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diff --git a/scratch.txt b/scratch.txt index acc0af0..dc0950f 100644 --- a/scratch.txt +++ b/scratch.txt @@ -10,24 +10,18 @@ Technology is a means to an end, not an end --- -### 5 minute journal +### Yuma scene. -I am grateful for -what would make today great +lemon yellow Volkswagon Dasher. smell of radiator fluid. hot wind. simba on the floor in the only scrap of shade. inside the diner, air conditioned, cool. eating ice cream. laying down in the backseat, the windows wrapping around above me. -highlight -what did I learn today - - -### stoic version: +### stoic journal: 1. Prepare For The Day Ahead: Each morning you should prepare, plan and meditate on how you aim to act that day. You should be envisioning everything that may come and steeling yourself so you're ready to conquer it. As Seneca wrote, "The wise will start each day with the thought, 'Fortune gives us nothing which we can really own.'" Or think of Marcus’s reminder: "When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil." 2. Put The Day Up For Review: Stoicism isn't just about thinking, it's about action—and the best wayto improve is to review. Each evening you should, like Seneca did, examine your day and your actions. As he put it, "When the light has been removed and my wife has fallen silent, aware of this habit that's now mine, I examine my entire day and go back over what I've done and said, hiding nothing from myself, passing nothing by." The question should be: Did I follow my plans for the day? Was I prepared enough? What could I do better? What have I learned that will help me tomorrow? - - --- + S.M. Stirling’s characters*. “History becomes myth, myth becomes legend, and legend becomes history [as people act it out in their deeds]. Time is not a straight line. Time is a serpent.” *The character was our old friend The Wanderer, here seen as an old mountain man in a sheepskin poncho, making coffee over a campfire – who suddenly, for an instant, is also seen with long black braids, a black Stetson, and the face of Coyote Old Man. @@ -196,23 +190,62 @@ When you live in a small space you have to be organized. Everything needs a plac People have forgotten how important the sun is. You can die from lack of sun. -## cuts from wired piece -[[SEE COMMENT: In his 2010 book Shop Class as Soul Craft, Matthew Crawford sees the need to be capable of repair as more than just a desire to fix things. He sees it as a desire to escape the feeling of dependence on stuff. The more I began to work on the bus the more I understood what he meant. Your stuff will never again fail you because you can repair it. -Yet these days of high technology, products are often covered with stickers warning you that even undoing a screw will void the warranty or risk injury. Companies like John Deere have even argued that it is illegal for the owner of their machines to repair them. This is creating a world of passive consumption devoid of personal agency. Crawford calls the person who wants to fix their own stuff, the Spirited Man. This figure becomes the antidote to passive consumption. "Spiritedness, then," writes Crawford, "may be allied with a spirit of inquiry, through a desire to be master of one’s own stuff." The spirited man "hates the feeling of dependence, especially when it is a direct result of his not understanding something. So he goes home and starts taking the valve covers off his engine to investigate for himself. Maybe he has no idea what he is doing, but he trusts that whatever the problem is, he ought to be able to figure it out by his own efforts. Then again, maybe not—he may never get his valve train back together again. But he intends to go down swinging." -Since I first read Shop Class I have decided it’s better to go down swinging. It’s not just me either. I see this in the work of filmaker Van Neistat, who explicitly took the Spirited Man mantle and ran with it. But also in the thousand people without filmmaking skills who are quietly working in their yards, in their garages, at the side of the road. Shade tree mechanics. Tinkerers. Spirited men and women who want first and foremost to understand, to expand their understanding of the world around them, to know how to use the tools we toolmakers have created for ourselves. The spirited man or woman doesn’t want to be passively entertained, or coddled. They seek to take part as co-creators in the world. We’re not along for the ride, we’re here to stand at the helm, trim the sails and steer the ship.]] -[[Could cut or trim Crawford from above, and then move this paragraph here?: There aren't many Travcos left in the world, but in June of 2016, after a few months of haunting Craigslist I found one for sale in the mountains of North Carolina, in the sleepy college town of Mars Hill. A couple who restored vintage trailers found the bus somewhere in Tennessee and tried their hand at fixing it up. Then they changed their mind and put it up for sale ]] +# Stories to Tell +Every little withdrawl 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. + +## St. Andrews + +St Andrews State Park is a beautiful little postage stamp of beach off the coast of Panama City, Florida. When the sea is calm it looks almost like Thailand. + + +Despite appearances I was dreading returning to St. Andrews. We had some bad experiences with the staff on our first trip. And the campground isn't the best. Someone last time asked what was so bad about it so I climbed on top of the bus one morning and took a picture. + + +It's not awful, but if I can borrow a 60s-ism that I think is worth keeping around, the vibe is not the sort we enjoy. And the thing with the staff happened yet again. Not just to us either. + +Nearly every park employee we talked to told us something different when we'd go to move camp sites. One camp host even lied straight to our faces. He told us to go ahead and move sites and then came back and yelled at us for moving sites. This made Corrine quite livid. Do not try to gaslight my wife. + +I was less moved because I read Kafka in college, which has helped me process the post-2016 world somewhat better perhaps. If the modern U.S. state confuses you, I suggest grabbing a copy of *The Castle* or *The Trial*. They won't help you understand anything, but at least you'll know some people saw this coming. + +I finally talked to someone higher up at St. Andrews and learned the actual rules regarding moving sites. I mentioned that one of the camp hosts had lied to us. He seemed unsurprised. He even said to me, pointing the ranger badge on his shirt, "if you don't see this on their shirt, just ignore them." Two days later we saw that camp host pulling out of the campground. I have no idea if it was because of us, but I can say this: don't lie to my wife. + + + + +One day while we were at St. Andrews I went to a nearby gas station to fill up the Jeep. I went inside the building to give the cashier my money, and found several other people already in line. There was only one cashier. In front of us were three self-check out kiosks though. No one made any move toward them. We all waited for the person at the register. After a minute or two a man who'd been over at the soda machine came toward the front to pay. He looked around confusedly at those of us in line, gestured toward the self-checkout and said to no one in particular, "do you mind if I cut ahead here?" + +The young man in front of me immediately turned and smiled at the man and said, "Go right ahead." "Thanks," said the man and he stepped forward to the self-check out. He turned around as he started to ring up his fountain drink and asked the young man, "do you just not like self checkout or are you waiting in line for a reason?" + +"Last time I checked," the young man drawled, "I don't get a W2 from Racetrack, so I can't see myself doing their work for them." + +The other man chuckled, but didn't say anything. He finished checking out, and went on his way. + +I will confess I had never thought of self checkout this way, but now I can't see it any other way. It's become almost impossible for me to use the self-checkout because I just see myself willfully becoming, for a few minutes, an employee of that business. + +At the same time the man reminded me of a moment in David Foster Wallace's famous Kenyon graduation speech, *This Is Water*. Wallace talks through the sort of default patterns our minds operate on when we're tired, overworked, in a hurry, and so on. But that's the problem he argues, that this default settings we don't question get in the way of seeing something more in those moments. Stopping at the store on your way home from work at rush hour doesn't have to be a moment of consumer hell, we experience it that way because we don't have the will to see it otherwise. + +> If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important-if you want to operate on your default-setting-then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying. But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars-compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. + +I think a lot time I use those self checkout kiosks as a way to avoid having to spend another second in crowded, loud, slow, consumer hell-type situations. That's what they're there for right? To avoid having to add a cashier to what's already *by default*, at least that's the assumption, a terrible situation. But again, that's a choice. And not the only one. + +I have a note in my journal, written months before the incident above, that reads: "Every little withdrawal you can make not only resists The Machine, but empowers you. Even a tiny act, like paying cash to a person rather than swiping your implant at the self checkout screen is a choice where you can retain your humanity and the humanity of those around you." + + + + +## Q and A Bus article + -# Stories to Tell # jrnl ## Gone Fishin |