If your mind were a dwelling... how it would be?

And the answer for jAz is:

Roulotte (caravana). 1955. Remedios Varo

A man with a birthday... Leonard Cohen

Happy birthday Leonard Cohen! Three years ago you turned 70 and the novelty of a new decade is fading away. But maybe it feels more like the revolution of being 23 than the slowing down of 33. One way or another we managed to celebrate it in Edmonton... one way or another.

The whole damn place goes crazy twice
and it's once for the devil and once for Christ
but the Boss don't like these dizzy heights
we're busted in the blinding lights,
busted in the blinding lights
of CLOSING TIME




"Ay, ay, ay, ay! Take this close-mouthed waltz..." wrote Federico García Lorca, and for your hero you wrote a waltz for his words, that you made yours, very yours. Not many birthdays I have been where the celebrated one gives the presents to the guests.

Perhaps that is the secret to have the guests back every year =)

Yeah I missed you since the place got wrecked
By the winds of change and the weeds of sex
looks like freedom but it feels like death
it's something in between, I guess
it's CLOSING TIME

Is email (and Facebook) taking over your time at work?

Let us face it. For those of us who have as part of our work a computer connected to Internet, the sources of distraction can be as many as how deep we are willing to dive into the web. It is not an easy situation because, as I mentioned in a previous entry, the web offers you tools that can actually improve your work and ultimately your life. But what happens when dealing with email and/or checking on Facebook at work starts to take over your production time? Well, Internet itself gave me some answers...

There is not always a clear distinction between what is a waste of your time and what can be... let's take it to an extreme, saving you to pay loads of money to a therapist because of your over-stressed life. Distractions have a healthy side and alcohol, tobacco and video games can give you a healthy happiness despite their toxicity. It turns out, as with many things, that the secret of a balanced life is in how much we "consume" of something.

With email and websites like Facebook it becomes even more blurred the distinction between good and bad. I am not going to discuss here the implications that Facebook is having in the lives of those of us who have adopted this site in a routinary basis. Let's focus instead in how to deal with email at work and hope that something can be extrapolated to other areas.

I am not re-inventing the wheel, but just passing on the advices that I read one day to tackle the amount of time spent on the email at work. In fact the original article has as title: How not to check email at work. I am going to summarize here what I have been trying to apply:

1. Turn off notifications and sometimes even keep the email manager closed.
2. Check the email when making a break and apply the 4 Ds:

• Delete it - delete if it has conveyed its purpose
  
• Do it - reply if under 2 minutes
• Delegate it - forward if actionable for someone else
• Defer it - put away [folder/star, etc.] for later

Ever tried to quit smoking or keep your visits to the gym on? Yes, it has to do with our will, identification of priorities and perception of time. I remember watching a documentary about the life of Charles Dickens where it was stated that he used to spend four hours every morning to deal with his mail. We are not as famous as him, but emails arrive quicker to our inbox these days =)

How are you dealing with email (and Facebook if it's the case!) at work?

Shopping or not to be, that is the question...

photo originally uploaded by lyzadanger

In this planet there is a land of consumerism, where plastic is a God and styrofoam containers the priests that everyday deliver to their followers lunch and coffee. A land where without a car you are nobody, the malls are churches where the faith is renovated and the energy power endless... or it seems to be...otherwise I don't explain why every night all the lights in the house are on... and appear on again in the morning despite turning them off. An electric stove can be left on without food on it and a SUV is the obvious choice when buying a car.

"And when you're out there
Without care,
Yeah, I was out of touch
But it wasn't because I didn't know enough
I just knew too much

"Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?"
Does that make me crazy?
Possibly

Jante Law

Don't think you're anyone special or that you're better than us.

The ten rules are:

1. Don't think that you are special.
2. Don't think that you are of the same standing as us.
3. Don't think that you are smarter than us.
4. Don't fancy yourself as being better than us.
5. Don't think that you know more than us.
6. Don't think that you are more important than us.
7. Don't think that you are good at anything.
8. Don't laugh at us.
9. Don't think that anyone cares about you.
10. Don't think that you can teach us anything.

In a bar in Helsinki, where you can dance Salsa, a drunk Finn approached me and with neutral tone and face said "Don't smile". Then he went back to his seat. =)

I love Scandinavians! (Specially Jenni, Sima and Chris... and you too Dulce ;-)

Dive into the web

From my first Open Diary entry to this post I have been living the Web 2.0 explosion with increasing interest and participation. Some weeks ago I changed the look of this blog taking advantage of Blogger layouts and some Ajax applications from Google. I am not any expert so I was delighted to include the video, map, and search tools that you can see here. Even more, subscribing my blog to FeedBurner made me realise how much this blog could become more part of "the web" than what I originally intended. This therapeutic exercise of writing that started for the sake of doing it (and having some "practice" for the thesis that I had to write at the time) have become a point of contact with a virtual community. It is then time to recapitulate some of the steps that I have followed...

After discovering that writing in the web can actually put you in contact with strangers I wanted to see the limits of this interaction and filled some profiles in dating sites. The frustration for not being able to actually contact other people in pay sites like Match took me to places like Plenty of fish, Person or OkCupid. This last one actually has surpassed my expectations from a dating site... which does not mean that it makes more easy to get a real life date! You still have to learn your lessons.

But the internet not only helps you to connect with others, it connects you with your life! Are you one who writes every reminder in a pace of paper that joins the bunch of others on your desk? Are you addicted to stickers? Is your agenda and address book cluttered with annotations? Do you have 567 bookmarks in your home computer (not to say the ones at work)? Do you always synchronize what you have in your computer at home with the one in your office?

Well, I could continue describing one or other aspect of my own life that has been impacted by internet. With pages like iGoogle (a kind of dashboard with all kind of useful widgets) I found that in one page and wherever there is access to internet I had my favourite RSS feeds, conversion tools, calendar, email, weather reports, etc. at hand. Then, one after the other I started using specific web tools.

I needed to keep notes of whatever I was finding while browsing internet for a particular subject. The old way of saving bookmarks was not useful. I always ended with a bunch of links, many without a clear context to tell me why I saved them in the first place when revisited later. With Google Notebook I found that I could save, organize and select the important information at the same time that I was finding it (enhanced by the add-on for the Firefox browser). Even more, if I still valued a website as to give it a bookmark I found that social bookmarking sites like Delicious could just make the trick. The trick of not only keeping bookmarks but also to organize them by labels (tags) and have them accessible from any computer connected to the web.

Word processor and Spreadsheet (former Writely now Google Documents), Photo album (Flickr for example), online Calendar and Feeds reader (e.g. Google again) are all web tools that, as I mentioned before, not only have made collaboration and exchange with others (either for work or for entertainment) a simple routine in my life but also have saved it to be drowned in this ocean of information... where of course I have decided to swim.

I use many other web tools (OK I am going to mention Remember the Milk which has cured my addiction to sticky notes), I do not know about many more and there are others in development... for sure. But let me say some final words about another "phenomena" that I also have joined: websites for social networking. They are for me a kind of synthesis of what I have loosely described above. They take the spirit of dating sites but with people that you already know, they allow you to collaborate, share or play with others not only with words and images but with whatever tools and widgets that someone develop. I am not going to explain those sites here, I think that you better find out what are those sites like Facebook, MySpace, hi5 and Bebo about by yourself. Like the slogan of the VoIP (voice over IP) provider Skype says... take a deep breath!... now dive.

A reason, a season or a lifetime

At the end of my teenage I was moved by this part of Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol:

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.


The prison (or gaol) still exists and the poem was inspired by Charles Thomas Wooldridge, Trooper of Royal Horse Guards who was executed on 7 July 1896 for the murder of his wife and I would say by Wilde's own feelings of betrayal from his former lover. Feelings that he poured out in his long, long letter De profundis.

In November 2005 I remembered Oscar Wilde writings after experiencing a broken heart.

But that experience, that encounter, taught me that she was not the one to blame but my own expectations. At the end of De profundis, Oscar Wilde realizes how much he is to be blamed for his misfortune. Later I would put in words my own realizations here helped by other books and movies. A final conclusion of what I mean with saying that love is the journey not the destination came in another post.

Last week I received this quotation. It summarizes what I have learned since that night of November 2005:

People come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime.
When you know which one it is, you will know what to do for that person.

When someone is in your life for a REASON, it is usually to meet a
need you have expressed. They have come to assist you through a difficulty,
to provide you with guidance and support, to aid you physically, emotionally
or spiritually. They may seem like a godsend and they are. They are there
for the reason you need them to be. Then, without any wrongdoing on your
part or at an inconvenient time, this person will say or do something to
bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk
away. Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand. What we must
realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled, their work is
done. The prayer you sent up has been answered and now it is time to move
on.

Some people come into your life for a SEASON, because your turn has
come to share, grow or learn. They bring you an experience of peace or make
you laugh. They may teach you something you have never done. They usually
give you an unbelievable amount of joy. Believe it, it is real. But only for
a season.

LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons, things you must
build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Your job is to
accept the lesson, love the person and put what you have learned to use in
all other relationships and areas of your life. It is said that love is
blind but friendship is clairvoyant.

Thank you for being a part of my life,
whether you are a reason, a season or a lifetime.

Thank YOU!

Elvira Santamaria

Last 30th of March I went to Downtown Edmonton considering that the artist Elvira Santarmaria welcomes the participation of the public. It is called action-art and in her own words it means... "a larger term than performance. It's the art of creating experiencies, meaning through feeling. Not objects, although in the process objects can appear or create an experience. Action art is actions as art."

Some minutes after my arrival I took my jacket and my shoes off and gently I made myself at home in her temporal space at Latitude 53. Thoughts started to cross my mind while I was observing her in her actions. For some moments she was reading words from a universal history book while standing in front of a big spiral made of salt scattered on the floor. In fact, in different places of the room there were other patterns made of salt that she made during her hours of activity. In some other moments she laid on the floor, gradually blowing some of the spiral, traveling from the outside towards the centre of it. This combined action of blowing and reading gave me the impression that she was erasing the words because this spiral had for me the form of the glyph that Aztec paintings used to represent someone speaking. I thought that she was also remembering the past as her selected words from the history book were flowing. Was she contemplating the past? There were certainly people contemplating her work and taking pictures of her display while she was making her way through the spiral. Was she making the way or erasing the way that history has followed? A history of creation and destruction.

At the same time that I was observing her, submerged in my thoughts, one of her salt patterns was inviting me to let the impression of my hand on it. Of course I had a debate in my mind. Should I do it or not? I believed that her work invites the audience to participate, to act. However, I felt that putting my hand on her work, out of the blue, was somehow too childish. A child does these things without thinking, not an adult. The solution to my dilemma came when I realized that being an adult does not necessarily mean that I should not do some things but it means that the how I do things is different to that of a child. Obvious as it sounds, to put this in practice requires more than thinking. I can be watching Elvira, expecting a signal that allows me to participate, the "permission from the authority", while holding my wishes to act. I can hold myself only reflecting, like others seem to be doing.

"I am not proposing people interact with me. The way to people is through my actions, how I use the space, how people can be there or feel free to leave. That's the way I invite them" she clarifies.

I sat besides the salt pattern that was inviting me to put my hand on it. It was there, it was not mine and I was not sure that it was completely hers. I decided to let myself be part of the actions, not suddenly interrupting but spending some time watching what was the dynamics of the actions taking place in the room in order to act myself. Gently, I left an impression of my hand on the salt and it really didn't look well there. Being part of something brings responsibilities. I understood that one of the beauties of her apparent simple and futile pattern was due to the time that she spent doing it. As she pointed out in her lecture days before in the University, the stress is not in what to do but how to do it, completely present, with dedication and giving the appropriate time. I would like to eat my meals in the same way that she works.

My intervention in her space made me part of it, only in terms of how I wanted to be there. With the best of my intuition I inserted myself in the dynamics of the room starting to modified my hand print to better suit her pattern.

She and I speak Spanish and nevertheless, there we were, in an English speaking environment. Perhaps in her blows of the spiral she was erasing a language of words in favour of a language of responsible communitarian actions.