Sharing...

I am all over the place in my mind this week (what's new). Words like story, relationship, isolation, journeys, sharing, and gifts are bouncing around in my head along with a head cold and too much coffee... 

Facebook: This week I shared the  following status update on Facebook: Next five days... married for 17, together for 23, sober for 25. Just a little bragging here.  Thanks Kat and all the rest who are the glue in those crazy numbers. I am not one to normally count "Likes" too much, but I was taken aback by the percentage of my friends list took a moment to click (14.6% for those who like statistics). What was it that resonated with a big chunk of my "friends"? I am assuming it is a combination of several things; the components might be... The approval of my long marriage with Kat? The support for my sobriety? The participation in being some of the glue? At the heart of all of these reasons is relationships. Relationships are what people make with each other. The need for meaningful relationships is so critical for our well-being. I am reminded of the lesson offered in the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. Here is part of the plot summary found on Wikipedia of the movie made from Krakauer's book: 

MAJOR SPOILER TO FOLLOW: IF YOU PLAN TO READ THE BOOK OR WATCH THE MOVIE YOU MAY NOT WANT TO READ THE NEXT FEW PARAGRAPHS. (If you do not wish to read the spoiler, listen to Eddie Vedder's beautiful piece from the movie, Society.)

In May 1992, Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch) arrives in a remote area just north of the Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska and sets up a campsite in an abandoned bus, which he calls The Magic Bus. At first, McCandless is content with the isolation, the beauty of nature around him, and the thrill of living off the land. He hunts wild animals with a .22 caliber rifle, reads books, and keeps a diary of his thoughts as he prepares himself for a new life in the wild. 

Four months later at the abandoned bus, life for McCandless becomes harder and he becomes less discerning. As his supplies begin to run out, he realizes that nature is also harsh and uncaring. In the pain of realization, McCandless concludes that true happiness can only be found when shared with others and seeks to return from the wild to his friends and family.... ....Slowly dying, he continues to document his process of self-realization and accepts his fate, as he imagines his family for one last time. He writes a farewell to the world and crawls into his sleeping bag to die.

END OF SPOILER ZONE

Isolation and Sharing: True happiness can only be found when shared with others. That's the wisdom. We are social. It is in our nature to be social. Isolation at times is excellent. Travel with oneself is critical. Sitting quietly, alone is essential for so many of us. But we always need to return to someone or make new connections to share those quiet or isolated moments with others. 

eric: I am not sure how to communicate how each of these elements connect, but I wish to offer a short story from Shaun Tan again to finish off this entry (I opened my blog in September with Tan's artwork). This story, called eric, comes for the collection tales from outer suburbia (from which the main element of my blog banner was also taken). 

I think the "liking" of my anniversaries on Facebook, the wonderful and varied relationships I have in life, Christopher McCandless' isolation and final denumal, and eric's visit in our country all converge on what I have swirling in my head today. Here's eric. Enjoy.  

---

eric

some years ago we had a foreign exchange student come 

to live with us. We found it very difficult to pronounce 

his name correctly, but he didn't mind. 

He told us to just call him "Eric."

---

We had repainted the spare room, bought new rugs and furniture,

and generally made sure everything would be comfortable

for him. So I can't say why it was that Eric chose to sleep and

study most to the time in our kitchen pantry.

"It must be cultural thing," said Mum. "As long as he is happy."

We started storing food and kitchen things in other

cupboards so we wouldn't disturb him.

---

But sometimes I wondered if Eric was happy; he was so polite

that I'm not sure he would have told us if something bothered him.

A few times I saw him through the pantry door gap, studying with silent

intensity, and imagined what it might be like for him here in our country.

Secretly I had been looking forward to having a foreign visitor

— I had so many things to show him. For once I could be a local

expert, a fountain of interesting facts and opinions. Fortunately, 

Eric was very curious and always had plenty of questions.

---

However, they weren't the kind of questions I had been expecting

Most of the time I could only say,

"I'm not really sure," or, "That's just how it is."

I didn't feel very helpful at all.

---

I had planned for us to go on a number of weekly

excursions together, as I was determined to show our

visitor the best places in the city and its surrounds.

I think Eric enjoyed these trips, but once again,

it was hard to really know.

---

---

Most of the time Eric seemed more 

interested in small things he 

discovered on the ground.

I might have found this a little 

exasperating, but I kept thinking 

about what Mum had said, 

about the cultural thing. 

Then I didn't mind so much.

Nevertheless, none of us could help 

but be bewildered by the way Eric 

left our home: a sudden departure 

early one morning, with little more 

than a wave and a polite good-bye.

---

It actually took us a while to realize he wasn't coming back.

---

---

     There was much speculation over dinner later

that evening. Did Eric seem upset? Did he enjoiy

his stay? Would we ever heard rom him again?

     An uncomfortable feeling hung in the air, like 

something unfinished, unresolved. It bothered us 

for hours, or at least until one of us discovered what 

was in the pantry.

     Go and see for yourself: It's still there after all these 

years, thriving in the darkness. It's the first thing we 

show any new visits to our house. "Look what our 

foreign exchange student left for us," we tell them.

     "It must be a cultural thing,' says Mum.

---

Mangalyaan...

From the NYT Opinion Pages, SEPT. 25, 2014:

"In successfully launching an orbiter to Mars this week, India’s space program demonstrated what’s possible when a determined group of people put their minds to solving a complex problem.

India’s Mangalyaan, or “Mars craft” in Hindi, is not the first orbiter to reach the Red Planet — the United States, the Soviet Union and the European Space Agency have previously achieved that feat — but it has done so in its first attempt and on a shoestring budget of $74 million. (NASA’s Maven mission to Mars cost $671 million).

Furthermore, India is the first Asian nation to reach Mars. The Indian satellite will remain in an elliptical orbit around Mars to study the planet’s surface and atmosphere." (Read the rest of the opinion here.)

I have had an interest in India ever since I lived there for a semester in 1992. I have had an interest in Mars since forever (actually, since my grade school classmate Benji Farr got me excited about space travel and Mars in particular). So when India gets into the Mars race, I get a little nutty!

Recently I picked up The Mars Trilogy (for the fourth time) by Kim Stanley Robinson. It paints an interesting and seemingly plausible future where the colonization of Mars is a possibility driven by necessity. The books focus on relationships of the "first 100" and the resulting multi-global politics that surround an overpopulation-driven land and resource grab. Here is an excerpt from Red Mars that speaks to the perspective of truly changing one's world view and hints at the wisdom that can be brought by time:

"Everything had changed, it seemed; the world and its civilization all grown vastly larger and more complicated. And yet there they stood nevertheless, all the oh-so-familier faces changed, aged in all the ways human faces age: time texturing them with erosion as if they had lived for geological ages, giving them a knowing look, as if one could see the aquifers behind their eyes. They were in their seventies now, most of them. And the world was indeed larger—"

The impulse to explore space costs a lot, even when done as cheaply as India's Mangalyaan. I have heard and read critics who believe that the effort is ill spent money. Out problems on Earth should trump NASA and others' experiments out there. And yet, what dreams are born with men and women risking so much to push the boundaries of where we have walked? How many kids yearn for the unknown places to be uncovered like a mystery box opened? Nobody expects little green men to leap out from behind a rock, but wouldn't it be cool to find a little lichen somewhere in a deep crevasse on the red planet? I found a website that attempts to show earthly technologies that have been improved or created as a result of our impulse to explore space. I have not vetted the list, but the items seem plausible enough to be extensions of NASA work that I have not felt the need to doubt the claims. Some of the items of note to me:

• Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs)
• Infrared Ear Thermometers 
• Anti-Icing Systems
• Highway Safety Grooving
• Improved Radial Tires
• Land Mine Removal
• Fire-Resistant Reinforcement
• Firefighter Gear
• Temper Foam
• Enriched Baby Food
• Portable Cordless Vacuums
• Freeze Drying Technology

http://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2008/tech_benefits.html

It is good to dream and even better to cheer for those who live out our dreams. I have long said I would like to live to see someone step foot on Mars, felt crushed when the financial crisis on the 2000s forced NASA's Mars program to be severely scaled back, and now feel hope as India joins the effort.

Doodles of 2013...

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." The first line of William Gibson's 1984 novel, Neuromancer, brilliantly describes the environment of his futuristic landscape with an image of now-deceased technology. He writes in his forward, "The reader never stopped to think that I might have been thinking, however unconsciously of the texture and color of a signal-free channel on a wooden-cabinet Motorola with fabric-covered speakers. Readers compensated for me, shouldering an additional share of the imaginative burden, and allowed whatever they assumed was the color of static to take on the melancholy of the phrase 'dead channel.'" Gibson's Neuromancer helped establish the foundation of cyberpunk: that genre tied to Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell, Deus Ex, and the Matrix. As I have come to figure out my own influences, the things that tweak my way of looking at the world, it seems that Gibsons's work has affected me quite dramatically. I am drawn to and repulsed by the world he creates in his novel. It's like my relationship with Facebook these days; I hate it and can't lay off it at the same time. The works and allusions defined by Gilson's extension of the northeastern Megalopolis, "The Sprawl," in part led me away from my Baltimore and Boston roots to seek more mountainous landscapes. Intrigued by the creative and often disruptive uses of technology in the hands of the young and brilliant has also made me hunger for things mechanical and analog. I play on computers all day long, but find that my creations that are most pleasing to me are often pencil and ink. I know there is balance, that I need a balanced environment, that technology and nature can have a healthy relationship; the fun of his story is that it offers none. It is out of control and on the edge. Jacking in to the net, careening through a digital landscape, and breaking though to the other side... it's a rush! Recovery—is a cup of green tea at sunset under the aspens in autumn.

---

The doodles below are some of what came out of me during trainings and meetings soon after my most recent reading of Neuromancer. I can only assume they are my brain working through some of the images that Gibson conjured up in my subconscious as I tried to share in shouldering some of the imaginative burden...

---

The skyline disrupted the natural chaos of the union between earth and air. Order and purpose marred the jagged edge, cutting smooth curves and precise angles where organic geological lines formerly existed. Their presence spoke of effort, planning, diction. Deep roots leeched from below disproportionately, allowing growth beyond what would have been in a natural state. And yet this was their nature, to do what their will willed them to do. The planning looked forward, never to what used to be... what should be.

Their monitors, like eyes wide in the darkness, searched for the irregular movement of pinpoints of light in the vast field of heavenly objects... searched for evidence of a return on their efforts... searched for the proof to warrant their long held faith that they could not be so alone in such a creation. They yearned for contact beyond themselves, forgetting that they already were in communication...

Their awareness of the transformed nature of the source awakened as the mist lifted out of the tucked in areas of the hollows and of the ravines. Shafts of understanding reached pockets of upturned minds while the subtle glow was perceived by the rest in varying increments. But over time only the psychically blind souls remained tuned to the obscurity rather than the illumination seen by the masses.

The frameworks from which they were operating had foundations in a singular directional orientation, that being time-based-forward. The existence of, the presence of, the awareness of the other forced some to accept a multi-directional, nay, an a-directional reality allowing for the unlimited potentials within "union".