Now

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Now I live a routine of laziness and activity, in roughly equal parts. Mixed up in there, I'm making small discoveries about life here in Sriracha, such as:

- There is a massive motorcross track just up the highway from us, but we missed the big annual race event.

- Beyond the motorcross track is a brand new fitness park. In fact, the park it belongs to is still under construction and the fitness area is gated off. I don't care, I work out there anyway.

- There's a big fad in Thailand that revolves around what are called "DZI" beads. I guy near the zoo sells them and has a collection of literature all about their significance to Tibetan buddhism. It's basically new-age witchdoctor baloney.

- Counting in Thai is really easy and useful. So is knowing how to ask the price of things.

- Some of the stray dogs (and house dogs) around here are my friends, but some definitely are not.

- They play the same stupid Christmas songs everywhere here, even after Christmas!

- African woman can be especially difficult to live with when they're having a rough menstruation.


But, mostly I just workout once a day, read a lot, write, and do the basics (eat, drink, sleep); I live.


Reading

I'm reading voraciously every day and night. I sit by the light of the crack of the door when it's too late and the girls have gone to sleep so that I can write my ideas at high speed in my journal until my mind is exhausted from thought and I drift into a sleep full of wild dreams (which I often write down immediately upon waking).

What I've been reading is mostly first hand accounts of life and travels, which goes well with most of what I've been writing. I've also read a lot of guidebook summaries of history and lots of religious materials like the Bible and whatever I can find online about the Dharmic religions. So I've been spitting out stuff about life, the universe, and the meaning of mankind.

I've also been dooing some reading on the science of life, the universe, and all that meaning: systems theory. This is mostly an online pursuit, but I also read Malcolm Gladwell's Blink in about a day and a half.

In list form, here's what I've been consuming over the last month:
- Some old copies of Time Magazine.
- Tourist brochures froim Cambodia.
- "Mr. Nice" by Howard Marks.
- "Off the Rails in Phnom Penh" by Amit Gilboa.
- The NIV Bible (esp. Solomon's stuff and the gospels).
- Travel guides to Southeast Asia and India (mostly reading the histories).
- A book on cocktails.
- "On The Road" by Jack Kerouac.
- "Blink" by Malcom Gladwell.
- Wikipedia


Trying to Dig

I've spent so much of my life dissapproving of certain things and approving of others, just for aesthetic reasons. This is why I like bikers and Mexican gangs, but can't stand techno ravers or goths. But all this reading--especially Kerouac--and all this travel is making me want to just open up and "dig" everything...

Then we go to Bangkok and see the Creepy Clones, and we go to Pattaya and almost everyone is a Creepy Clone, and the girls take me to a techno club and I want to run away fast.

Maybe there are just some things I will never dig.


Paths

Reading Lonely Planet and Off The Rails and On The Road and even Eccliastes has started to give me the feeling that there really IS nothing new under the sun.

People have pushed out the edges of conformity and non-comformity so far as to rob these things of meaning and drive anyone who strives for them insane. There really is no comfortable ground for someone who wants to remain original and individual.

Every path has been beaten, and not only that, swarmed with so many people as to pack it down tight--and maybe they even paved it!

I could write tomes about all the many groups and cults and cliques I've joined or encountered over the years, all striving to be something or to do something new and important and different:
- anarchists
- skateboarders
- role players
- computer hackers
- punk rockers
- straight edge
- skinheads on the left and on the right and in the middle
- itchiker hippies
- drug fiends
- train squatters
- backpackers
- indie filmmakers
- etc, etc, etc, ad infitum, ad nauseum, blah, blah, blah

These people's interests become passions become lifestyles become all-consuming. Every one of them thinks they're doing something special, but they're not: they're just imitating someone else and living up to one-another's expectations. The kings of the scene are the ones who do it the best, with the most utter devotion to their cult and it's following. Everyone else is just some kind of a square.

It may be most sad to be that guy--really deep into one of these--as he constricts the size of his world in an attempt to rule it. Then there are the real squares who are just too scared or timid or dull to become so passionate about anything like a hobby or a lifestyle. It may be very difficult to lead an uninteresting (uninterested) life in this day and age, and I think it's totally pathetic to do so.

So, what's left? Most of us squares are dabblers and former, present, or future members in many cults and tribes. The new and important and different things were too old and trivial and similar for us. Conforming as a non-conformist hasn't worked. The stray paths were packed with others and the trails we tried to blaze were already bare.

So, what's left?


Planning

It may not sound like it, but my major mental occupation (and Chelly's) has been planning (plotting, anticipating, dreaming). We're planning our next transit towards Greece, and our travels beyond. We're also planning life in the future: future travels, future ambitions, and future settlement back in Seattle.

I'd like to take my truck and drive it across the U.S.A. Chelly and I could bring a tent and some camping stuff and lots of blankets and pillows: maybe even stick the mattress in the back again.

And we would only go on highways, never freeways, and we would pick up every hitchiker we saw, asking a little gas money here and there and just letting their destinations guide us.

I think we'd learn a lot about America that way. We'd meet a lot of people and we'd go a lot of directions and it would all be free-form and wild.


How Do American Minds Really Work?

I got the idea to check out www.implicit.harvard.edu from reading Malcom Gladwell's book, "Blink," which I blazed through in less than two days. The site invites visitors to participate in psychological research by undertaking various online IATs (Implicit Association Tests). There are different tests for people from different nations, I did a few from the American section and there was a lot to learn

The tests are designed to reveal our own automatic associations and intuitive feelings about controversial subjects. Test-takers are guided to consider their conscious feelings and personal beliefs, then high-speed tests of automatic responses measure our unconscious attitudes and we are given the results. They are often surprising, but the statistical breakdown of American's tested is the most revealing.

My first test was designed to reveal automatic associations between Native Americans and Foreign-ness or between White Americans and American-ness. My results told me that I have a "strong association of White American with Foreign and Native American with American." This is a result that occurs with only 5%!o(MISSING)f the test-taking population, especially unusual because the vast majority of people show some level of preference in associating White Americans with American. It is one of the few examples of conscious attitudes matching the unconscious.

The second test I did was called the "Skin Tone IAT". This explores our preferences for Light Skin versus Dark Skin. It uses positive or negative terms as well as images of darker and lighter toned people. This one also put me in a minority category amongst American test takers. I scored as having a, "slight automatic preference for Dark Skin compared to Light Skin," which is a score shared by only 6%!o(MISSING)f the tested. It wasn't shocking to learn that only 17%!o(MISSING)f people tested score neutral while 70%!s(MISSING)how some preference for Light Skin, this is so obvious in America, with most dark-skinned culture-groups in the U.S. exhibiting internal preference for their own lighter-hued. I wonder how I turned out this way? Maybe growing up next to the Rez and watching a lot of the Cosby Show really did impact my brain.

My third test was similar to the skin tone test, measuring simple preference for Straight People or for Gay People. This comparison is of greater interest--however--because, while consciously positive attitudes towards dark skin have been encouraged recently by our culture, the social acceptability of positive or negative attitudes towards gays has changed very little. My test told me that I have, "a moderate automatic preference for Straight People compared to Gay People." This is a result shared by 25%!o(MISSING)f test-takers, 68%!o(MISSING)f whom show some preference for Straight People.

I thought it was interesting that these researchers have found our current national culture to dictate stronger conscious positive associations with dark skin than with homosexuality, yet the statistics of these test results showed virtually the same breakdown of preference-attitudes. It may be socially preferrable for Americans to feel positively towards dark-skinned people and negatively towards homosexuals, but most of our unconscious minds harbor negative associations with both.

My last test was the "Celebrity Age IAT" This one was the day's "Featured Task" and uses pictures of old and young celebs (Shatner, Brando, Newman, etc.) to test our automatic preferences towards Old or Young. I showed, "little to no automatic preference between Old or Young." Interesting because I thought I had a preference for the old and I definitely prefer talking to older people...


The Fourth Unity

Of course, older isn't always better. One old idea that I'm sick of feeling the impact of has to do with narrative structure.

Aristotle talked about three unities in storytelling: unity of time, unity of place, unity of action. This was later expanded in by Rennaisance dramatists and it's long been a dogma of the stage and screen.

I believe a fourth unity has emerged in modern literature, which has just recently established it's place in TV and Film and is the backbone of New Media and the Internet. This fourth kind of unity may be the hallmark of the intellectual development of the human species. It definitely has a lot to do with the emergence of holistic thinking.

I've been mostly considering this as a unity of thematic presentation or one of emotional-logical sequence, but it is probably better named the "Unity of Intent". The fourth unity is like the Fourth Dimension, in that it is something bigger and far more important than the other three, but it takes a well-developed understanding of them to comprehend it.

This means that a story or a work can be guided and driven solely by the purpose, the central idea, the goal, the point. When the Unity of Intent guides you, the importance of showing a single place, a single action, or a concise time period is cancelled-out.

Structures don't need to be subverted to ancient patterns and logics. This has nothing to do with arbitrary non-linearity, but involves the sequence and presentation of scenes or information out of chronological order and free from spatial continutiy or event-relatedness. The binding constraint to the presentation of these scenes or information is the thematic, emotional, philosophical goal.

When this is done well, it trumps all previous notions of storytelling and creates a higher form closer to the function of our minds: it maps to our psychological processes. Analysis based on a Unity of Intent may help explain the brilliance and effectiveness of a well-told nonlinear tale. This form has long been present in the structure of effective debate or discourse, but has only recently embodied itself in the function of the story.


Movies

I've been watching lots of movies, mostly romantic comedies, and writing a lot of great movie ideas. The romantic comedies surround me because they are Chelly's favorite genre, but sometimes she lets something else slip in on accident.

One of her accidental purchases was Steven Soderbergh's "Full Frontal". This film had all of the ingredients of your standard, typical indie/edgy/mature film fare:
- strong ensemble cast
- intertwined love affairs
- deciet and adultery
- a dash of drugs
- a dash of death
- little bits of wisdom scattered in monologues and speeches
- a few slices of life
- smattering of tears

But, it was all packaged in this art film veneer, making so many un-acknowledgedly self-conscious comments on it's own message. There were actors playing actors playing actors, a shot at the end pulling-out from the film's set, fake home video stuff, etc., etc.

It made me think about some of my own awful art film attempts and it made me realize how much bullshit it is to bog yourself down with all that "subtle" film artistry crap. If you want to tell a story in a differeent way, do it, and stick to your concept. Don't try to tell a handful of stories all at once in a handful of ways and then call it one film.

Anyway, if you want to play with a technique or a premise or a point, do not just leave hints or test it sparingly, go ahead and OVERDO IT! Make it mean something, and do it with style.


A Very Cool Dream

I don't know where we were or what was going on, but my friend Winston Cely had just found an old story of mine which had been published in comic book form somewhere over the years. He said he reallly loved it and that he'd done some research about it and learned that I'd been paid cash for the story. The funny thing was, I'd never seen this little mag, I didn't know this was published, I barely remembered writing it, and I did not recall getting paid. I'd have to look these people up.

The really cool thing was that the entire story was presented like an inverted film storyboard with lots of black and little white-trimmed picture frames showing the shots (starkly ilustrated and boldly coloured), with the dialogue and some vivid descriptions of textures of actions written in white below each frame. It looked awesome. As I was dreaming lucidly (which is kind of like watching a film) I decided to stop the dream and remember this part.

The effect would be really easy to do, having Neil Of Steel draw and letter the pages and ink them. Or I could create the frames, he could draw the pics, and then I'd type the words directly on the page with a typewriter. Then we just invert the black and white of the entire page on a photocopier and he goes and puts some great bold colors in the odd white spot.

Not all my dreams excite me, however. I keep having dreams in which Ole Johnson is reading or leaving lying around one of his stupid graffiti/clever wit/skate/shoe/whatever magazines. This one is called, "Madwichmayhem" and it is always thwarting me.

They say you can't read in your dreams, but I always can. Why the hell does it have to be this dumb magazine that I'm reading?


"Tanning in a Winter Wonderland

"Tanning in a Winter Wonderland" is what I should have titled my Christmas blog. I think everyone should spend at least one Christmas in his shorts.

I did, in Pattaya, and the aftermath in Sriracha. But a few weeks ago I was in Cambodia, explaining to a classroom full of Khmer students in an English class about the meaning of Christmas.

You see, the Cambodians are eager to adopt the Amercian-style Santa Claus and Shopping kind of Christmas that has become all the rage in Thailand. They think that North America is in Europe, so they call this (with all the Elvis carols and oversized strings of lights) the "European Christmas".

I started with the Roman Saturnalia and the Pagan solstice festivals and then talked about the Emporer Constantine who first instituted the celebration of Christ to replace the other ones (this isn't entirely accurate). Then I talked about the ideas of the Christian holiday, then about Madison Avenue and shopping. Finally, Christmas toda--in most of the world that knows it--is about family, togetherness, and the giving of gifts. Of course, the Christians still celebrate the birth of their God and many others still celebrate the solstice... but celebrating shopping alone is just silly.


Comparing Religions

I'd like to write some stuff on compariative religion, but I'm not going to talk about the similarities in mythologies and traditions (which are staggering) or about common teachings and doctinres of the major religions (which are overwhelming, but not unpredictable) or about the amazing number of common rituals practiced throughout the ages under the banners of differing faiths.

I want to talk about the history. About the shared history (interactions) about the parrallel history (similar epochs and eras, movements, figures, revolutions, reforms, persecutions, expansions, revivals).

I'm especially interested in the parrallels between two religions that began as exclusively tribal beliefs with tribal deities, but flowered into major forces the world over: Judaism and Hinduism. While Judaism is credited as the original monotheism and Hinduism as the ultimate pantheism, they both advanced the moral systems of human civilization by tying our deeds and actions to our consequences in the afterlife. When they each encountered Greek philosophy, great cultural conversation occured, and they managed to spawn Buddhism, Jainism, and Christianity at around the same time: all belief systems with a strong central human/deified figure and a strong moral focus. Some few centuries later Islam, Sikkhism, and Protestantism popped up to further refine and reform these traditions as they spread far beyond their orignial homes.

There's a lot to write about the many cultural, political, economic, scientific, and philosophical factors that created these movements, and about their development and interactions along the way. They almost remind me of cocktails... "God's Great Cocktails", grand mixtures, shrouded in controversy, with setting and appropriate accompamiment being critical to the proper experience and understanding.


What's It Feel Like?

There was an incident just before I left Seattle that I'd like to mention. It was late and the bars were all closed and I was sitting out at Lake Washington with a few of my friends, having some beer or wine or something.

I was trying to get everyone to swim, but these guys weren't into it. Then I saw a naked girl come up out of the lake and I shouted to her to go back in and I would join her.

I started taking off my clothes and she walked towards me in the dark. Her friends were already up the hill, going to their cars. I cried out, "naked girl, naked girl! I want to swim with you!"

She came over to me and when she got closer I could finally make out her face in the moonlight. And she could make out mine.

"Nic?"

"Amy?"

WHAM! She slapped me across the face. I was still reeling from that when she leapt up and put her legs around around my waste and started kissing me and shoving her tongue down my throat.

My buddies watched me fall over onto the grass with this naked chick wrapped around me that had just slapped me as hard as she could and was now kissing it better. And they wondered what it was like to be someone who is capable of inspiring such intense and contrary feelings in someone.

Who knows? I guess that's just how I am about the world and about myself, and I suppose I spread it to others. Intense and often contrary feelings.

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Comments

[Sean Fay]

Read 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' by Bill Bryson
This is the best book I've read in 5 years! You'll particularly love it-doing what you're doing. All the best, Your friend, Sean Fay

[Neil Ofsteel]

...
I'm down for some comic book collaboration. I've also heard the naked chick story a million times, I know I was there but for whatever reason I missed the actual excitement, maybe I was too drunk.

[Aaron Brown]

"It's basically new-age witchdoctor baloney. " hmm, depends on what they're made of. If plastic..then ya. but if some sort of natural, round mineral/stone, it could have certain properties. I am inclined to believe that certain things pick up energies from their formation in the course of thousands of years (or millions?). "Every path has been beaten, and not only that, swarmed with so many people as to pack it down tight--and maybe they even paved it! " Amazon? Maybe there are a few spots that haven't been totally beaten down there. "Every one of them thinks they're doing something special, but they're not: they're just imitating someone else and living up to one-another's expectations. " Freedom from judgement, freedom to be yourself. That's all you need. "Most of us squares are dabblers and former, present, or future members in many cults and tribes." When free of potentially restrictive beliefs, such becomes an impossibility methinks. "I think we'd learn a lot about America that way. We'd meet a lot of people and we'd go a lot of directions and it would all be free-form and wild." Sounds good to me- get rid of the notion that being open and connecting with your 'neighbor' is dangerous. Sociology(at least my teacher) talks a lot about how the media influences people to think outsiders are dangerous. You're plan sounds good.