to find a new chapter heading with one of those lovely illuminated letters to start it off.

Now I have to unpack the items from boxes that are piled up in every room of the house and have no time to do it (in fact I’m skipping something tonight so I can actually be at my house for more than an hour before going to bed, a rare opportunity). I’m imposing a two week deadline for this stage of things. I am going to try to organize a yard sale with our neighbors two weekends from now, so if I haven’t found a place for things inside the house, out it goes to find a new home.

At the same time that all this insane busy madness is going on, I keep seeing the most amazing and inspirational artwork and projects. It’s driving me crazy to not be able to sit down and start my feeble first steps toward creativity. But I have to be patient and take one step at a time, frustrating as it is to stretch things out so far. I’m finding myself in a weird struggle between achieving balance and attacking stuff with all my energy and focus. How can I sit serenely on a park bench surrounded by nature and appreciating the leaves and birdsong when I’m also dying to dance around and sling paint while shouting, ‘Help! I want to create!’?



Anyway, I’ve been thinking about collections and curating a lot lately, because I don’t really collect anything. But while I’m pondering that, my thoughtful mother has provided me with a jumping-off point by picking up two Harry Potter books in foreign languages (Spanish and Italian) during her travels!

Harry Potter e la Pietra Filosofale and Harry Potter y las Reliquias de la Muerte

I already have all the American covers and also one British book 7.

Finally, some quotes from a recent Keri Smith blog:

“i begin to write here and end up stopping for some reason. my mind does not think or reach outwardly these days.

she felt, not very “present”. just hearing her say that made me feel extremely relieved and understood as I had been feeling the EXACT same thing, but had not spoken of it to anyone. i felt my eyes get wide and my insides taking a deep breath.

right now I feel pulled in many directions but unable to connect.

this person looked at me and said, “it’s perfectly normal. you are in a new and very intense phase of your life. there’s no need to resist it.

damn, i really needed to hear that.”

Once I left for school in San Antonio, I no longer had a room at either parents’ house (due to my mother moving, and my sister occupying the former shared room), so summers and holidays were tricky. Plus I lived in a dorm, so I moved my possessions around every semester, in addition to those aforementioned breaks to Dallas.

So yeah, I have a weird relationship with the concept of “home”.

Even my first apartment(s) weren’t ones I chose for myself; I relied on my mother to help me scope out places and my final choices were based on her approval of the area’s safety and amenities.

So this new apartment of ours is great leap forward into constructing my life to my own vision. It’s come with a hefty price, though. To start, our utilities weren’t turned on in time, so we moved in all weekend in what was easily 100 degree (or 38 for my Celsius-based friends) heat.

Though now that I think about it, the price extraction started quite early on, with the sorting and purging of my apartment’s contents, which included three years’ worth of accumulated detritus as well as plenty of miscellaneous stuff I’d brought with me from four years of school.

Every time I look at a stack of papers from an old university class, I think of two things, Niecy Nash from Clean House (“mayhem and foolishness!”) and this passage from “The Artist’s Way”:

You probably won’t have time to complete all of the other tasks in any given week. Try to do about half. Know that the rest are there for use when you are able to get back to them. In choosing which half of the tasks to do, use two guidelines. Pick those that appeal to you and those you strongly resist. Leave the more neutral ones for later. Just remember, in choosing, that we often resist what we most need.

Truer words were never spoken, Julia Cameron! Shedding my accumulated ‘Stuff’ has been like a snake sloughing off its skin. It’s hard and emotional and makes me grumpy as hell, but it’s freeing in the best way imaginable.

Plus, definitely the best argument for asceticism is having to schlep your stuff down three flights of stairs and up two more in the Texas summer.

D6 – Prayer Flags Special by Purple Cloud

A prayer flag is a colorful panel or rectangular cloth often found strung along mountain ridges and peaks high in the Himalayas to bless the surrounding countryside or for other purposes. Traditionally they are woodblock-printed with texts and images.

Traditionally, prayer flags are used to promote peace, compassion, strength, and wisdom. Tibetans believe the prayers and mantras will be blown by the wind to spread the good will and compassion into all pervading space. Therefore, prayer flags are thought to bring benefit to all.

As the Buddhist spiritual approach is non theistic, the elements of Tantric iconography do not stand for external beings, but represent aspects of enlightened mind i.e. compassion, perfect action, fearlessness, etc.

The prayers of a flag are released and become a permanent part of the universe as the images fade from exposure to the elements. Just as life moves on and is replaced by new life, Tibetans renew their hopes for the world by continually mounting new flags alongside the old. This act symbolizes a welcoming of life changes and an acknowledgment that all beings are part of a greater ongoing cycle.

The santos bracelets have a similar though theistic concept:

Originally from Brazil, the bracelet – made of cherry wood or plastic – features a different Saint on each square. But unlike other wrist candy, this one’s got ‘meaning’ (or so we hear). Over time, the pictures of the Saints fall off, leaving just one man standing…well, that Survivor’s your patron Saint. It all sounds kinda ridiculous to us, but times are tough…we’ll take any divine intervention we can!

I really dig the universality of releasing ideas and energy into the universe. When I die I’d like to be buried as a whole body under a tree or plant, so that my atoms once again become part of the circle of growth and life.

But any time I start to feel overwhelmed, I find that something is waiting around the corner to remind me of my blessings and to give me perspective.

This morning, Guy P linked me to the Longplayer, “a one thousand year long musical composition”:

Longplayer is composed for singing bowls – an ancient type of standing bell – which can be played by both humans and machines, and whose resonances can be very accurately reproduced in recorded form. It is designed to be adaptable to unforeseeable changes in its technological and social environments, and to endure in the long-term as a self-sustaining institution.

Longplayer grew out of a conceptual concern with problems of representing and understanding the fluidity and expansiveness of time. While it found form as a musical composition, it can also be understood as a living, 1000 year long process – an artificial life form programmed to seek its own survival strategies. More than a piece of music, Longplayer is a social organism, depending on people – and the communication between people – for its continuation, and existing as a community of listeners across centuries.

This canny and gorgeous project of course brings to mind Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, with its cloistered monastic communities deliberately living outside the too-rapid ebbs and flows of culture and society.

Anathem was, in turn, inspired by the Clock of the Long Now, “a clock that ticks once a year. The century hand advances once every one hundred years, and the cuckoo comes out on the millennium.”

Obviously, no clock can have a guaranteed lifetime of 10,000 years, but some clocks are designed with guaranteed limits. (For example, a clock that shows a four-digit year date will not display the correct year after the year 9999.) With continued care and maintenance the Clock of the Long Now could reasonably be expected to display the correct time for 10,000 years.

Whether a clock would actually receive continued care and maintenance for such a long time is debatable. Hillis chose the 10,000-year goal to be just within the limits of plausibility. There are technological artifacts, such as fragments of pots and baskets, from 10,000 years in the past, so there is some precedent for human artifacts surviving this long, although very few human artifacts have been continuously tended for more than a few centuries.

(There’s even a music project inspired by the musical compositions in the books, a very pleasant merging of the human body and the mathematical concepts Anathem explores. It’s appropriate that it draws upon monastic musical tradition, and the 1,000 year composition is played on Tibetan singing bowls.)

I’m constantly astonished by how much things change in relatively tiny spans of time. Surgical sanitation (ie, the surgeon washing their own hands between patients) really only emerged in the 1840s, about 160 years ago. Freud’s “Interpretation of Dreams” hit right at the turn of the century, a mere 100 years past.

We look back on our Victorian and Edwardian ancestors and think of them as awfully quaint. But it’s going to be remarkably similar a hundred years from today. Even yesterday, someone on the radio mentioned that during an artifact recovery in 1997 (for a potential landing spot of Amelia Earhart’s missing plane), they handled items without gloves because even at that point it wasn’t possible to extract DNA from touched items, while it is now. I think the next really big advance will be how we view the human brain and its functions; we can see the mechanics of the body down to tiny levels of detail, but there’s still a lot of mystery about its chemistry.

What a fascinating mystery, though. NPR recently did a story on prayer and meditation and how it affects the brain. In short, meditation is a bodyhack that darkens the area of the brain which perceives one’s sense of self and the passing of time; hence, “oneness” with the universe.

Sitting back in this manner and considering time on a geographical scale instead of a human one really helps me feel less agonized by the day-to-day drudgery I’m dealing with now, as we purge, pack up and prepare to move to our new apartment. There’s enough there for me to discuss to want to craft a separate blog post about the gentle, constant pressure required for personal growth. But for now, I’ll resume the trudge forward to new spaces, physical and mental, with the final result firmly in mind.

Decorative tile on the new fireplace.

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.”
- Henry David Thoreau.

Another habit I enjoy is following a director’s or actor’s ouvre. At home we’ve started on some Akira Kurosawa films, intending to watch them in (more or less) order. (Though as in this Slate article on keeping discs for forever, we’ve had Seven Samurai languishing at home for months. I even carried it to England and back.)

But slightly easier to digest than the the above “existential cinematic vegetables” are the works of Japanese animation Studio Ghibli.

We’re following this list of “Films and specials (Excluding short films or Ghibli Museum releases)”. So that is, in order, with ones we’ve watched so far in italics:

Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
Laputa: Castle in the Sky
Grave of the Fireflies
My Neighbor Totoro
Kiki’s Delivery Service
Only Yesterday
Porco Rosso
I Can Hear the Sea/Ocean Waves
Pom Poko
Whisper of the Heart
Princess Mononoke
My Neighbors The Yamadas
Spirited Away
Howl’s Moving Castle
Tales From Earthsea
Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea

So far I have been completely blown away by the films we’ve watched, and am lucky to re-watch several with new eyes.

Each Ghibli story is radically different, but they’re joined together by the same loving, creative spirit. The art is amazingly detailed, and the worlds they portray are unique but familiar, interweaving modern settings and mythology. And I love that many of Ghibli’s films deal with relationships between humans and the planet (the ones touching on harmonious, respectful co-existence often turning out to be the most profound and beautiful).

My favorites so far are Nausicaä and Totoro.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind takes place a thousand years after a war that destroyed the ecosystem of the planet, which is only just starting to heal itself. Every generation contributes its various pollutants to the atmosphere (just think of the Victorians and their coal burning! sheesh) and frets about its impact on the planet, so the film feels timely even though it was created in 1984 — the year I was born, and during the Cold War. In the film, a new war is about to break out, so there’s quite a bit of combat and fiery exploding stuff, but there’s also a truly epic plotline about the insects and toxic forest that are slowly covering the surface of the planet.

My Neighbor Totoro was a welcome balm after viewing Grave of the Fireflies, which is a beautiful but deeply haunting film about two children starving to death during war and famine in Kobe, Japan. Totoro is about two siblings who meet a giant, furry troll (it looks like a cross between a cat and a bear) who lives in the nearby forest. Early on in the film the children and their father enter the forest to visit an ancient camphor tree, to thank it and ask it to continue watching over them. Throughout the film — without getting too specific or spolier-y — they rely on the tree, forest and its inhabitants for help and guidance as they grow from children to young adults, physically and spiritually.

Like plenty of classic literature, lots of the Ghibli films feature children as a way to channel the magic of the world, a sense which fades as one grows older. (In Totoro, Granny explains to the children that she used to be able to see the house’s resident soot sprites, when she was their age.) Also given that there are strong mythological and earth-spirit elements, it makes sense that they’d use young people as vehicles:

“Animism in the widest sense, i.e. thinking of inanimate objects as animate, and treating them as if they were animate, is near-universal. Jean Piaget applied the term in child psychology in reference to an implicit understanding of the world in a child’s mind which assumes all events are the product of intention or consciousness. Piaget explains this with a cognitive inability to distinguish the external world from one’s own psyche. Developmental psychology has since established that the distinction of animate vs. inanimate things is an abstraction acquired by learning.” (via)

Totoro is also one of the most joyful films I’ve ever seen. According to Wikipedia, Totoro is as familiar to Japanese children as Winnie the Pooh is to British kids. I believe it, and I will also show it to my nearly-three-year-old nephew.

Last night’s Kiki’s Delivery Service was excellent as well. It features a young witch-in-training who leaves home at the age of 13 for a year of training in the real world. It’s about finding what you’re talented at, and then discovering what inspires that talent, and keeps you going. Inspired by Kiki, I have left this post as a long, rambling screed instead of trying to edit it down (or just cutting out parts completely), since I’m mostly just relieved I seem to have so much to say about it all.

Anyway, Ponyo is due out in American theatres on August 14, so now we have a dilemma — try to watch the remaining 10 films in 18 days and risk losing details in the rush, and not appreciating each film as a separate entity…or see Ponyo on its release, supporting the box office efforts and helping ensure the future of such films, but also ruining the order of our viewing schedule and the experience of seeing the films chronologically to witness the evolution of the studio.

(Though to be completely honest, we’ll probably see it on opening weekend AND watch when we’ve finished the others. Best of both!)

But at least you have options. Check out this auction lot from the the Texas State Surplus ebay store:

In tangentially-related news, William Gibson shared earlier this story about cigarettes manufactured in Russia specifically to smuggle into Western European countries with high tobacco taxes.

Jin Ling, virtually unknown to the authorities three years ago, has grown so rapidly that law enforcement officials say it now rivals Marlboro as the top smuggled brand being seized in the European Union.

Last Sunday, Jey and I popped into the pet store down the street to grab some food and litter for Evey.

We emerged with a foster cat.

We’ve talked about adopting a second kitty but had agreed to do it in a month or two, once we’d scoped out some new apartments, had a bit more time to dedicate to the process, once we’d budgeted for the adoption fees…we had lots of reasons to wait. But when we saw Cleo, a tiny gray tabby curled up in her cage, shivering from the loud noises in the pet store, we looked at each other and decided to just go for it. Ten minutes later, the kind women of Texas Pawprints clipped her nails, put on her red collar, and handed us a carrier box.

We already have one cat, Evey, who is also a rescue animal. Because of her background (taken off the streets where she was starving, as she didn’t have the courage to fight for food) she’s always needed some special attention. Basically, she is the very definition of a “scaredy-cat” — she requires coaxing to do just about anything new. But with patience and time she becomes desensitized to new environments (walking around outside the front door, for example) and eventually becomes eager and confident.

Evey chillaxin’

I’ve never seen her around another cat before, and from her kittenhood she’s always been isolated, so we read a lot about how to introduce two felines to each other.

Mostly, the sources say, you have to let them get used to each other. Start with the two cats in separate rooms. NewCat, as a foster animal, is often comfortable with a bathroom or utility closet, as they are used to being in cages and even that small room is a lot of space to them. ResidentCat should be allowed to sniff the carrier, towels that smell like NewCat, or even poke her nose under the door.

As it turns out, Evey was not too keen on having another cat invade her territory. She hissed…a lot. At the cage, at the smell on our hands, at the bathroom door (when she could stand to be around it).

When Evey hisses her face gets wrinkly and distorted. Kinda like the vampires in Buffy.

But we just stroked her and kept talking to her. We also took turns behind the door, helping Cleo adjust, and explore, and not knock anything down.

Cleo is between 8 months and a year old, and she’s already had a batch of kittens (four of the five have been adopted out by Texas Pawprints already), despite still being a kitten herself. She ‘made biscuits’ on just about everything when she first arrived (as is evident in this video).

The first night, Cleo meowed all night long. We didn’t get much sleep.

The second night, Cleo meowed all night long. Our nerves were getting a bit frayed, but we put on some music and tried our best to get a bit of rest.

The meowing…the meowing…

The third night, Evey camped out in front of the bathroom door. Whenever Cleo began yowling, Evey would hiss. Cleo, reassured that she wasn’t alone, would stop meowing. Thanks Evey!

By Wednesday, we let the cats look at each other through a net divider. Evey would creep over, hiss, and retreat to stare menacingly (known in the cat world as ‘posturing’). But the hissing was less angry, more ‘I’m asserting my place in the household heirarchy!’ — progress!

After a couple of days of gentle meetings like this, Evey was constantly trying to get into whatever room Cleo was in (to groom her or swipe at her, we weren’t quite sure). Cleo also had a tendency to shoot out between one’s legs as soon as one opened the door. (This happened with me a lot more often than with Jey…)

Whenever Evey saw Cleo, she’d freeze — but after several attempts at freedom, Evey seemed a lot more chill — so we decided to let them occupy the same room (more or less, as we have a pretty open floorplan). Miraculously, hissing encounters were minimal.

Fast forward a few days, and the pair were actually kindasorta playing with each other!

Now, they both tolerate each other. They hang in the same room, usually within four feet of one another. Evey only hisses if Cleo tries to smack her tail. They aren’t sleeping on the same surfaces yet, but I think it’s only a matter of time.

A gallery of Cleo:

P.S. The kitty’s original name (given to her by Texas Pawprints) was Rizzo, after the character from Grease played by Stockard Channing. We were planning to name our new kitty “Mew”, but found that we talk to them too much (“Hey Mewmew! Come here!”) for that to work as a name. I think kitty has a very Egyptian profile, so her name is now Cleo — short for Cleocatra.

We move in August 8.

The new place is warm and bright and we could feel its good vibes immediately. We’ll be doing some major purging as we sort through our collective belongings to pack, ridding ourselves of literal and figurative baggage. I’ve been feeling discombobulated for a long time, having trouble focusing and not feeling like I had the time or mental energy to bring to life the creative things that have been banging around in my head. The thought of starting in a physical, mental, emotional space that’s a fresh and clean slate is so freeing, and this is such a huge step toward making the lives we actually want to live, that when I think about it I get a really strong physical reaction – a nervous energy roiling in my stomach, making me nauseated and giddy at the same time.

The president of Canon Electronics Hisashi Sakamaki is also the author of a book called “A company will do well if you get rid of the chairs and computers” – available on Amazon.

According to his book, employees can concentrate on the meeting at hand without chairs and they have been able to half the number of meetings each year.

He also says that by standing at work, the employees develop a closer relationship with each other and that problems are solved much more quicker. The company also saves on the cost of buying chairs as you can see in the photo.

Also in the photo you can see a blue sign on the floor. When Nikkei went to interview the president, while walking in the corridor a siren and flashing lights went off. The corridor was designed to detect whether employees were walking at least 5 meters for every 3.6 seconds.

The blue sign on the floor also says “Lets rush – if we don’t then the company and world will perish.”

(from Danny Choo)

My opinion is that standing meetings are an excellent way to reduce meeting times. Threatening employees with the destruction of the earth if they aren’t ultra-productive, though? Not so much.

If (when) I do go back, I’m definitely going to Chefchaouen, a city notable for being almost entirely blue.:

Found via the always excellent Keri Smith.

(via someone Twittering a link to Slashdot)

What was your favorite story to read or edit?

I really don’t have a favorite, but there is one piece that absolutely doesn’t fit but was just too good not to include. It’s an imaginary conversation by Richard Goodman between Thoreau and someone who’s interviewing him for a job as a housecleaner — apparently he needs a day job. Did you know that Thoreau used to bring a bag of dirty laundry for his mother to wash when he’d go to visit her?

Well, no, I did not.

Neither did I.

I cut about 30 6″ lengths of regular beading wire and wrapped them around the tip of my round nose pliers, forming loops on the ends. The flesh of my left thumb pad is still a little sore but I like how it turned out.

“In the first days after it went up, the wall was a barbed wire barrier. Conrad Schumann, a 19-year-old soldier in the East German army, was standing guard on the corner of Ruppiner Strasse and Bernauer Strasse. He was taunted and insulted by passers-by from the West and, on a whim, started running and hurdled the barbed wire into the West, thus becoming the subject of one of the most dramatic photographs of the time. Only recently have I realized that I often go jogging up that very sidewalk.”

“On 15 August 1961 he found himself, aged 19, guarding the Berlin Wall, then in its third day of construction, at the corner of Ruppinerstraße and Bernauerstraße. At that stage of construction, the Berlin Wall was only a low barbed wire fence. As the people on the Western side shouted Komm rüber! (“come over”), Schumann jumped the barbed wire and was driven away at high speeds by a waiting West Berlin police car. Photographer Peter Leibing captured a photograph of his escape on film and it became a well-known image of the Cold War.” (via)

• Make it part of your routine and give it 20 minutes
• Think About What Interests You and Surprise Yourself
• Use free resources
• Take notes, spend some time reviewing

Also: “Astronomers searching for the building blocks of life in a giant dust cloud at the heart of the Milky Way have concluded that it tastes vaguely of raspberries. . . . Curiously, ethyl formate has another distinguishing characteristic: it also smells of rum.” (via)