Gus found peace dreaming he was dead

Summer solstice, 2007. As the evening came on we spoke of dreams. We ate. We sipped wine with the maker. The maker’s wife told us stories of nuns. Nuns who unknowingly ventured back and within, and though afraid, dreamed. They dreamed of a time before nuns, a time of maypole dancing, of stone monuments, of bonfires, of celestial alignments, of harvests, antlers and a shining moon burning against a setting blue sky.

All good things, Wig

Hierarchies

“The biggest time-sink in America is email categorization”

I don’t know who said this. I don’t care. Over the last month I’ve found myself inching closer and closer to my computer screen. This always happens at this time of year. I used to think it was just something in the air; the longer days, brighter sun and a need to adjust my screen contrast and brightness. I’ve come to learn that this isn’t it. Nope. Around this time of the year I just begin to really hate my messed up email filing system. I hate the one that holds my network and local files all-year round.

I can’t find a thing. I sit for minutes, tens of minutes, eyes squinting, neck straining, my stomach pressed against the desk, my hand palming the mouse with the poise and grace of an NBA all-star clutch player with the shot clock running down. My finger hovers and - click!- . Folders cascade open. I lean in -click!- files ripple open. No good. –click!- -click!- -click!- I beginning backing out, retracing my steps to safely and logically arrive to my jumping off file folder higher up on my hierarchy.

Pick one of the following: The phone rings, a new email pings in, someone prairie dogs over the top of a cubical wall, I have to pee, someone signs on and my Yahoo IM announces it to me, I rub my burning eyes, it is lunch time, I look at my watch hoping it is lunch time, I stand up to stretch my legs, I check my to-do list on the white board near my desk, I prairie dog over the cubical wall, I look at my visa statement, I daydream about my weekend,…the phone rings.

It isn’t that I’m easily distracted. I’m just busy.

Regardless of the interruption, when I return the scent has run cold. I still know what I was looking for but my files are so many, so complex and organized by necessity in such a moment by moment fashion that they defy logic. I have no idea where I left off. Each place I turn looks vaguely new and vaguely familiar. I’m lost. And besides, in the interim I’ve discovered five more items that need to be found.

My tactic for this works in its own haphazard way. That is up until about six month into the year. Until then (until right now) I simply keep everything in my head. This logic goes that soon enough I’ll stumble upon the original item I was looking for. And sure enough I almost always eventually do….I think. Of course, at that moment of discovery the new thing I am frustratingly sniffing around for is dropped with a delightful sigh and –click!- and the old thing becomes my new priority.

One of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings characters said “all those who wander are not lost”. I’ve been lost and I’ve wandered. I like being lost, and wandering. I just don’t want to do it in the jittery, twitchy, “why haven’t you responded to my email” overloaded digital information world.

I’m not against lists. I know we live in a society of hierarchies. Information needs to be organized. But chaos exists, my question is, how do we deal with it? Or rather, how don’t we deal with it? It would be nice if we lived in a more circular, multi-dimensional world. I can imagine a world where we thought in circles and not lines. How different would our world be if we thought in dimension instead of not hard and fast goals and singular outcomes?

Yesterday in my “My Retinue” blog I constructed a list. I didn’t organize it consciously. I didn’t even index my family because they are beyond indexing. Instead I just listed a bunch of people, places and things that are important to me. Today I had a number of lighthearted emails about where and how people unraveled on my list. I repeat, they were all lighthearted and good natured email that I enjoyed. My bike, last at number 43 wasn’t happy at all. This did, however, point out to me the importance of placement in our hierarchical world. If YAHOO really does mean the “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.” And my messed up outlook folders represent the old world of hierarchy that I’m completely lost in then SEARCH and by default Google represent the new world.

I increasingly send everything, personal and work, to one of my default gmail accounts. My hard drive has been indexed by the Google utility. In my gmail and desktop application I’ve begun to transition to worrying less and less around hard and fast categories. This was driven home to me a while ago when I was asked why is it that I can search for and find anything, like an out of the way Enoteco in Montepulcian, Italy amongst the billions of internet pieces of information and can’t find my journal entry or version 4 of a graphic design from last week on my hard drive with perhaps 1 or 2% of the information? The answer is SEARCH.

Relying on SEARCH, open and free, is a leap of faith. It can’t come soon enough for my email or my desktop or my information. It is a new way of thinking about information. I see those around me struggling with it everyday. We all think we are keeping up. We all know we are not. When I shove information into a digital basement I trust I’ll be able to find it again each and every time. In the old world I have to know the path and be able to retrace my steps. In the new I recollect, connect and recall. The new relies on giving up a perceived amount of personal control for a step of faith in an algorithm and a network. SEARH, and the mythical algorithm is its own sort of hierarchy. I get that. Still, next time instead of positing a list I might install a search box.

My bike, which will be searching for itself, will be much happier with the result.

All good things, Wig

My Retinue

We all have our retinue. I have mine. In school I studied the royal retinues of kings, queens, pharaohs’, heroes and gods. The existence of royal retainers and attendants is as old as kingship itself. Kings and monarchs can’t travel without the trappings of state; pomp, protection and council. In olden times, they had far more magnificence than they have now; but even in these days we see plenty of the royal retinue surrounding our leaders, celebrities and stars. What are MySpace, Facebook, Orkut, LinkedIn, and others if not places to expand and develop a modern retinue.

For awhile I played a computer game called Rome-Total War. I believe there is a sequel out now and I have to check that out sometime. RomeTW was a historically based strategic game where you attempt to conquer the world through political, economic, cultural or of course military prowess. These efforts were assisted by your leaders; generals, spies, diplomats, priests, etc… As these icons of your empire won more battles, recruited more conscripts, subdued the conquered with mercy or wrath, they attracted attendants, supporters, professionals, servants, advisors and partners, sycophants, scribes, crooks and craftsmen. Their retinue.

In the game a leaders retinue could also grow by improving city works; building churches, temples, markets, harbors, taverns, guilds, etc… and then living in and around the people and cultures that tend to accompany the institutions these buildings represented. Over time and with deeds and accomplishment mounting, leaders begin to attract to them those whom their actions reflect. And this retinue of followers increasingly influenced and represented the leaders, personality, quality and essence. Some in a retinue provided benefit, others didn’t.

I have my own retinue. Sometimes my retinue is a hodge-podge of merry pranksters, and other times they are stern voices, trusted confidants, experts, statesmen, volunteers, or humanitarians. Sometimes my own personal retinue is an experience, an event, an association, a journey (foreign and domestic) or an even a simple object. My bike is an important part of my retinue. As in the game, my retinue has rose from where I come, the things I’ve done, and the environments I’ve surrounded myself in. My retinue doesn’t traipse along behind me waiting for me to lay waste to an innocent barbarian village. Nor do they follow me shutter-clicking like the paparazzi. I'm no king, no prince, no royal. Still, I've got a retinue and they are there daily, at my side, within me, guiding.

I love to imagine and sometimes even boast that I “keep my own council”. That is true. And it is also crap. I consult my retinue all the time. Unlike a traditional retinue (“a body of retainers in attendance upon an important personage”) in the iron days of courts and kings a modern retinues can shift from moment to moment. Some of my retinue are alive, some are dead. I have many kids in my retinue too, even though I don’t have of my own. Many of my retinue reside in books or live in a distant past, or on the playgrounds of my childhood. Some of them I met during short brief campaigns, other have been around much more consistently and much more frequently than others. Some I’m not sure exist at all outside of the brief images I carry of them, the words they imparted to me, and what my memory does to them through time.

There is no right mix or magic number for a retinue. There is no way to predict outcomes and influences. My retinue tends to change, ebb and flow, contract and constrict. You can travel with an entourage of carpenters, prostitutes and fishermen, with a bus full of dope smoking groupies or with the "best & brightest" and there is no guarantee how you are going to turn out. You can travel alone with only the faint guiding words of a highland Wiseman as your only attendant or bury yourself deep within the matrix of your hometown friends, church and family. One person might end up thinking widely and the other narrowly, one enbittered and the other free. A good retinue doesn’t assure success; only that you won’t be alone. A well-rounded family, group of friends and first rate education doesn’t guarantee victory or peace or 100% correct decision making. But they sure do help when all those things go awry.

The first people in your retinue are a dice roll, your parents. You don’t get to choose them. Second are your brothers and sisters. Don’t get to choose them either. They bring with them all their retinue; wives, husbands and kids. And you end up with them too. They, happily and without exception, are the core of my retinue. Them aside here are some others,

My Retinue:

1. kids (long list)


2. my co-workers


3. my tomato plants and herbs


4. Jesse Cool & Jonah Cool


5. Louda-Bey


6. GENO


7. Dominic and Daniella and Cloe (and Curtis)


8. Keith and Carol


9. the Axemen


10. Valerie Barr


11. Justine Cassell


12. Erin Buxton


13. the judean desert


14. Ann Redelfs


15. Fran Allen
16. Suzanne


17. Karen


18. Xicanista


19. Tri-Team Peninsula


20. Hagia Sofia


21. Shirely


22. Sam


23. Education, education, education


24. Anita Borg


25. Pondok Pesantren Teburieng


26. Grace Hopper


27. you


28. Madame Clicquot


29. Tim Aline


30. Fuk


31. my history wall charts


32. Farmers Markets


33. Flea St.


34. Pak Tasirp


35. Gus Dur & Wahid Hassim


36. living writers, artist, musicians and poets (a long list)


37. dead writers, artist, musicians and poets (a longer list)


38. Todd Brown, Clyde Davidson, Dale Ruch, Jeff Simpson, etc…


39. my rice cooker


40. Tanja


41. Frisbees


42. Bapak Irfan


43. my bike

All good things, Wig

The Silent Voices of Fathers Day

My Dad is the strong silent type. He doesn’t talk much. He never did. We talked yesterday, Father’s Day, 2007. He talked quite a bit about his day. He spent the day being pampered and was served breakfast and Bloody Marys in bed. I asked him about his wife and his two new kids. He beamed a chuckling update.

We talked about last ski season and Sun Valley. That broke the ice and warmed the air even further. I’ve always been good at noodling behind his stoicism. I made him laugh about something and he asked about me. I skimmed the surface about work, recent visits by Laura, Isabel, Mason, Hugh, Scott, Anne, and Lyndsey. I told him about my tomatoes, green and hopeful on the vine.

I hear he talks more these days; paints, cuddles children, laughs, reads. I’m glad. People get softer, they open. Or they get harder, shutting. Some people remain in a range, moving tectonically, remaining “the same”. But even they are changing, slowly, receding or advancing on something. He was a lot better with me than he was with my older brothers. He was tougher on them. He learned something, opened or shut, that helped him raise me. And I needed it. Or maybe I just got lucky.

After I got off the phone with him I called my brothers; fathers. Steve was out and I got the answering machine. I left some overly gregarious exaggerated greeting and congratulations about being good father. I’m often NOT the strong silent type. At the Ketchum Grill I got the floor manager who told me Scott was too busy on the hot-line to talk. A successful chef-father creating meals for other dads.

I don’t celebrate Father’s Day, or my dad’s strong silent type. I should. It was good to hear his actual voice yesterday. I hear his silent voice plenty, even when I'm not listening. We don’t talk often, so I guess to me, he still doesn’t talk much. But I hear people change.

All good things, Wig