my most embarrassing moment growing up came when i was in 4th grade. i retold this story at a family gathering recently - my father didn't even recall the incident that burned into my mind with a clarity that would last thru the years.

i was on the couch in the living room watching tv. my dad was sitting in the 'dad' chair across the room from me reading the newspaper. this was a scene that occurred on a highly frequent basis and this particular evening seemed no different. as a 10 year old boy, i had not yet mastered certain social skills. one skill in particular that evaded me in my youth was when, how, and what to do when i felt the pressing need to remove debris from the protuberance on my face with my index digit.

so on this particular night, i absentmindedly picked my nose. fishing with determination, i was rewarded with a fine specimen, about which i will not go into detail here with, but suffice to say was of the el grande category.

being rather enthralled with the show i was watching and not seeing a kleenex box anywhere nearby, i was faced with a dilemma. do i do the right thing and get up and find a tissue of some kind and dispose of la boogaire properly? (this was the correct action and unfortunately one i declined to choose.) do i stealthily attempt to wipe it on a nearby object? i scanned the room - the new couch, the light colored carpet, the wooden coffee table, the german shepherd...none of these would satisfactorily hide something of this size and texture. i debated and tried to continue watching the sci-fi show awhile, but my distraction grew.

i decide to choose the 'out of site, out of mind' option (a very poor choice on retrospect) and curled my finger for a mighty flick. the trajectory long and high, the distance was great, and in the semi-darkness i lost site of the small green comet as it sped outwards. briefly, i felt the problem was solved and turned my attention quickly back to the tv.

a second later my father roared like a mighty lion. instantly, i correctly guessed where my far-flung projectile had landed. now it was just a matter of determining exactly where. please, please, pllleeeaase let it at least be on his clothing, i wished with all my heart.

but no.

much to my juvenile horror, my scholarly, soft-spoken father was yelling at me (which he almost never, ever did) to get my ass over there and clean off the left lens of his glasses, NOW. yes, smeared there, like a big squashed bug on a tiny windshield, was, unbelievably, and disgustedly, my errant mucus, blocking the view of my fathers nightly newspaper.

did you ever see those southwest airline commercials showing somebody doing something really stupid and then wanting to get away? that's nothing compared to what i was feeling at that moment. my guts pulled into a knot so small i couldn't breathe and the adrenal rush of the flight or fight reaction threatened to overcome me. but i shot up out off the couch, crossed the few yards between us, quickly took the proffered glasses, and even more quickly wiped the troublesome bogey onto my sleeve and slunk out of the room with my tail between my legs like the bad, bad, dog that i was.

i had done stupider things before and since, but for some reason that instance for me was the perfect storm of young male social stupidity wrought upon the larger than life icon of my youth that was my father. he quickly forgot about it - no doubt chalking it up to just another gross thing by yours truly, but it was days before i recovered from the shame. and i still cringe when i think of it. ack.

posted by bluematrix at 11/27/05 21:16 | link | comments (4)

Galumphing (taken from 'Free Play', S. Nachmanovitch)

Galumphing is the immaculately rambunctious and seemingly inexhaustible play-energy apparent in puppies, kittens, children, baby baboons - and also in young communities and civilizations. Galumphing is the seemingly useless elaboration and ornamentation of activity. It is profligate, excessive, exaggerated, uneconomical. We galumph when we hop instead of walk, when we take the scenic route instead of the efficient one, when we play a game whose rules demand a limitation of our powers, when we are interested in means rather than in ends. We voluntarily create obstacles in our path and then enjoy overcoming them. In the higher animals and in people, it is of supreme evolutionary value.

Galumphing ensures that we remain on the upside of the law of requisite variety. This fundamental law of nature states that a system intended to handle x amount of information must be able to take on at least x different states of being. In photography, for example, if we want to capture three levels of light, we need a camera with at least three apertures or shutter speeds. In music, if we want to transmit three kinds of emotion, we need to be able to draw the bow or blow our breath or strike the keys with at least three kinds of touch - preferably many more. This is what we call "having technique to burn" - having more powerful and flexible means available to us than we need in any given situation. A would be artist may have the most profound visions, feelings, and insights, but without skill there is no art. The requisite variety that opens up our expressive possibilities comes from practice, play, exercise, exploration, experiment. The effects of nonpractice (or of insufficiently risky practice) are rigidity of heart and body, and an evershrinking compass of available variety.

In play, animals, people, or whole societies get to experiment with all sorts of combinations and permutations of body forms, social forms, thought forms, images, and rules that would not be possible in a world that functions on immediate survival values. A creature that plays is more readily adaptable to changing contexts and conditions. Play as free improvisation sharpens our capacity to deal with a changing world. Humanity, playing through our prolific variety of cultural adaptations, has spread over the whole globe, survived several ice ages, and created stupendous artifacts.

We are taught (by the Book of Ecclesiastes and the second law of thermodynamics) that the world of matter and energy falls in the natural course of things from order into disorder. But life reveals the inherent countercurrent to this tendency, transforming matter and energy into more and more organized patterns through the ongoing game of evolution. This proliferation of variety seems to be self-energizing, self-motivating, and self-enriching, like play itself.

There is a German word, funktionslust, which means the pleasure of doing, of producing an effect, as distinct from the pleasure of attaining the effect or having something. Creativity exists in the searching even more than in the finding or being found. We take pleasure in energetic repetition, practice, ritual. As play, the act is its own destination. The focus is on process, not product. Play is intrinsically satisfying. It is not conditioned on anything else. Play, creativity, art, spontaneity, all these experiences are their own rewards and are blocked when we perform for reward or punishment, profit or loss. For this reason, "Man cannot live by bread (or even peppermints) alone.

posted by bluematrix at 11/21/05 11:43 | link | comments (2)

well that was pretty damn fun.

day one found my sister and i checking into a hotel right on venice beach around sunset. once we got settled in and had a bite to eat we went out to walk the strip - though being a sunday nite, most of the vendors and street performers and artists had packed it in. in the darkness, the sound of many drums carried across the sand and we soon found ourselves in a very eclectic group of 100 people or so on the beach near the shore, most of whom were banging on some form of drum. very burning man-like.

day two found us traveling north up highway 1 (the road that hugs the entire western u.s. coast) out of LA, past malibu. mile after beautiful mile of mountains on our right and pacific ocean on our left. we stopped to eat, drink and be merry at a small beach called el capitan, and were entertained by a pod of dolphins, jumping and swimming. shortly after leaving, we bought some fresh strawberries near an immense field of them before turning inwards past miles of vineyards near san luis obispo. since it was dark, we started partying at 8am, and we were tired of driving, we found a hotel in some cattle smelling town not far from sequoia national park.

day three was a short morning drive to sequoia where the largest living thing in the world awaited us. on the way to the general sherman tree, we saw a bear not 15' from the road. bears, being one of the few critters left in north america that would have no qualms eating me, make me nervous. good thing i was already on my second stiff drink when i saw it. the seven mile hike thru the forest of the biggest fucking trees imaginable, was long and incredible. after staggering back to the car and driving for a few more hours south, we crashed in a very odd little town called tehachapi.

day four was yet another wake and bake and find yourself in killer national park, this time joshua tree. which describes the type of tree, not a specific one we found. yet another beautiful california stroll - this time thru weird rock formations that led to a small lake out in the middle of desert, complete with small ducks called 'coots'. after an unbelievable sunset we stopped for the night in palm springs and drank too much chianti at an italian restaurant.

the last day was a chilly drive thru the san bernardino mountains, then fighting LA traffic to return the rental car and catch our flight back.

a most excellent adventure.

posted by bluematrix at 11/14/05 21:34 | link | comments (3)

okay, so i couldn't find anyone to go to the austin city limits music festival last month. but tomorrow i leave for a week of exploring something that should prove even better. first up is my favorite spot in LA - venice beach. lots of wackos there and i fit right in. also i might get to hook up with the actress who played mary in my rock opera who's excited about some work she's getting on 'desperate housewives'. then up the coast for a bit before turning inland and the overwhelming beauty of southern california.

sometime in the next few days i plan on seeing the oldest living thing - a bush out in the desert that is 11,000 years old. then several hours (or days depending on what we feel like) later to what used to be the oldest living thing, but is still the tallest and most massive..a tree, named General Sherman, is 272 feet (83 m) tall with a massive trunk 35 feet (11 m) in diameter and 109 feet (33 m) in circumference at the base. It has been estimated to contain over 600,000 board feet of timber, enough to build 120 average-sized houses. The trunk alone weighs nearly 1400 tons. By way of comparison, this is roughly equivalent to 15 adult blue whales, 10 diesel-electric train locomotives, or 25 average-sized military battle tanks.

should be mighty. plus i've made a bunch of compilation cd's and party goodies for the drive. yea baby.

in reading one of the blogs i link to (see american in thailand) i came across this eloquent piece about travel...

This poem, entitled Wanderer, appears in Jason Elliott's excellent account of his travels in Afghanistan called An Unexpected Light.

Wanderer

I have always wanted to sail the south seas, but I can't afford it.

What these people can't afford is not to go. The are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of "security", and in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine - and before we know it our lives are gone.

What does a person need - really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in and some form of working activity that will yeild a sense of accomplishment. That's all - in the material sense. And we know it, but we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade.

The years thunder by, the dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it the tomb is sealed.

Where then lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be; bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life...?

posted by bluematrix at 11/05/05 19:20 | link | comments (3)

Each piece of music we play, each dance, each drawing, each episode of life, reflects our own mind back at us, complete with all its imperfections. As we spontaneously create, we are like the oriental calligraphers, where not a single mark or line can be erased. The calligrapher treats space as though it were time. Each stroke is unique and imperfect, forever frozen on the thin paper. These minute imperfections of body, speech, mind, and movement are what we call individual 'style', the vehicle thru which the self moves and manifests itself.

The essence of style is this: we have something in us, about us; it can be called many things, but for now lets call it our original nature. We are born with it, but also as we grow up, we accommodate to the patterns and habits of our culture, family, physical environment and the daily business of our life we have taken on. Everything we do and are - our handwriting, our voice, the way we talk, these are all symptomatic of our original nature and reflect our personal style. Compare the impulsive scrawls and hen scratches of Beethoven's musical handwriting to Bach's tidiness. Style and personality came thru with every mark they made. Your style is no better and no worse - listen and cultivate the uniqueness in your original nature and watch your style blossom. (more on this in this great book i'm reading called Free Play)

posted by bluematrix at 11/02/05 09:29 | link | comments (1)