added some sketches of a new lux post

1 files changed, 14 insertions, 6 deletions

diff --git a/scratch.txt b/scratch.txt
index 6c837ac..e5da37c 100644
--- a/scratch.txt
+++ b/scratch.txt
@@ -214,7 +214,13 @@ People have forgotten how important the sun is. You can die from lack of sun.
 
 Every little withdrawal you can make, not only resists the system, but empowers you. Yes even tiny acts like paying cash to a person rather than swiping your implant at the self checkout screen.
 
-## A Cup of Coffee
+Someone stopped by the bus the other day to talk about it. I don't really recall what we said, probably started with the year, then the engine, then other stuff, then he said something someone else said to me once before: thanks for keeping it going.
+
+I like that. I like that there are people who are just glad to know that things like the bus are out there. I understand how they feel because I fee the same way. This evening I ran to the store and there was a 1960s Ford Bronco at the gas pump. I don't particularly like Broncos and I'd never own one, but I am glad it's out there. I don't know why I am glad. Maybe it's the connection to the past, maybe it's some kind of 
+
+Making and fixing things with purpose. Extending the life of this thing is extending its potential to the world. Repair with purpose. 
+
+## Parts of the Whole
 
 One of the interesting things about repairing engines is that they teach things about life more generally. Engines have taught me that while the parts might influence how the whole functions, all that really matters is the whole. If the whole isn't right, it doesn't matter how good the parts are.
 
@@ -224,17 +230,19 @@ This is the way of the world. Everything must work as a whole or it doesn't work
 
 Strangely, we live in an age where the dominant myth, the story most of us live by, says the exact opposite. 
 
-The myths we were handed from 17th-century culture (which is where our myths mostly begin) claim that everything can be reduced to understandable parts, dealt with at that level, and the whole will somehow benefit. The famous mechanistic universe. Anyone who has spent any time working on engines should have serious doubts about Descartes mechanistic universe. Pipe organs, which were the beginnings of the modern engine in many ways, were probably no different than internal combustion engines when it comes to mysterious failure of the parts to make a whole. Descartes, I suspect, did not turn his own wrenches.  
+The myths we were handed from 17th-century culture (which is where most of our myths begin) claim that everything can be reduced to understandable parts, dealt with at that level, and the whole will somehow benefit. The famous mechanistic universe. Anyone who has spent any time working on engines should have serious doubts about Descartes mechanistic universe. Pipe organs, which were the beginnings of the modern engine in many ways, were probably no different than internal combustion engines when it comes to mysterious failure of the parts to make a whole, which means Descartes had no excuse. Descartes, I suspect, did not turn his own wrenches.
 
-If he had he might have saved us a 400 year long detour from the reality of the world into the fantasy we currently inhabit. We do not experience the world as the sum of its part and, so far as I can tell, this is not at all how the world works. It might be nice if it were how the world works. But it doesn't. On the plus side, if the universe truly were mechanistic I don't think half the hacks and things I do to keep the bus going would work. I think this is the first clue I had that things were very different than what the stories claimed -- things that should work didn't, things that shouldn't work often do.
+If he had he might have saved us a 400-year-long detour into the fantasy world we currently inhabit. We do not experience the world as the sum of its part and, so far as I can tell, this is just not at all how the world works. It might be nice if it were how the world works. But it doesn't. On the plus side, if the universe truly were mechanistic I don't think half the hacks and things I do to keep the bus going would work. I think this is a big clue that things are very different than what the stories claim -- things that should work didn't, things that shouldn't work often do.
 
-I read a lot of writers who explore this space, the gap between myth/story and the reality we experience. There tends to be a good bit of hand wringing about how this leaves us fragmented, incapable of certain things that were easy to someone living 500, 1000, 5000 years ago when myths better matched the world. That may well be the case. Certainly what I have read of indigenous people of North America, they seemed by the large have cohesive myths that created a world in which they were... content? Where things made sense to them. 
+I read a lot of writers who explore this space, that is, the gap between myth/story and the reality we experience, and there tends to be a good bit of hand wringing about how this leaves us fragmented, incapable of certain things that were easy to someone living 500, 1000, 5000 years ago when myths better matched the world. That may well be the case. Certainly what I have read of indigenous people of North America, they seemed by the large have cohesive myths that created a world in which they were... content? Where things made sense to them. They had a place within their world that they fit into you.
 
-That would probably be nice live with, but it's not where we are now. It's not, apparently, where we need to be. We are here, which I take to mean we need to be here for some reason. Perhaps we need figure out how to either live with the gap between myth and reality or to create new myths that better match reality. Perhaps both in some cases.
+That's not where we are now. It's not, apparently, where we need to be. We are here, which I take to mean we need to be here for some reason. Perhaps we need figure out how to either live with the gap between myth and reality or to create new myths that better match reality. Perhaps both in some cases.
 
-I don't know that I am capable of creating a new myth, but one thing I can say is that you can certainly cast most of what culture handed you and get by on your own terms. It's a lot of work, and it will really bother some people (which is odd, but it happens). There a plenty of days when you think *what in the hell am I doing this for?*, but then there are far more days when you know exactly why you're doing this.
+I don't know that I am capable of creating a new myth, but one thing I can say is that you can certainly cast off the old myths. You can leave behind most of what culture handed you and get by on your own terms. It's a lot of work, and it will really bother some people (which is odd, but it happens), but it's worth if if it's something you truly want to do. There a plenty of days when you think *what in the hell am I doing this for?*, but then there are far more days when you know exactly why you're doing this.
 
+You're doing this because if the whole doesn't work then none of the parts matter. 
 
+That said, when the parts break, the whole falls apart. I've been ordering parts, slowing building up a whole. The tailpipe is at the shop several hours away, hopefully being rebuilt into a new whole. The seats are about to be pulled out and torn down and remade, whole, new.