UNLEASHED, UNCUT, UNREAD



5.26.2007

Dotted lines

Listen to the brambles and gravel crunch underneath the tires as you pull away from the curb. Feel the engine spit and gurgle while it awakens from its nap. See familiarity slip away in your rearview mirror as you round the corner. Taste the gusts of air sneak in through an open window. Smell diesel and hot asphalt and oak trees and dry grasses blend into a perfume of motion.

The road opens its arms and welcomes you into its universe.

What outwardly lookes like escapism is, in reality, an avenue to real introspection. You get to it by getting away from it. This is widdling away the distracting minutiae and focusing on the bigger picture.

This is the crucial combination of meditation's repetition and adventure's novelty: Dotted lines and whitewater. Dotted lines and skylines. Dotted lines and diners. Dotted lines and rolling green hills. Dotted lines and pink semis. Dotted lines and old friends in new lives. Dotted lines and new friends. Dotted lines and revelations, large and small.

Connection from disconnection.

Let me engage in this world, but remind me why I'm doing what I'm doing. Yank me away from my world and let me see another existence. Strip away preconceptions and blase dismissals. Usher me back to my world refreshed and enlightened.

I never found in a church what I find on the road. Maybe our church just doesn't have a roof.

So, here's to you, Caretaker of Ruth.

5.22.2007

4 notes

1. Those subway and sewer vents in downtown are veritable chasms whispering my siren song. I'm not convinced that I won't plummet to my demise some day walking over those evil grates but I'll be damned if i'm not gonna risk it. I've observed the plight of my chewing gum and it's not pretty. But that's why I carry around my Mary Poppins umbrella. Well, one of the reasons I carry around my Mary Poppins umbrella.
2. The NBA playoffs are no longer my friend. I had three teams that I was really excited about watching. All three lost last round. Not only that, they either played half-ass or suffered the pangs and arrows of outrageous officiating. The only thing I can fall back on now are my childhood sweethearts, the Utah Jazz, which captivated every soon-to-be-five-eleven-white-kid-from-spokane-washington back in the day. But Mr. Stockton and his crew broke my heart too many times in adolescence for me to lightly dig those pompoms out of storage.
3. I swallowed a bug while running today. That little bastard bee-lined straight for my non-existent tonsils and fulfilled his kamikaze pledge. Although I'm not convinced that dying in a violent phlegm tornado is really that honorable, I must commend him on his aim.
4. I didn't really have a fourth point. But, damn, the first three were really good. Really, really good.

5.15.2007

Tip of the day: ovens and renting

If you're like me, you're still stuck on the final legs of renting as you prepare to invest in your own palatial estate. Here's one thing to watch:

When you move into a new place, open up that compartment below the main oven chamber where many people store baking sheets, etc. Maybe, just maybe, some creative folk inhabited the apartment before you and thought it might serve as a nice receptacle for a stack of papers. Really, who could blame them? Then maybe, just maybe, you'll turn on your gas stove for a few minutes and soon find your apartment engulfed in heavy smoke. Perhaps next you'll attempt, unsuccessfully, to control the smoke and see the pleasant warm glow of orange flames issue forth from underneath your gas stove. Ooooh, delicious! In a wild, wacky, cool-aid style twist of events, maybe you'll then get the opportunity to visit with the local firefighters as they isolate and quench this nifty fire.

I've heard these stories so, kids, always keep an eye out for those little practical jokes your lovable ex-tenants might have concocted.

5.11.2007

Cicadas are coming!

Cicadas are coming! Cicadas are coming!
Hear them stomping their feet to battlecry drumming,
I fear bulbous red eyes; here’s a shiny doubloon,
Stop the swarms of doom from excavating my tomb!

The scientists lie and declare that they’re harmless,
Anxiety, stress; I’m becoming a Pharm mess!
They will steal young children and hold them for ransom,
They will devour your face, nomatter how handsome.

For seventeen years they have been hatching their plan,
But don’t let them eat me with their monstrous wingspan,
For seventeen years they have been plotting my death,
Give me electrocution or poison by meth.

Yeah, yeah, you prune the treetops and aerate my soil,
You claim to minimize bugs through ravenous toil,
Sing your own praises you contemporary plague,
Tell your all-male chorus it’s an onerous nag.

I dodged you back in DC and hail from the west,
So this will constitute my inaugural test,
Call me an alarmist, extremist, curmudgeon
But if need be I’ll slice ‘ya, dice ‘ya, and bludgeon.

5.09.2007

Strategic walking: showdown on sedgwick street

I had a terrifying experience on the hard streets of Lincoln Park the other day. There I was, minding my own business while en route to the train. And that’s when I saw that two-bit jackal of a walker: me.

You see, I walk a lot. I live in cities, mostly rely on trains and buses for longer trips, then fill in whatever gaps this public transportation can’t cover by trekking on foot. I like walking. It’s how I learn about neighborhoods and see the underbelly of bridges and figure out what’s in all those stores with crowded signs that I couldn’t interpret at 30 mph.

So I’ve had a lot of practice and I take pride in having honed a pretty smooth walking style that maximizes my flow and the flow of those around me. Having diligently studied the art for years, I’m keenly aware of different walking styles and I’ve worked to adapt my own approach to any circumstances.

For instance, in the subway stations and streets of New York I was a darter: you’re dealing with a swarm of people who’re out for blood, so you can’t expect anyone to yield to you. Plus, there’s rarely room to forge your own path on the perimeter of the flow so you have to work in the same spaces as the masses. That means you take the openings when you find them. You move fast, often laterally, and always have your eyes two or three people ahead to gauge the plans of those in your vicinity.

In Washington, I played the perimeter game. It's a more conservative place, so although the sidewalks and subways might have pedestrians, you could normally squeeze a bit of space to yourself on slightly riskier terrain, i.e. streets and rumble strips next to the subway tracks. It was a little dangerous, but the rewards were plentiful so if you kept your head, you’d move swiftly and safely beyond the masses.

Here in Chicago, I haven’t quite developed my local style but I’ve performed relatively well by varying my approach with a given neighborhood. All was going swimmingly until the other day:

You see, I was playing the rumination card during a mid-morning stroll, so I had my head ducked a bit and hands tucked safely in the pockets. My pace was brisk, but not dangerously so. I snuck a surreptitious glance ahead on the sidewalk-which is a crucial element of this advanced walk style. Sure enough, I spotted somebody approaching me directly about 50 feet ahead.

No big deal. The alarms didn’t blare immediately because my sentinels didn’t sniff any trouble. They’ve since been replaced. So I resumed my downward glance but was startled a moment later by some shuffling gravel ahead.

This joker was moving faster than anticipated! My nerves tingled slightly as I quickly glanced upward, still trying not to make any direct eye contact. At this moment, I realized that I’d have to make the first move to prevent certain peril. If I did it now, this guy probably wouldn’t pay any attention to our awkward situation and we’d pass each other anonymously and safely. No harm done. We still had about 35 feet of separation at this point but were closing on each other rapidly. I mustered my courage and veered slightly to the right, thinking this would suffice for a close, but safe pass.

To my horror, I realized he had made the same veer to his left. Outrageous, I thought, as we raced directly at each other. Having faced this uncomfortable situation a few times before, I felt certain there was still time. 25 feet. Alright, we both made the early calculation that this scenario could be troublesome, I thought, so we’re both going to make an equally quick decision to take the second move. This dude’s legit, but If I play my cards right, I let him make this second dodge to his right to avoid the collision. It may give him the glory, but it lets us both walk another day.

So, thinking I was the better man, I sucked it up and maintained my course. But the fires of Hades burned for me that day because this half-wit refused to take the move that I handed him on a silver platter. Instead, through his gross negligence and brazen unwillingness to make the second sway, we were careening headlong towards each other with precious seconds ticking away.

My god, I thought, this could be it. I thought back to all the training I’d done the previous years to get to this elite level of walking. Could it really all be for naught?

12 feet. 12 feet separated me from this cold-blooded killer. He’ll probably take a swipe at my knee as he passes, level me with an elbow to the temple, or poke my eyes out with a fork and leave me writhing on the cold, hard cement to be put out of my misery by a passing Fed-Ex truck, I thought. Why, oh Why?!!

Knowing it was now or never, I dropped the act and faced this insufferable fool with straight eye contact. But oh no! Oh lord, those eyes! Those eyes burning with a manic expression of fury and fear; those eyes were my eyes. This fool wasn’t a ravenous blood-thirsty contract killer out for nothing but another obituary and a stack of cash. This was just a poor novice thrown into a walk-off he’d never dreamed could have such high stakes!

6 feet. I went even farther right, he went even farther to his left. 4 feet. A shriek, a holler, bystanders covering their children’s eyes to prevent permanent trauma. Hands out of pockets, a slide to the left on loose gravel followed by an unimaginable, pivot-foot-270-degree-hop-from-the-off-foot carried out in unison like a synchronized swimming pair performing for their lives in front of an otherwise bored shah looking for two additions to his head-on-a-pike collection for the terrace of the summer palace. Scheherazade, your spirit lived with us that day.

My heart skipped a beat as I felt the cold wind of his being pass within a centimeter of me. Breath held and senses numbed, we looked at each other as if in slow motion as we dusted off our shoes and backed away slowly. There were no laughs, there was only terror. A tragedy was averted by the tiniest of margins and we were shaken beyond comprehension. I’d lost my cool, my reputation was blown in this neighborhood and I’d never walk with the same bravado that turned heads on passing buses. I was done here.

That walk could have ended it all. The rumination strut is out for now. I’ll have to rethink my entire Chicago strategy. As for that poor fool, I can only hope that he has the sense to take a gift the next time it’s offered. Maybe, just maybe, it’ll save his walk and his life.

Some Chicago shots




Picture this: an introduction to life in Chicago.

5.01.2007

How kool is your skool?

This post is like a bad infection that I really need to just belch out so I can get on with my life. This is another topic that would take a dissertation to do justice to it (not to mention it presents the dual peril of bothering friends and making me look preachy), so I hesitated about even mentioning it. The demons won’t go away, however, so I lay myself down on the chopping block…

You see, I read this article the other day that everyone else on earth, apparently, read too. I was excited because it expressed some of the visceral thoughts I have about education in America. If you’ve read my last couple posts, you know this is an issue on my mind.

The ultimate message, and the conclusion I have reached over the last few years, is this: there are incredibly gifted kids that don’t end up as undergraduates at elite colleges. This isn’t (mostly) to detract from those elite schools, but more a statement about 1) how other schools are attracting phenomenal students because it’s getting crowded at the top, 2) an acknowledgement that some bright minds simply don’t blossom (academically) during the high school years, and 3) that some sharp and driven minds don't ever find their real outlet in school. Futhermore, although this guy doesn’t say if he agrees with me or not, in my opinion, far too much emphasis is placed on standardized test scores.

Actually I can’t relate to the students he discusses who are rejected from Harvard, but have unbelievably accomplished stats. What I relate to is the author’s experience and the attitude he has about his own kids. The former do research for NASA while in high school and travel in Europe with orchestras during the summers. He and I worked in pizza restaurants, shoveled gravel, or put in sprinkler systems. Like his kids, my friends and I learned life lessons during high school by skiing on the weekends instead of doing pre-calculus homework and reading history textbooks.

My problems rest much more in undergraduate education than with graduate education. I think graduate programs do a better job of sniffing out the best candidates based on a broader set of considerations. Also, if you’re getting an advanced degree from any school, you’re probably quite driven and likely have an active mind. Furthermore, what you become during your undergraduate years (and afterwards) has much more to do with who you are, while what you become during your high school years has more to do with what you were born into.

Elite undergraduate schools serve an important role. There needs to be a place where the truly brilliant and the truly driven (or some combination of both) can congregate and push the limits of human thinking. But let me say two things: while the wealthy in this country have such an enormous advantage in training their children for these overemphasized standardized tests, getting their children into elite summer training programs, privately influencing high-level people with control over admissions, and offering to forfeit the entire $50,000 for a year in school instead of asking for grants and loans, this is simply not a meritocracy and you cannot be assured that you are giving every bright student the right consideration. Again, this doesn’t apply to everyone from wealth, but we do have a problem here. Secondly, don’t think for a second that you have such a monopoly on the best minds. You will soon be paying more attention to schools that right now fall below your radar.

To answer upfront any speculation about bias, I’ll give the disclaimer that my SAT scores were better than average but certainly not adequate to compete for the top schools. The one quite competitive school I applied to (still, a notch below the best) didn’t particularly like me and slapped me back to their waiting list. These realities haunted me for years and when I awakened intellectually in college my victories were tempered by ruinous memories of underperformance and rejection at the age of 17. Seventeen years old. It took me many years to see beyond this.

When given the chance at another standardized test (GRE), I knew deep down that it would not serve as an adequate measure of my intelligence. However, I wanted to forever quell any lingering doubts about my capabilities on this front. It was personal. So I signed up for that test, got all pumped up, memorized some vocabulary, looked over a bit of high school math, went in there, freaked out, and froze up in the middle. The computer generated scores that said I was pretty mediocre. But this time, I wasn’t having any of it. Pissed off at the world, I marched back in there, showed that test who was boss and sat back for my scores. But when the computer spat out scores that supposedly told me I should apply to really competitive grad schools, I felt anesthetized. Was this really any moment of elation?

No. Not really.

“What an empty metric”, I thought to myself as I walked the DC streets back to work. I know so many sharp thinkers with truly novel ideas who wouldn’t score well on that test for one reason or another. Or what if like me, they had a bad experience the first time and never reconciled that with another test? So I thought back to high school and how before my our schoolwide SAT prep courses (sorry, mom!) my friends and I would take beer bongs, then show up and make people laugh instead of memorizing lists of vocabulary and reviewing how to deal with an arctangent. A couple months later, we came in one Saturday morning, were convinced that we weren’t that smart by a really long test, and called it good. Maybe one or two of my friends took it again. Most of us didn’t. We had other high school stuff to attend to, just like countless other high school kids across the country. I also think back to my college years when I encountered some bonafide brilliant people that forever changed my perspective about what intelligence is and how we measure it. For various reasons, these kids weren’t at Stanford.

What I’m trying to say here is that as someone who’s scored both underwhelmingly and quite well on standardized tests, I hope I have atleast a balanced opinion (although, yes, my argument that graduate schools are more balanced with their admissions would fit nicely into my scoring history…don’t worry, I see you). When you’re 25, you have likely developed the maturity and wisdom to know that standardized tests simply cannot encapsulate the breadth of an individual’s intellectual capabilities. But when you’re 17 years old, it’s different. This metric has been so overemphasized as to devastate swarms of great, young thinkers and instill a hideous arrogance in a few others.

Although I do think genetics contributes partially to an individual’s level of intelligence, research is amassing that suggests their experiences (nurture) are atleast, if not quite a bit more so, important in molding a 17 year old’s mind. So, please, let us all stop freaking out so much about who ends up in what undergraduate school and what a kid scores on a test at the age of 17.

So, I have a couple things to say to some people who aren’t reading this:

Elite colleges (and their students…a number of which are my friends): First of all, I’m sorry but you place too much emphasis on standardized test scores. But much more importantly, there’s something else. Most of you are filled with exceedingly bright, hardworking people. I commend that. Really, I do. You, however, need to keep in mind that there are other kids in schools you wouldn’t suspect with marvelously nimble minds who, for one reason or another, didn’t draw the attention of the big names when they were 17 years old. You might be surprised to find out how little separates you from a number of those kids. So quit namedropping and keep innovating!

High schools (including teachers and parents): for the love of god, stop placing so much emphasis on these standardized tests. Instead, try to instill a love of learning in the students and teach them why learning is important and enjoyable. I promise you this will pay off eventually. Are you looking for kids who get accepted into flashy schools or are you trying to produce people who will make a real difference in the world? (no, they are certainly not mutally exclusive, but you get the picture) In my opinion, the focus on test scores distorts young minds and will backfire in the end. Not to mention, if a kid falls in love with learning on his/her own terms, the right scores will follow. This may not happen at the age of 16 or 17 because there’s lots of distractions while high school kids grapple with the transition from adolescence to adulthood including a maelstrom of physical, emotional, and mental challenges. But it will happen and that success story will trace its roots back to the foundational education you offered. And my last point, we need more innovation and less rote learning. We need analysis, not automatons. Creativity should not be squashed, but encouraged. Please, please work on this.

My two buddies from high school English class are both at Harvard now. Another brilliant friend from high school was working on installing refrigeration systems, last I heard. A couple friends have PhD’s in physics from MIT and Stanford, a couple others are budding artists working lame day jobs to pay the bills. A few people are going to medical school, a couple are farming, and some are learning about raising families while trying to excel professionally, too. The thing is, I don’t care what you are, where you are, or what you’re trying to become so long as you’re working hard to get there, applying your mind, and have a reason for what you’re doing.

If you have the opportunity to study at the best institutions in the world, damn, take it! If I get that chance, I’ll do the same thing. But just as those cherished acceptance letters wouldn’t cement my contribution to humanity, neither would a degree from a state school mean my thinking couldn’t be the most innovative around.

So, yeah, shake what your mama gave you, because she’s not gonna shake it for you.