All Souls 2009

Even though it's been a good week since the Procession, Flam Chen is pretty much looking ahead. Someone described it to me as Flam Chen's New Year—after the Procession, everything starts over, and is fresh again.

But the Procession itself went great. Not without its own hitches and problems. But that's the insider's perspective—for the outsider, who it's really about, it was pretty amazing.

Most of the photos I took are really not that great. So instead I'm just going to post a video that pretty much summarizes the whole event. Enjoy.

Dr. Megavolt - Or, when can FC do that?

Found this video on Wired. Man in steel mesh suit and birdcage hat, next to Tesla coil, in front of audience, shows how not to get electrocuted. And much fun was had by all!



My only question is—when do we get to do that? I can just see it now… electrified poi spinners.

Bike Woes, Glamorous Week

This week has been a troublesome week, but with today, the Saturday before the All Souls Procession, everything should be back in full swing for me. During the early week I got sick. Determined to overcome it quickly my first full week in Tucson, I laid low and pumped myself full of garlic, echinacea, orange juice, green tea, and chicken noodle soup. By Wednesday I was back on my feet, though not fully healed. I had spent some good money on a new bike, my main mode of transportation, just the week before. Finally ready to get out of the house, I woke up in the morning, showered, and was ready to go.

Flat tire.

Apparently Tucson wreaks havoc on bike tires. It is the desert, after all. Burs, needles, all those sorts of things will make short work of any normal bike tire. After getting a ride to the bike shop and fixing the punctured front tire, I ride home and check the tires again that evening, only to discover that the back tire now has a bur of its own.

Patching the tire proves useless. Frustrated, still a little sick, and still looking for work, I decide to lay low again.

Finally, the cold is almost entirely gone, and I've learned a lot about bike tire protection. It took a good $140 of my bank account, but today I should be all set. A set of new tires, both back and front, that have a layer of kevlar and/or nylon on the inside. Then, an inner tube protector layer, and finally, a slime layer inside the tube that will fill in any hole that makes it past the first two layers. It was a little bit of money blown, but in my mind it's worth it. In these situations, you usually get what you pay for—and even though I may still be in a scary transition phase, investing in solid transportation is, in my mind, totally worth the investment. I need to be able to get around for networking, work, and personal sanity. I've found that I'm usually much more productive when working in a cafe or lounge, rather than at home. It forces me to focus.

So, finally settling in a little bit and having scoped out some more places around town (I'm posting this from Epic Cafe), and starting to get some web design work trickling in, I'm starting to feel a bit more confident. I realize though that I really am making my own way here. Of course, I knew that initially from the start. But the practical, tangible reality of that is much rougher, much more cut, than I've known so far.

But everything is working. There is very little I can complain about—in fact, I have a lot to be thankful for. And tomorrow will be a day of days.

Don't worry—I'll post pictures of the Procession. Even though I've been pretty much out of the Flam Chen loop this week, they've all been working non-stop. And with even seeing a few fruits of their labors now, I'll get to see the whole tree, in all its flaming glory, tomorrow evening.

Transmitting from Tucson

Legitimate sighting of Blonde, abstract artist/graphic designer and wannabe circus freak in central Tucson, E. University Blvd., at obviously one of the best coffee shops in town (thanks Google Earth!).



Please inform the institutional authorities so this creative force can be contained, managed, and given a bank account with a few extra digits.

In all seriousness though—flew into the city yesterday, everything went smoothly (as smooth as air travel can, really). Already settled in, saw the Flam Chenistas. It's the last 400 yards of the All Souls Procession prep, so I've been making myself available to help randomly wherever random help is needed. Though I've been warned not to say this too often—there's lots to do.

Also, finally got the full version of Proteus Creative launched, with all its navigation and sub-pages. Full portfolio is now online. It also went through a hasty compatibility/testing period, so it should work with flying colors (well… maybe missing one or two) in Internet Explorer and the windows browser of choice, Firefox (sorry IE 8—you got the CSS right, but now your kind isn't obeying JavaScript correctly).

So this whole transition time, getting settled down here, carving out a business, and managing personal finances (awesome online app for this I found: Mint.com—if you have money issues and are an internet-savvy person, this might be a godsend for you like it is me), will take some time, and a lot of work. But it's that sort of thing where keep your head down and just keep driving forward.

Let me know if any readers out there want web design work! ;)

Mad Trampoline Skills

Happened to find this video on College Humor. Take a look. The guy has some awesome trampoline skills.

I am convinced that he works for Cirque Du Soleil. Not just because of his obvious talent—but because I actually recognize that set piece from the DRALION show. Kind of freaky to see it in broad fluorescent light like that.

I guess this is what the Cirque guys do for fun! Hmm… now I suddenly want a gym with lots of padding and an industrial strength trampoline. It just looks like too much fun to not try.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Krisja Hendricks and Health Insurance in the United States

With the fact that I'm no longer in college (not technically, but reality-speaking) and moving out of my parents' house, the health insurace/personal finances complex has started to come front and center to my attention. It's a scary complex. Which is why this email caught my eye today. Krisja Hendricks:

"Last week, I stood in front of 12 television cameras and dozens of reporters in the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. Standing with me was the Speaker of the House of Representatives, other members of Congress, and over 100 young people from across the country. I was there to tell my story and to help announce that health care legislation making its way through Congress will include a provision allowing young adults to stay on our parents' insurance through the age of 26. "

Read the rest here: Rock the Vote Blog.

This is one of those stories that makes an example of why government should be in control of certain public-oriented services and fields, and not private corporations. Money is a great judger and balancer of energies. But it is not always the correct one, given the context. It's situations like this makes me wonder why people think corporate entities, large or small regardless, are the universal solvent. It hinges on the fact that competition will be numerous enough to keep each entity beyond a certain growing height. I think this is not the case with American capitalism—I think our flavor of capitalism actually encourages monopolies. Five or six big health insurance agencies is not competition.

The fact of it is that, even though there may be "competition", most of the corporate entities that give things like health insurance do not have a soul, nor a face, nor a mind with which to consider the situation. I'd be fine if there was a corporate entity, privately run and small enough to still have a soul, dealing with people face-to-face, to be taking care of people's health. My health. But that is not the current scenario in this country.

This is the simple fact: if you do not understand the reality of sickness and death, you do not understand the value of life. If you do not understand the value of life, you should not be taking care of people's health. Money is a means to an end in this context. If corporate entities can't turn this leaf, they should not be in control.

Get this through the thick, national head of the American people, who are so scared of the "possibility of government-run" stuff. Like it's 1984. Please, soon.

Transition Week

I've fallen into a rhythm this week—anything that could be a rhythm. It's a transitional rhythm.

I've been back home at Maryland ("home") for about a week now. The familiarity of it all was palpable. I had grown up in these rooms. Many memories were tangible—old, leatherskinned journals containing secrets. IKEA lamplights that I had hung and left there for 5+ years. It's funny to think that orange tends to appear very often in my design-related projects. My entire room was painted like my designs—black, browns, oranges, and luminous, rice-paper lamp tans. All warm colors.

I've started reading The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard. Appropriately, probably, since his intention is to form a phenomenology of the house. I'm keenly interested. I liked his quote that states that artists are phenomenologists by nature. It makes me want to read up on what phenomenology actually is. I know enough to have a feeling about it—I don't know enough to have a definition.

When I came back from Arcosanti I hit the ground running. This week was not a vacation, nor is the next coming week. Proteus Creative saw a partial launch right before I left (check out the site if you haven't, http://www.proteuscreative.com), just so something could be up there. I've been since working on the full version of the site, which is coming along nicely. The full version will probably be up by the end of this week. Of course I already want to redesign it. I'm frustrated by my lack of scripting skills—I don't want to be dependent on other people's plugins for jQuery anymore, which is why I will be learning Javascript and AJAX—so I can build my own intuitive web interfaces from the ground up.

But even with all that, I've learned that there is a rhythm to the day. Like music. There is the upswing in the morning. I look forward to the smell of coffee, the cool air, that top of the world feeling—the feeling where you're looking forward to everything that will happen in the day. Salvador Dali once said that he would wake up with a feeling of ecstasy in the mornings, jumping out of bed to see "what this amazing feat this character, Salvador Dali, will accomplish next!" I'm not quite that… egotistical? But I do see enjoying progress in my work. The fulfillment of art in its completion, is the completion of art itself.

But I need to work on the nights. Because I'm such a focused personality, I need time to relax. Usually this comes in the form of playing video games, which I've finally gotten sick of. Not because I don't like video games. But because they, really, don't relax me—they allow me to concentrate on something else. Something other than all the things I want to accomplish in a day, or a lifetime. But for the amount of relaxation they do give me is kind of a game of decreasing returns. I'll play for hours until I'm tired, then go to bed. Then wake up in the morning—but I won't feel refreshed.

So I've decided to take up reading. It's only been a few nights, but reading Gaston Bachelard has been a lot more fun—really—then playing games for even twice the amount of time. And I love philosophy. I always intend to read more of it, but never do. For me, philosophy really is the engine that drives art, science, culture, writing—everything. Philosophy is a powerhouse, if you understand it and can see how it can be applied in practical ways. I just lack the foundational knowledge, personally speaking, to fully grasp all of it in its full intent. So picking up the habit of reading (and doing so with intent!) is two goals at once. I want to make it my way of relaxing—the way I calm my brain, yet can still allow myself to remain focused on something that is not work.

Writing is similar. Journal writing, I mean. I'm starting to pick up that habit again, though it's stop and start. Same with yoga. Yoga in particular, and its offshoot field for me, Aikido, are both things I want to concentrate on more steadily once I get down to Tucson. They are more pieces in the puzzle I want to fit together in making the transition to Flam Chen.

I'm still very intent on it. This week has just been the thick of things. Realizing how much of a cliff I'm jumping off, yet considering the scenarios again and again, comparing my intentions, my expectations, the realities, the possibilities, what I can give, what I can get out of it—I always come back to the same conclusion. Which is why I haven't wavered.

Socrates said: "The mark of an educated man is the ability to entertain a possibility without accepting it."

I think education, if it were actually education, would account for a lot of the personal conflicts in the world. Misinterpretations and so forth—being willing to entertain possibilities without accepting them—realizing that you don't have to commit to them by entertaining them.

But that is part of the good, solid decision making process. And I've not done all this on a whim. I'm very sure of myself—yet completely open to what may come. I have goals, but not expectations. It's a fine balance, a delicate balance. But if you can achieve it, it is a wonderful feeling.

The night comes.

It's only Monday. I leave on the 26th.

I have reading to do.