ALAMERE FALLS AND MARCUS AURELIUS

Two things that have been on my mind lately, catching waterfalls and cleaning my mental thought processes. To help move this along, I've been reading/attempting to read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (it's akin to The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up - but for the brain). And I thought I would share some excerpts.

"Spend not the remnant of thy days in thoughts and fancies concerning other men, when it is not in relation to some common good, when by it thou art hindered from some other better work. That is, spend not thy time in thinking, what such a man doth, and to what end; what he saith, and what he thinks, and what he is about, and such other things or curiosities which make a man to rove and wander from the care and observation of that part of himself, which is rational, and overruling. See therefore in the whole series and connection of they thoughts, that thou be careful to prevent what is idle and impertinent: but especially, whatsoever is curious and malicious: that thou must use thyself to think only of such things, of which if a man upon a sudden should ask thee what it is that thou art now thinking, thou mayest answer This, and That, freely and boldly, that so by thy thoughts it may presently appear that in all thee is sincere, and peaceable; as becometh one that is made for society, and regards not pleasures, nor gives way to any voluptuous imaginations at all: free from all contentiousness, envy, suspicion, and from whatsoever else thou wouldest blush to confess thy thoughts were set upon."

That is a very high bar, I think, to cleanse your thoughts so perfectly that you can allow yourself to be entirely transparent. You see the pattern: he lays out the common traps human pitfalls: envy, petty thoughts, malice and then lays out the standard: freedom from these hidden thoughts, thought which would otherwise make you blush in the light of day.  

WOULD YOU CHANGE YOUR NAME?

Source

A little after reading this article about transgender people choosing their names, I wondered, as I have since I had the ability to wonder, what I would choose to name myself if that choice were mine to have. What if the social custom was to allow people to name themselves as a rite of passage? You are called a generic term from birth, let's say "young one," the same as any other child. Then when you come of age, you choose a fitting name. I personally have two names, my American name and my ethnic name. If pronounced correctly, I prefer the ethnic name. It sounds beautiful with the right inflection. Unfortunately that never happens. 

There is a power inherent in naming. Actors usually get to choose a stage name that is usually more socially palpable than their given name.  It creates their outward persona, because as an actor, they are always hiding beneath a character. That idea has always intrigued me. So then begins a series of what if's. What if I had been born with a different name? What would I choose? And so on. Then the stage of fantasy came to an end. 

In reality, there are very few opportunities to change your name, it's an enormous hassle and in the worst case scenario may leave you open to an accusation of identify theft. One of the most common ways that you end up changing your name as a female,* is to take your husband's name when you get married. There are a few ways of perceiving this. You could see as an opportunity to become your husband's chattel (highly negative), or to transition into becoming a member of his new family (more positive). What if there were a third option? This could be an opportunity to define yourself anew, to emerge from your former self like a snake from it's skin, fresh and unblemished? 

*Or as Zoe Saldana's husband 

TIME TO VAG UP

Source

Instead of telling yourself to "Man Up," why not "Vag Up?"

I heard my friend E telling herself this other day and thought this was a genius way to shine a positive light on female genitals. There is already so many negative associations already out there. If you've ever heard a guy call another guy a pussy, that about sums up the current situation. 

So I would like "Vag Up" to become a thing, I want it to hit the big time, and then to become commonplace. I'm trying to do my part to set the wheels in motion. 

Alternately, and I don't know why this sounds more ladylike, I have known a man, a true feminist, tell himself to "vagina up!" It sounded darling. 

KATHMANDU, PICTURES AND THOUGHTS

The view from the roof of my hotel, The Tibet Guest House, a quiet oasis in the turbulence of people and cars, shops and scooters, lying in wait out there in the Kathmandu streets. I don't have any pictures from street level. As I learned on my first day, stopping makes you a target. Not for safety reasons - I don't wander around by myself late at night, it was just that the bright phosphorescent beam of my tourist origins shone out like a beacon when I stood still. It was hard right away because there were no street signs. If I turned the corner without looking, I might never have found my way back. So I tried to orient myself, and immediately, someone introduced himself, tried to tell me his life story (a sad one) and then tried to interest me in buying him food because - his words - "You can afford it! This is nothing to you!" And then he kept following me. So. 

So I learned to not stop walking, but walking itself was draining, because there were no sidewalks and no lanes. You walked on the same street as cars, people, and scooters going in both directions, and the road was not a generous one. Honking was almost a form of conversation.  

This the wonderful courtyard of the aforementioned Tibet Guest House. I tried to wait until there were no people present to take this, so this is as good as I could make it. They pipe in classical music too, and it is just as serene as it appears.

I took this through some slats in the hotel wall. They were decorative slats, quite beautiful in fact, and I wanted to capture what was going on next door. I wanted the frame of the slats around the lens.

You see all these people? This is what it looks like when there are less people than normal milling around. You can see some are dressed up. It was the Dasan holiday, and most people in the city had already left to go back to their homes in the villages. This year's will likely be very different.

WRINKLED, RIPPED UP, AND LIVED IN IS BETTER THAN NEW

Shoes from Garance Dore via this post

My shoes are my friends. Of course, the shoes above are not my shoes, because mine are in a worse state and she has better floors. 

Part of the minimalist thought process is to value what you have. There are articles of clothing that I have worn for years. I trust them, I know how they will stretch. I know what will happen when I have worn them for an entire 24 hours, and then the next day when I am too lazy to put together another outfit. Because I don't want to expend valuable mental energy thinking about what to wear anymore. Or because I want to adopt a European lifestyle - whichever rationale sounds more sophisticated. 

Have you ever gone into a dressing room to realize that what you're already wearing is better than the shiny new thing you're trying on? It makes no sense.

There's a certain anxiety I carry with me when shopping, because I have realized that new clothes, particularly new shoes, will f*** you. They will ride up, they will make you look like sausage, they will pinch. There is never a convenient time for any of these things to happen. The clothes you have, the ones waiting faithfully in your closet, they are like friends. You have broken them in properly. They are trained. They will treat you well. 

Every time I think about some new purchase, I think about it in terms of friendship. Do I already have a good friend that I can rely upon - then I should refrain. However, if there is a gap, a death in the family, then there will be a transition period that cannot be rushed, where I will have to carefully sort and vet this newcomer. As I would any new relationship.

KITES OVER THE WEEKEND

View from below

There are certain things you conveniently forget ever exist. Kites, for instance. I had forgotten that there were such things. So passing by Kite Day over the weekend, I received a reminder. And then another. Followed by octopi.

SIDE CHARACTERS: HOMELAND'S PETER QUINN

Almost. I am almost caught up on the 3rd season of Homeland. I've had to dodge spoilers like the Matrix, avoiding all potential leak points. You have to be constantly, almost hyper-vigilant in avoiding any and all sources of information. 

I'm not going to discuss the two leads. I think a good show, a good story, lies in the details, such as in having side characters that intrigue and have the same gravity as a lead, only their bit of the story carries less of a punch. So for Homeland, there is Peter Quinn. Granted, the actor's cheekbones are amazing. But once you get over that part, and it make take awhile, you start to notice details. The two leads bring the hard hitting drama. She's bipolar, he's a traitor, and they are surrounded by terrorists and inept CIA bureaucracy. So, there is a strong foundation here for intense dramatic scenes. The show is full of them. They're great, I'm not complaining.  

Everyone on this show is in crisis, and they express this all according to their character. While I like overt confrontations, it's also nice to note that off to the side there, this Peter Quinn person is quietly going through a complete meltdown. It is the most contained, competent meltdown I have ever seen. His work doesn't seem to be suffering. He is still an effective agent, and can still stakeout his targets diligently for hours upon days. I've come to the conclusion that this character wears CIA-issue diapers and eats babyfood. There is no way one person can sit that long without eating and well...that other thing.

Carrie/Claire Danes is almost transparent - every emotion shows on her face. Quinn, in contrast, is almost a blank canvas - he blends in, because he allows others to project their own perceptions onto him, while keeping his own to himself. His clothes are absolutely generic. Nothing stands out. You only know he's in crisis because he tells you/Carrie/you. I like the internal crisis. It's difficult to impossible to portray. You wonder where this will lead in a person with such immaculate control. 

DECISIONS, DECISIONS AND INJURIES

So this happened. 

I was trying to get a shot of trees - the ones in the background - and that highly unphotogenic branch made it into every shot, at every angle, at every twist and turn. At some point, I decided to just go with it and see what happened. Well, this happened. 

Now let's talk about my arm. Because when I see this shot now, that branch makes me think of my arm. About a week ago, my bike slipped on a wet patch and I hit the ground hard. The force divided pretty much equally between my arm and my hip, injuring both. 

I can now say, with conviction, that injury proceeds in three distinct stages.

1. shock and awe* 
2. numbness, and
3. interpretation.

Let me focus in on this second stage, the numb stage. It's probably the shortest, or ostensibly the least interesting, the least emotional stage, but it's a critical stage, because this is when the mind starts to tell you a story. The mind naturally gravitates towards storytelling. It wants to find explanations, to impart significance, even when there are none to be had.

While I was waiting for feeling to come back into my arm and leg, so I could basically use them again as appendages and pedal home, my mind began trying out various explanations. Here are some of the more obvious ones: 

1. I was never meant to ride a bike, it wasn't meant to be. 
2. The universe is sending me a sign, and it involves never getting near a bike ever again, and also it prevented me from an even worse fate just around the corner.
3. This is a punishment. For what? I don't know. TBD 
4. And so on.

Most of these fall towards the dramatic end of the rationale spectrum and completely ignore the more mundane explanations: that this was just the natural consequence of the water on a metal surface causing a lack of traction, sufficient to make the wheel glide, and then for me to hit hard ground, etc. I should wet metal surfaces in future. Boring.  

In the middle of these explanations, I realized, that these were all options that I could decide to believe. Or not. The bad part is, I do gravitate towards explanations that involve universal meaning. I don't know if it's human nature or my nature, but it is more emotionally exciting to pick option 2. But that might stop me from getting on a bike ever again. 

So I decided to think of this as an accident without meaning, and to get back on the bike. I have to constantly remind myself of this decision, because again, it's not where my mind naturally goes. 

What I find intriguing is that this is a decision that you can make, while lying semi-prone waiting for feeing in your limbs to return - you can decide how to interpret trauma. 

*lying on the ground until feeling comes back into your extremities

YOUR FRIENDLY THURSDAY REMINDER

Hey, what's that over there? Maybe I should open another tab and find out...well stop. Find out tomorrow. No more tabs.

Just a friendly reminder to try practicing using only one tab today. 

Then check your focus, and check your anxiety levels. How do you feel?

TABLESS THURSDAY

Single-tasking Is the New Multitasking from The Atlantic on Vimeo.

Let's start a trend.

First, listen to the pitch: press play. I have zero resources, so here is someone else's video about single tasking, but what I got out of it was the concept of Tabless Thursday.

If you take a look at a typical week, there is clearly a gap:

Meatless Monday

Taco Tuesday

Womething Wednesday

_________ Thursday

Funning* Friday

So now, just for fun's sake,** this coming Thursday, practice tab monogamy. What is that? It's simple: only use one tab on your browser at a time. If you need something else, close the one tab, and open another. Then work on that ONE tab for the entire time until you have completed whatever it is you're doing. 

Only once a week, a small commitment of your time. Let's see what that does for you. 

* I meant to put something else here, but then thought that was too easy. 

** It helps sometimes to just think of change as fun, improvement as fun, and fun as something you want in your life. 

SHALLOW WORDS AND DEEP THOUGHTS

I was out with my friend S. the other day, when a young couple, female and male, early 20's I'd guess, stopped us and asked if one of us could take their picture. We chitchatted a little, asked them to move into the sunlight for better lighting (we were considerate), took some pictures of them, reviewed those, thought better of it, took better shots, and then went our separate ways. 

When the couple was safely out of earshot, we turned to each other. The conversation went like this:

S:  That girl? She was so pretty! Didn't you think she was pretty?

Me: That's exactly what I was thinking! 

S: I'm so jealous! I wish I was that pretty!* 

Me: Me too!  

(Significant pause.) 

S: She was too good for him.

Me: Oh, hell yeah. 

With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, there may be a few elements of that conversation that could be improved. For the record, the boyfriend looked fine. He just wasn't exceptional. Not the way she was. She caught your eye, while your gaze might just pass right on over him without stopping. That's not a crime. He could even have been a Getty. Although, based on clothing, I have my doubts. 

Back to the her: based solely on appearances, both of us immediately felt that this girl's looks entitled her to someone better. It seemed perfectly rational at the time. It made sense. Some of the most irrational thoughts always seem perfectly rational. We both had high expectations of this complete stranger. She should do better. She should dump her nice boyfriend, and get herself someone more in her league. Her looks league.   

What were the assumptions behind this line of reasoning. Do good looks naturally lead to higher expectations? Do we assume that she had all these better choices, and then chose this somewhat blah guy? Did he trick her? Is he, in fact, evil? 

In future, I will probably reflect less on other people's choices, and more on my own line of reasoning.

* For reference purposes, she looked like a younger version of actress Kelly Hu. Hu is probably best known for being really hot on the Scorpion King. Check it out. 

TAKING A BREAK

Alright. That pretty much says it all. 

I'm going to take the next week off and see how that goes. I'm concerned I've gotten complacent, and have started mistaking consistency with quality. In short, I don't want to post crap. 

Should be back soon, and I hope life is treating you well.

IS BLOGGING NARCISSISTIC?

Via

You write about your life. Your daily adventures. What you eat. What you wear. Where you go. You document your thoughts and opinions. You take pictures - possibly of yourself - and you share. This assumes, of course, that whatever you're writing about is interesting and beneficial. It's also a practice known as blogging. 

So...is this narcissistic? Or is it just sharing?

I couldn't tell you. To be honest, I just like putting myself on a writing schedule, which to a certain extent keeps me on a creative schedule. I also keep track of how many times I use the word "I" in a post - only I'm not sure if that really solves the problem. I guess it's just something to have in mind, a pair of mental handcuffs, so that one day you don't up and think everything you say is golden. I think it's good to take stock every once in awhile, and see where things lie. 

Thoughts?

  

OUT AND ABOUT: PINNACLES NATIONAL MONUMENT

Sometimes, when you're out and about, up and down, does it ever just occur to you that - hey, this life - it's not too shabby. This sometimes occurs to me mid-sweat, when I've just plowed up some horrifically steep path, thighs burning, mouth filled with ashes, and then turned to take a look at the view. 

These pictures are from Pinnacles National Monument park. It has a nice retinue of anti-sloth activities: some nice views, clever scenery, a lake, some caves. Then you can go home and mentally congratulate yourself on a job well done.

AGING LIKE JAMES SPADER

Sources: Left Top, Left Bottom, Center, Right Top, Right Bottom

James Spader and I are not friends.

It's a shame, really, because I always have that thought in the back of my mind - when I happen to see him - that he's an interesting person. He seems to get put into roles where he plays the person people want him to be. If I had to put labels on it, I'd call it the emotionally-jaded drifter type. Or spoiled, emotionally shallow business-superior. Or even that slightly naive clean-cut upper-crust corporate exec type person.

There seemed to be no way around it - he just looks like that guy. Which doesn't mean that he isn't, but it's no fun being pinned to a type. If I were an actor, I'd like to pretend to be someone that was far away from what I saw in the mirror, but sometimes that doesn't happen. So you hang around, and you wait.

Recently, there seems to have been a shift. I saw an ad for the show The Blacklist, and my eyes almost shot out of my head. The prettiness is gone. The hair is gone. Everything that made him the James Spader of old is...gone. By the way, I don't watch the show. I've seen one episode, and it wasn't my cup of tea. I just wanted to see the new Spader in action, and he is magnificent. Not the way a lion is magnificent, but he gets to use a whole new set of acting muscles that I had assumed had eroded and died from lack of use. He finally gets to play a mysteriously complex criminal mastermind. The kind that authorities would never be able to catch...until he wants to be caught. It's the acting equivalent to watching a lion run free in the wild. I always suspected that he could do a lot more, and this confirms my suspicions.

This brings me to my next point: aging. I've always seen aging as a process of refinement. You cut away the external layers, until you find out who you really are, at your core. I've never thought of Spader as a shallow pretty person. I've always suspected that there was something underneath that bit. It's part of what made him interesting, because at some point, he would reemerge. Except he would have shed that old self, and what would appear next was unknown.

Now here he is again, and he can't be typecast as easily. He no longer looks like Spader, and all that that entailed. You can pretty much put him anywhere. I can't say for certain, since we are clearly not friends, but it looks now like he's having a very good time. He has this knowing quality now that wasn't there before - I'm not sure if anyone else notices this - but just behind his eyes, he seems endlessly amused.

Isn't that the ideal? To just let the pressures fall away and enjoy yourself. Once you have found your core (this may take awhile) - and I think this new Spader is the core that was there all along - you can finally relax and let it flow.

ON FAME

"Jared Leto said that fame doesn’t change you, it changes everyone around you. While I’m not the centre of attention here (and fuck, the times I have, it’s never been fun), I do become aware of the people around me and their transparency. They fail to hide it. I’ve experienced being a target of the tabloids, finding moments I thought I was in safe hands splattered all over the internet, being pushed and shoved, or watching others get pushed and shoved by paparazzi just to get what they think they’re entitled to."

- James Lowe (boyfriend of singer Lorde)

ON DOUBT

Source

Do you believe in the existence of an internal compass? It's the closest thing to a writer's spirituality - you have to have faith that it exists, without any physical proof. You just have to believe, because without it, you have no guide, no point of reference, just options. There are too many options, or none. To make a choice, you have to believe sometimes, that you know what you're doing, you have to trust in your creative instincts, and set aside the doubt.

MILEY SHAMING

I went to a Miley Cyrus concert.

This is normally something that I would file under "Nobody Cares," and then move right along with the next topic. Ironically, the next topic would be the Dalai Lama, who I saw in the same week. Except, a few little things happened to make me reconsider.  

When I mentioned to a friend I was going, her reply: "That's great - oh wait - that's horrible."

Other reactions: "I'd be embarrassed."

Then you feel that slight twinge - the need to justify yourself or whatever it is that you're doing. It's an instinctive reaction in the face of criticism, or in this case, the shaming. I've gotten to the point when I recognize the twinge for what it is, a reaction, and ignore it. 

It's interesting the things that will set people off. Not only would they never go to that concert, but you shouldn't go either. Or if you go - you shouldn't tell people about it. You should treat this like an STD. It should be a secret. 

With these pleasant thoughts in mind, I decided to go ahead and write this post, something that I otherwise would consider not that interesting. If this is not obvious, then I'll go ahead and say this now: this is not a blog about me and about my life, it's about ideas, observations, beauty, simplicity, a slight infatuation with interior design (I'll admit to that), and topics that will ideally make life a bit more enjoyable. That's right - I went from talking about a Miley Cyrus concert to talking about making life better. Here's how I went from one to the other:

Sometimes, when you find someone interesting, there is a quality that person possesses that you admire. What I like about Miley is that she doesn't care about the people that hate her (and there are a lot of those out there), she focuses her energy on the people that care about her, her fans. That's a good policy. There really is nothing worse than bending over backwards to try to please everyone. 

Now if, say, you do happen upon her in concert, share! Miley knows how to show you a good time. 

WHAT'S YOUR CHARACTER TYPE?

I have a friend, a good friend, who I consider mainstream in her tastes. She only watches romantic comedies and reads chicklit or romance novels, a lot of them by Danielle Steel.  She can deviate from her preferences - we've had deep discussions about Game of Thrones, which is not a romance by any stretch of the imagination - and she can discuss football like a man. However, she knows what she likes and isn't tempted by anything else. This is how I have traditionally perceived the notion of having a book "type." But, what if this is too simple?

I've been thinking about "types" a lot recently, starting from this post, where I rambled about how following the main character was ruining the experience of the book for me. There was nothing wrong with the book itself, but the crucial choice of main character didn't work for me. I didn't like him. What I have come to realize is that one of the most useless bits of feedback you can receive is "I didn't like it," with no explanation. So I decided to delve.  

According to my own diagnosis, I don't discriminate across genres: sci-fi (don't gravitate towards it, but won't turn it away if it looks good); mystery (great sense of plot); romance (emotionally engaging and complex; funny); books about family (a look into someone else's life you would otherwise not get); etc. However, if you've been around the literary block a few times, there are certain types characters who, if sketched broadly enough, will be familiar to you. You've seen this type before, and when you encounter them again, you get a sense of déjà vu. 

In a book I read recently, I recognized a type of character, let's call him the "T" type, as someone I had read before, over the course of a number of other novels. My reaction to T was visceral: I couldn't stand him. It was borderline irrational. When I see T again, I hate him even more. Why? 

Here is my definition of the T type character: a spectator in his own life, he reacts rather than takes action, he is constantly victimized, his defining feature is that he is sensitive and/or delicate, the plot progresses as a series of personal tragedies, and most importantly, he does not grow or change, he simply survives. This, in general, is the story of T. 

To be really specific, here is why I don't like the T type narrator: he suffers constantly, and to be around him means that you get to suffer too. Suffering isn't bad, it's an opportunity to grow, develop, and overcome, and then the journey of the novel is worth it. For a good example of this, see Life After Life. However, and this is key, T does not grow, does not overcome. Things happen. T stays the same, all the way to the end, and I beside him, suffer. T lets people take advantage of him. I feel miserable. Then he does it again. 

Through the haze of misery that being with T created, it occurred to me that while I don't have a specific type of literary genre that I prefer, I have a character type, or an anti-type that I avoid like the plague, because it guarantees a miserable experience. Sometimes, people like knowing that the focus of the story is a romance, or a mystery, but for the General Fiction category, the stories that do not fall effortlessly into categories, it might be a specific character type that holds or destroys your interest. This is my working theory. 

What are some other character types? I'm going to throw out a few generalizations: the flighty female, the methodical scientist, the bland everyman or everywoman or girl-next-door.* I could go on. When looking at your audience, the pattern into their heart may not necessarily be by approaching through specific genres, but by specific Character Types. You can be known not for your Thrillers, but for your character type, a type you vary a little bit each time, across genres, across countries, across space and time. But the character remains true.

*Not to be confused with the Playboy Playmate reality show. 

WRITING UPDATE: REVIEWS

This is going to be a bit of a ramble. Don't say you weren't warned!

Thanks to my new vow to stop multi-tasking, I had to to wait until I finished a book that was really pissing me off, before starting this post. I'm not going to tell you the title. I will never name books I don't like. Someone put a lot of work and a lot of soul into that book, and I can't bring myself to demean something so precious to another person.

So let me talk about this in the abstract: I wanted to stop reading this book altogether at some point (at many points). The main character really pissed me off. He was one of those types that I hate - a character that is a spectator in their own lives, where all they do is react to situations, and where every other character introduced is so much more interesting, and yet someone we don't get to follow. No, we're left with this guy, who can't stand up for himself, who isn't articulate, who is a constant victim in a world where bad things just keep happening, and in response he never seems to learn or improve. He's not attractive or intelligent or special in any way, and he doesn't become any of these things either. He's just a sponge - absorbing and feeling bad and then expounding on the life lessons he has learned as a sponge. The longer the amount of time I spent with this person - the more I started to actively hate him. I felt like spending time with him was wasting hours of my life, and maybe so.

However, every time I wanted to stop - I thought about the reviewers that I sent my book out to, and I kept going. I've tried to put a constructive spin on reviews, with this post, and here's a follow up. I've sent the draft out to a good number of people - a sample. There were two reviewers in particular who I had been really looking forward to hearing from, because they were published authors; they had that aura of legitimacy: they had been published in the traditional way. They were represented by agents and a real publisher had published their books. This would be some great feedback! So I waited for their responses in happy anticipation. Then I just kept on waiting. 

One of the authors could not finish the book at all. My book isn't that long, just to be clear. But she just could not finish it. As I was reading the book which will not be named, I kept thinking - was this what it was like for her? What I've heard back from the reviewer is that this book is not her "type." (I'm assuming she's being honest here, and there's no reason to think she would lie.) Anything that falls outside this "type," she cannot bring herself to read, not even for a friend. What I take from this is that people have a natural range of books they will read: they have a "type." People like blonds and Thai food, and anything else is ugly and tastes like dogfood. Human nature is what it is. I, on the other hand, am a book whore. I'll read anything, as long as something about it piques my interest, so this was good to know. 

The other reviewer? She's a genius. Literally, a genius. She could probably put away an encyclopedia a day. So no sweat, right? Could probably jot down a few useful notes and be done with it. I never heard back from her again. I don't understand why people say they're going to do something - and then don't do it. Human nature is a funny thing. I'm going to keep shuffling along. Writing is a process, and there are a lot of obstacles along the way - I just have to keep moving forward. As long as I keep moving, I will eventually get to where I want to be.