The Orange Hat

I used to consider myself an 'explorer' and my view was that of some proto Magellan or even Galileo- looking or the next big unknown and using tools and wit to get there, to see new places, and find new ideas- a Journeymen man, and the world was my great big backyard to explore before mom called me in to dinner - the fire flys still flashing  with mystery into the endless fading woods, warm at first, later snowy, and they might turn into mountains with caves or seas with fish in them.

But, that's changed, very recently. It wasn't for lack of places left to explore, but how I interacted with my explorations. I Moved to San Francisco over a year ago. Dropped into the middle of what I still thing of the 'Cult of Science,' The social group in and around Langton Labs that either directly contributes to the advancement of science and engineering, or has latched on to the idea that science is an amazing thing and even if you don't directly work in the field; you need to know all the latest trends and act like you are involved in it (which is still a little bizzar  but everybody should be allowed their desires - even wickens). There went another long sentence. I hopped around houses for a while before realizing I wasn't really trying to support myself, found a hostel to work at and scrapped along for six months getting distracted with the idea of a start up - not having the money to actually enact my ideas, and realizing that there were so many more ways to live in the world, ways to party, and things to build. Yes Build.

I always had on my list of items to make a house, a cabin, in the woods somewhere. But it wasn't until I moved to San Francisco that I saw people that were actively involved in making... things. Art, Big art, art cars, huge sets, boats, robots, 3d printers, milling, making lasers, creating web sites, coding databases. I attend events were cities were build on the water and in the desert. I made friends who had found ways not to work a job they didn't care about and make money they didn't have time to spend (or live for a short weekend or the bar after work) but found ways to make enough money to take months off, and travel all the time, and have not only work they loved, and cared about, but side projects that inspired them, and helped people.

It took me a month after burning man (easily on of the most inspirational events of my life) to realized I wanted to learn to build (all the things) a city, and learn about all the systems that it took to interact, and after a month in Haiti realized I was a bit in over my head and needed a firmer place to start (Maker/hacker spaces are a great resources if you're interested).  I even remember the New Years Eve night, when two of my best friends and I sat around our small fire, and made our promises to our self's, and what we wanted of each other. I wanted to Make. This wasn't traveling, thought that's still not far off. This was internal. This was development. This was working with my hands, and using my thoughts to find ways to interact with dirt, and trees, and tools all around me. I didn't want to go back to school, but I wanted to learn every thing I could about building, and making, and creating.

So I started a blog, which I still find to be funny things, about making daily- my goal to make one thing a day. I didn't hold to it (posting) but I did start. I even made a tree of the 'things' I wanted to make. Low tech, high tech, dirty, clean, food, mechanical. It was and is a different way of interacting. It's project based. It's creative, it's interactive, it's fun.

Once I realized I had this goal, I immediately  realized I had teachers all around me. I had access to tools. I gained mentors. I found a movement (the Maker movement) and began tinkering, and talking, and learning more about how individuals make, rather thank some fictitious factory far off in China (though I am beginning to learn more about what China actually does).

I've been going at this for almost 5 months now, and can't thing of any time that I've learned so much, or had so much to point at that I was proud of. I built this! I built that! Next week I'm taking (another) laser cutting class, we're getting a micro mill at work, I have several welding projects!

There, that's it, but it's not, it'll keep going, and damn it's fun to make.
-s

Blank pice of paper
sailing
fishing
farming
making metal
making wood
making lastic
writing
folding
drawing
steeping
cooking
crafting
communicating
value
breath
relatives
family
community
growth
graden
events
relax
breath
words that have pictures relating to them
symboles
purpose
following through

cohesiveness

music
banjo
keys
seeds


Sail boat by July

I spent the week in Atlanta for Thanksgiving seeing my parents, brother, and friends. It was a mixture of work, play, and exploration. Here are some of the highlights:

My Dad id a mycologist by training, and has recently joined a mushroom hunting club, which has inspired several trips with just our family to seek out fungus in the Atlanta Area. We explored Piedmont park, a local Decatur park, and Chatahoochee nature preserve up by 400. We found:

• 5 or 6 Richie Mushrooms in Piedmont, used for making herbal teas and seem to be the centre Chinese medicine. They seem to grow on dead or old oak trees, and have a generally dark complexion. It seems most people make Tea or syrups with them, they're not enjoyable to eat.
• A lions mane in Chatahoochee preserve, which we put on sandwiches after boiling. It was a loner, and the area had seemingly been picked through.

Ahhh... another mushroom who's name I can't remember but it was also a tea mushroom. It was somewhat funny to think that we found mostly one mushroom in each spot, but that's because we were late in the season.

As we were hiking, we also identified trees, apparently mushrooms grow on, well just about everything, but the editable ones are more likely (in the us) to grow on hardwoods. Pines have componements that end up being highly toxic to humans, and mushrooms growing on them are to be avoided.

My dad and Conor were reading a book called Myciliam Running, that gave all kinds of references to mushroom characteristics and uses. Apparently there are mushroom that absorb radioactive materials, fungus' that act as helper cells for trees, and components of mushrooms that can hold 1,000,000 times the weight of their own mass.

There was lots of talk about mushrooms this weekend, if you can tell.

Here's a leaf that I couldn't identify, so I need to look it up, while we were on our trail.


... sorry no pictures of Mushrooms!

20 day project Day 1:

Sanivation:
Continue Design question for sanivation, and found out that the ticket codes didn't work

worked at 3scan - to what end?  $$$ possibly - have a vision in mind for them, and help with the micro scope

GL: talked with Ben and Paul about ideas:
result:
- gear bank idea
- differing prices if you had gear vs didnt
- play with idea of library vs bank

SH:
talked with Eoin

Small tasks:
doc and stuff

Thoughts: find a place away from everything else to work on GL (happy place)

They went to the geysers. Exploding streams of water and steam found at 15,000 feet. So I did the only rational thing, and left to explore the salt flat alone on my rented mountain bike.

I looked at a map, saw a large area of nothing, packed my bag and headed south- some food, camera, sense and lack of direction, and water. The road headed east towards Bolivia and into the mountains. The armed police pointed me south, again, and I rode with large ore truck along the highway. The sharp cloudless sky highlighting the mud brown peaks ridges and valleys, the hays of the Santiago Andes nowhere to be found.

Small homesteads where the locals lived extended for 20 minuets or so, protected from the winds and dust by dry trees and shrubs, the trees stopped with the houses, but the shrubs kept on for much longer than expected.

After the long road left the houses and trees, the wind began and came and left from minuet to minuet for the next 5 hours. Rarely gentle, usually bitting with bits of dust and sand. I found the dirt road by following signs in Spanish. Road might have been too good a word.

Peddling in sand if fine if you keep your momentum going, but if the sand becomes too dry the tiers can sink, you lose most sense of steering and your balance is put to test. I attempted to find the ruts in the sand, not fall over, and search for flat rock to bike over and if possible avoid the bumps in the sand that are presumably made my tour buses and rented 4x4's. I found out they were made by tour bus with bike trailers and rental 4x4s, neither of which I was particularity happy to see with their dust trails making it hard to breath.

I arrived at the Oasis and ate by the non swimming pool, where guls and small birds picked at whatever lied beneath. The other pool was populated by bikini wearing sun bathers with catered lunches- I road south to be further alone, but stopped several times to take photos of the lagoons back dropped by the volcanoes, still crisp in the air, but duller in color now that the sun was higher.

I continued to ride south, still seeing the tracks, but no cars themselves. The previous lagoon had somewhere around fifty or sixty people, as before, I was alone. I sang song I though were Iron and wine, but probably didn't know the lyrics- which was fine with me. The sun beat down on my hands and neck, so I put on a ligh sweater that had a hood and thump hods to cover every bit of me.

I didn't know where I was going. South seamed good. I wanted the big nothing that others had taken pictures of, where it appears that the cracked adobe plates have been broken and flattened for endless miles, and the only change you can possibly see are the dust devils that swirl haphazardness through their playground. But I made the mistake of imagining that. What I found was a place where the shrubs continued to grow, but never larger than a few inches. Any outcropping or raised ground was a land mark, and the buildings of the previous lagoon disappeared amazingly quickly.

The road continued in dust and sand, but less than before, now more compacted dirt, which maintains it's bumpiness- they type of cyclical wave pattern that you can enjoy with each and every up and down or speed over in a car, I lacked a car, so I tired my best to avoid them.

The lagoon showed up when I found a marker that turned out to be an old chard stone structured. There were old chip wrappers and indistinguishable rubbish inside. The Vicunas off in the distance eyed me cautiously, grazing in the new grass that coated the small valley around the oasis.

following the edge of the oasis, I found the false ground, which has a thin layer of crusty must supported by the salt, but fellow away when I stepped on it.

The bike tires were fine on the road, but the crust was enough to puncture them, and later did, making it easier to leave the bike behind. The Oasis was a mix of weeds and small bushes with straw grass lining the boarders. Distant flamingos dipped their heads into the green blue water. Every step I took made a crunch, and lowered me a few inches. The sky was still jay bird blue.

I found small salt stuctures, muddy crystaline clumps of salt and dirt that made little piles in floods when the glaciers melted and the streams got bigger, I assume, unless the salt just piles up slowly, which seems difficult.

The road veered off, and I wanted to keep heading south, so I trucked into the brittle salt mounds, bike on my shoulder, careful not the rip my pants on the sharp structures. After a short distance I came on a small creek, and walked up and down it until finding a place to cross.

I was looking for nothing, still not finding it- the stupid vision of flat empty space. I had only found more and more of something. It lived here, and didn't care what I wanted or hoped. so when I found out my tube was popped after crossing a small muddy stream, the salt mounds, and wind, and occasional clump of green and tan brown that was the extent of flora here- all did...nothing.

It was a 'hummm' moment. I had an extra tire, but I was low on water, and how tired and hot I had become over the past three hours became very real. I had made an effort to leave the road, but had accidentally found it again, empty as before, but still more welcoming than the salt humps.

I changed my tire, with a brief moment of despair when I believed the tube was too small- and began my trip back north. Tired, hot, thirsty, I still had a liter of water left, but was all to aware that I was headed slightly uphill now.

I stopped at the lagoons, where the wind beat me for 30 minuets while I rested in the shade, and headed back to the sandy road. Taking what I thought would be a short cut and avoiding the highway. I stopped when I saw the car in the sand.

I don't remember their names, but the four door red something or other had been driven into the sand ruts, and the two front wheels barely touched the ground, they were trying to reverse, and all it was doing was kicking up dust. We tired to push, pull, but random items underneath, but in the end, I got their number and headed into town. Promising to call to see if they we were out yet.

After leaving them, the road got better, which was ironic, then came to a assfault intersection with no obvious path north, and my stomac started cramping. I'd never been this dehydrated, and it wasn't something to glamorize. I wanted to bend over and throw up and at the same time release the other end at the same time- with all the nothing that I had in me. I found a leatherman nockoff in the middle of the road. It didn't quench my thirst.

I knew I was in trouble, no real idea of how close I was to the town, but I kept peddling, the curve of the road headed slightly downhill, which made life more enjoyable. About this time the dust devils started picking up, and I was slightly worried about being in their path. The mix of dirt and sand, reddish in the setting sun, it was chaotic and hard to take your eyes off, a mix of awe and weariness.

By the time I reached the road, I knew I had to stop. I lied down next to some trees, there wasn't really any shade, but it didn't matter now. I stuck out my finger to the few trucks i saw passing, but no one stopped. several rental SUV's blurred passed, feelings of despair more than angry when they never slowed.

I found a house after about thirty minuets where they gave me water. The dogs barking and the little girls staring emotionless at me. We tired ot communicate, but beyond 'Aguga' there wasn't much to go on.

The ride after the two liters of water, still windy, still, hot, and uphill, was relatively easier. I returned to the hostel, found my roommates, and went straight for the water- a shower- and a long nap.

Writing Practice:

The science fiction reflection piece, Moon, is about as close as you can get to decent, authentic, science fiction in mass media. It's authentic look into what might be considered a realistic dystopia of a near future, much like Blade runner was in it's time. The characters and themes within the movie stuck home with the patient audience, and didn't over blow the plot with needless shooting or heroics.

The premiss, and if you haven't seen it, this is so full of spoilers that you should probably stop reading, involves a man, Sam, stationed on a lunar mining base for three years, and has only two weeks left to go. He is completely alone except for his robot helper Gerty who manages the general workings of the base, and his communication is all time delayed. Sam makes a trip out to one of the harvesters, crashes, and is left for dead while Gerty wakes up his clone, also Sam, and tells him to rest, that he's been in a carsh adn needs him to do some tests. The new Sam gets a little angry, and tricks gerty into letting him leave the base and ends up finding and resquing himself.

What follows is a journey of introspection and growth. Af first the two Sam's are horrified that they're even the same person, the new Sam is healthy and fit looking, and understands his predicament better than the same who's been on the moon for three years and is pale and very sickly. Younger Sam is angry, he's rejecting his reality, it sucks, and he is violent with his older clone who he views as the reality that he has to deal with. The older Sam is in placid denial, like the old man that he's portrayed to be, and still believes he's going home in a week, that all he's done is not in vain, and that there is hope for him. The dichotomy between the two, and it might just be because of my current location, reminds me of a riot where the elderly stay out believing that they were never the same as those in revolt, and the youth not understanding why their elders wouldn't do exactly what they're standing for.

The reconciliation comes from an attempt by the older Sam to placate his youthful self and attempt to see if there is anything beyond the base that he would usually travel (far beyond the harvesters) when he does find a jamming device, it's alarming and sends the older same even further out to communicate with Earth and the Daughter he though he had, who would be 3, and it turns out that she's fifteen which drives him into depression.

At this point the Sam's truly unite, acknowledging one another, the younger actually apologizes, and begins to plot how they might get back to earth. A situation which people have faces time and time again when they learn that what they had worked so hard for meant nothing, the project was scrapped, the money wasn't there, the lover died, and they have to reinvent themselves. The younger Sam devises a way so that one of them can live by going back with the ore deposits and live the life they are meant to on earth.

This is where it the similarities between Blade runner become obvious: that the clone wants what the rest of us have, or don't that subjective for a variety of reasons - but he has even less; and that's choice. He want the choice to be something other than a moon miner who's only chance was stolen by his birth.

The two Sam's discover the plot (there are countless Sam's in a hidden compartment under the base) and just hours before they're ready to pull of their plan, the older sam dies (with some indication that the clones die after three years and are incinerated) and the younger Sam takes his place to go explore earth.

The well developed character make you feel for both Sam's and the predicaments they're in. The base could easily be Plato's cave from The Republic, and the enlightenment is the earth itself (the base is on the far side of the moon). With the younger Sam pulling the older Sam into the reality that he has to face. It was a tragic moment that he died knowing the truth of his predicament, but in some way it felt good to know that he knew the truth.

The movie Moon was a enjoyable reflection and a saddening dystopia which stuck true because it isn't too far off what might be a realistic future. In the same way that other 'release' movies such as The Shawshank Redemption and La Papillon show the struggles of grasping with the idea of freedom and the desire for it, Moon creates a prison out of something that no one suspected and gives release in the most gratifying way.