Pig Zen

From the roof of the Terminal A parking structure at SJC, July 2008.

I wish I knew how to feel about my country on this day of celebration.  Should it be based on my own personal standing in the world?  I’m lucky enough to be doing better than most of my fellow citizens, and as a whole, everyone above the American poverty line would be a prince among 80% of the world’s people.  I try to be mindful of this and use it to keep my problems in perspective.

I was serendipitously born into a reasonably stable family in the suburbs in the richest country on earth during peacetime.  That’s just a statistical anomaly, really; it seems like basing any national pride on a fluke would be akin to a statistical fallacy.  So what does that leave?

I was in England in 2003, and my traveling companion and I were eating lunch in a little country inn.  We talked politics with the innkeeper and she seemed very curious as to why the US was doing what it was doing, but she clearly did not hold me or any American layman responsible for what was being done in our name.  The quintessential American tourist Rick Steeves went to Iran recently, and he said all the Iranians he was allowed to talk to were thrilled to meet him and showed him no hostility; they expressed the same sort of curiosity as to why anyone here would think our current foreign policy was a good idea.

The first thing I’m proud of is that we finally made Sting’s song from Cold War days come true:  everyone finally knows that their so-called national enemies love their children too, and that it’s just governments that fuck things up.  I think the United States has somehow helped spread that little kernel of truth around.  That’s kind of like being proud of helping to “adapt” the Native Americans to smallpox and syphilis, but I think it’s important.

In the early days of the Bush Administration, I had the pleasure of meeting some Moroccan people.  They were, at the time, the only people who were really happy with the American government.  Why?  Because they were able to express any unhappiness they might have with it, should they feel it.  From what I recall, they said even expressing a little displeasure with a long line at a government agency could be grounds for a visit from the secret police.  All the adults in the family had first- or second-hand knowledge of the consequences of a truly repressive regime.

The second thing I’m proud of is that I’ve never known an environment like that.  Hand-waving and rhetoric aside, I’m completely able to take the Bill of Rights for granted because I’ve never lived in a world without them.  I’m not proud of how poor of a custodian I’ve been of those freedoms, however, and I have no one to blame but myself for that.  Complacency is an underreported symptom of the western obesity epidemic and a concerted treatment protocol should begin immediately.

So those would be the verses in my version of the Lee Greenwood classic.  I hope I can be a part of writing more.

Courtyard of my apartment complex, SF Bay Area, June 2008.

Does seeing a good movie ever really make you want to go out and gorilla-produce your own masterpiece?  We watched Wall-E tonight and it kind of had that effect on me, although it also made me wish I could work on computing problems that would yield something as cool and as tangible as a feature film.  While I work at a cool place, I don’t often feel truly connected to the cool stuff that we do.  There’s two ways to look at that:  I’m stuck in a backwater or I’m not trying hard enough to get involved.

That comes back to one of those “two kinds of people” generalizations: there are those that let things happen to them, and those that make things happen.  No one can truly be completely one way or the other; even really passive people find food, and the most assertive/agressive people I know still pay taxes, but there are ways to polarize both of those things.  “I don’t know, what do you want to eat?” is a common refrain around my home, so it’s probably obvious with which group I tend to hang.

Knowing how much pressure to apply is something I struggle with constantly.  There may be things I really want, but there’s also trying and pushing too hard.  I often find myself being aggressive-passive, forf lack of the right term; I’ll push really hard to start something and then lose interest or energy shortly after I get started.  Unfortunately, I’ve gotten good enough at it that I manage to build up enough momentum at first that I can coast through.  That can appear really annoying to others because it makes it seem like everything comes easily to me.  Building up that initial momentum is hard and takes a lot out of me, so I naturally want to fall back to my passive state right afterwards.  Of course that also means I end up disappointed — no one ever gets all of what they want by having a great start, a tepid second act, and a phoned-in ending.

SF Bay Area, June 2008.

Learn your lines

“Repetition is the mother of learning” is supposedly a Russian proverb.  What do we get out of repeating things?  Are we wearing a path into our neural networks?  Does doing something over and over make it easier because we’re remembering how to do it, or is it just that we grow more comfortable with the process?

How do actors learn their lines?  How do figure skaters learn their routines?  How do painters build technique?  How do surgeons manage to stay within the usually invisible lines?  Do we ever really do something the same way twice?  Does anything ever go according to plan?  Are we actually practicing so that when it comes to do things “for real”, we’re comfortable enough with the way things are supposed to work, we’re free to improvise?

I’d never really thought of something in these terms until I tried learning some lines for an acting class.  By the time I actually gave them, the specific words themselves were no longer important.  I knw them, but when I performed them verbatim, it fell flat.  It wasn’t until I started tweaking things that I could really “own” the words.  It helps that I wasn’t reciting Shakespeare.

The same is true in so many other pursuits.  I think practice is what allows someone to know a scenario so well, she can enter it at any point, leave somewhere different, and come back to it in a third place without losing the beat.  Practice produces confidence, and so does power.  Being able to change the rules also inspires confidence — inspiration is often blocked by working within constraints.

But once that feeling of confidence becomes practiced, just like the original scenario, the constraints do become energizing rather than limiting — anyone can personalize something by coloring outside the lines; the next level of mastery involves making a statement by playing by the rules.  Moving beyond changing things just because you can is the next step.  Improvization allows for spontaneous greatness, but there’s something to be said for the well-rehearsed Shakespearian kind, too.

SF Bay Area, June 2008.

I have a lousy linear memory; at any given time, I probably wouldn’t be able to reconstruct fifteen minutes of what’s happened to me in the last day.  But there are some timelines I remember pretty well.

A while ago, one of my internet friends decided to stop by for a visit.  By then, this was not an uncommon thing for me — I’d go and visit people I’d met over the ‘net and sometimes they’d come and visit me.  All it really necessitated was making sure the spare bedroom was made up, most of the dirty dishes were in the dishwasher, and the bathroom was reasonably clean.  It made vacation planning easier and more social for people that were often less than outgoing in real life.  It was also very friendly and welcoming and generous, as that’s what online communities were like back then.

I do try to be a good host, though, so I’d spent some time at least planning what we’d do upon arrival.  I lived in a real cow town back then, so finding a decent place to get a snack after the late plane landed was a real pain.  I eventually settled on a bar just south of downtown that was reported to serve a good macaroni and cheese until midnight and had a jazz band in the lounge.  No small effort was put into making this decision — I am wont to over analyze every little thing over which I might have some control.

Being a master of the trivial, I am the most annoying tour guide.  I can’t answer substantial questions about the places I’ve lived, but I can overwhelm with random facts and obscure occurrences.  This continued as we made our way across the city and down to the bar.  There was a cover charge, but I think I had enough cash to cover both of us.  We sat at a table, and a martini and I believe a cosmopolitan were ordered.  My visitor proceeded to eat the olives out of my martini, which was fine.  I think that was the first actual martini I’d ever had.  We listened to the band in the other room, enjoyed the four-cheesy goodness, and made small talk as people do.  A second round arrived and was consumed leisurely; there was no hurry as all of this seemed quite natural.

The hour grew later and we were both tired.  I drove home and carried in the bags.  A brief tour of my stately abode was provided, and some minor unpacking and settling in took place.  I had gone out and procured a wireless access point just for this visit — previously I didn’t trust myself to be productive if infinite distraction was available from any room in the house.  Again, it all seemed so comfortable, so expected.

After a while I went into the guest room and my guest and I talked some more, but said very little.  Some other stories were told and a few secrets were shared, as friends do in the wee hours in strange places.  I sat on the floor for what seemed like an eternity and wondered why the air seemed so heavy and why those brown eyes looked so deep.  I was over analyzing again.

Then I kissed her.

And that’s a story of how people fall in love.