deadlines, schmeadlines
It's hard not to look at the date and remember that I'm way behind on the book. 12 chapters. Due Sept 1 2007. So I figured one chapter a month would work nicely. Easy. So now it is February eve and I'm 2.5 chapters in, and the chapters are a bit shorter than I'd hoped. It's going to be an interesting summer. Pity my family. Better yet, invite them to come stay with you. I'll be a bit, um, grizzly. Even better, if you've got a quiet place with a coffeemaker and a wireless hookup, invite me to stay with you.
I had a long, upwind walk to work this morning, my first day back in the office after the 48 hour viral debacle that knocked me on my ass. Here was my deep thought of the morning, as I felt my long hair freeze into the front of my beard, making me look like some kind of hoary, bedraggled street person (and I liked that). Perhaps not so much a thought as a series of vaguely connected thoughts. More a tattered sheet of semi-thoughts. But I digress (and hence that deadline problem).
I think it started with Caroline's comment on the Old Man Farm blog about how intimate contact with landscape alters our relationship with time (and thank goodness for another post from the inimitable Farmer's Wife, though the sight of all those fresh-faced young WWOOFers left me feeling positively fossiline). I tried a stint on that farm once. All I was good for was staring at cows and drinking scotch. But I was there, goddamit, and I knew what Caroline meant.
Though it was different, I had a moment, after having escaped from urban chaos for almost a full year when, one morning, while walking along an Atlantic beach last year, I was struck by a thought that seemed so profound at the time that I stopped, fumbled through my pockets for a bit of paper and leaning on a big rock with the goofy but now defunct dog staring up at me in wonderment, wrote down my idea. I was convinced that by the time I got home this grand idea would have oozed away, like a Dali timepiece, and it would remind me of one of those grand visions of the universe experienced as a teenager after a nice jolt of LSD. I'd look at it in the cold reflection of a kitchen cup of coffee, scratch my head and, in the argot of the day, mutter "WTF?" It would be like the early morning in Toronto, about 30 years ago now, when I stood under a lamppost with my best friend, staring up at a sea of moving stars, laughing because we both realized that we 'got' it. All of it. (And maybe we did at the time, but the next morning all I had of 'it' was a peculiar feeling that I no longer quite fit inside my own brain properly -- as if I'd picked up the wrong shoes by mistake at a party and had worn them home). This moment on the beach was different, though. Even though I recognize that I was heavily under the influence of what I still believe is one of the most important books I've read, certainly one of the most beautiful, and one that I will read again soon (much sooner than I will ever again let any lysergic acid pass my lips -- it's got nothing left to teach me I haven't found better ways to learn), I still think I might have been on to something. And it all connects up to Old Man Farm, time, attention, and awareness.
So now here comes the weird little clang association that I don't know what to make of. We're going digital. I've spent countless more hours reading about how much of the world we're pouring into silicon and light. Computing is becoming so cheap that the Hans Moravec notion of being able to pour all of our life's experiences into silicon seems not quite as nutty as it did at the time (I sat beside Moravec at a conference once. I had no idea who he was and couldn't understand why, even though he never said much, the room fell silent when his mouth opened). We're getting better at modelling. Everything. Behaviour, brains, weather, traffic jams. Much of that is because we can get our grubby little paws on gazillions of terabytes of storage and we can move bits around faster than my lovely little Chinese hyperdaughter can smash fine china plates. Accurate modelling means that now, not only can we bottle up the past to play over and over again in achingly Technicolor detail, but we can lean into the future. We're getting better at knowing what will happen. So if we know what's about to happen, when are we? What's that Laurie Anderson lyric? "History is an angel being blown backwards into the future." In a song dedicated to Walter Benjamin. Who wrote this.
At which point, to use an ironic turn of phrase, I realized I didn't know whether I was coming or going. But I was pretty sure that those stinging little jabs of snow on my eyelids as I stumbled up the last snowbank before sliding under the wheels of a (thankfully stationary) SUV in the parking lot of my not-completely-pedestrian-friendly campus, were not the least bit digital. They were right there making my flesh hurt. And I was glad.
I had a long, upwind walk to work this morning, my first day back in the office after the 48 hour viral debacle that knocked me on my ass. Here was my deep thought of the morning, as I felt my long hair freeze into the front of my beard, making me look like some kind of hoary, bedraggled street person (and I liked that). Perhaps not so much a thought as a series of vaguely connected thoughts. More a tattered sheet of semi-thoughts. But I digress (and hence that deadline problem).
I think it started with Caroline's comment on the Old Man Farm blog about how intimate contact with landscape alters our relationship with time (and thank goodness for another post from the inimitable Farmer's Wife, though the sight of all those fresh-faced young WWOOFers left me feeling positively fossiline). I tried a stint on that farm once. All I was good for was staring at cows and drinking scotch. But I was there, goddamit, and I knew what Caroline meant.
Though it was different, I had a moment, after having escaped from urban chaos for almost a full year when, one morning, while walking along an Atlantic beach last year, I was struck by a thought that seemed so profound at the time that I stopped, fumbled through my pockets for a bit of paper and leaning on a big rock with the goofy but now defunct dog staring up at me in wonderment, wrote down my idea. I was convinced that by the time I got home this grand idea would have oozed away, like a Dali timepiece, and it would remind me of one of those grand visions of the universe experienced as a teenager after a nice jolt of LSD. I'd look at it in the cold reflection of a kitchen cup of coffee, scratch my head and, in the argot of the day, mutter "WTF?" It would be like the early morning in Toronto, about 30 years ago now, when I stood under a lamppost with my best friend, staring up at a sea of moving stars, laughing because we both realized that we 'got' it. All of it. (And maybe we did at the time, but the next morning all I had of 'it' was a peculiar feeling that I no longer quite fit inside my own brain properly -- as if I'd picked up the wrong shoes by mistake at a party and had worn them home). This moment on the beach was different, though. Even though I recognize that I was heavily under the influence of what I still believe is one of the most important books I've read, certainly one of the most beautiful, and one that I will read again soon (much sooner than I will ever again let any lysergic acid pass my lips -- it's got nothing left to teach me I haven't found better ways to learn), I still think I might have been on to something. And it all connects up to Old Man Farm, time, attention, and awareness.
So now here comes the weird little clang association that I don't know what to make of. We're going digital. I've spent countless more hours reading about how much of the world we're pouring into silicon and light. Computing is becoming so cheap that the Hans Moravec notion of being able to pour all of our life's experiences into silicon seems not quite as nutty as it did at the time (I sat beside Moravec at a conference once. I had no idea who he was and couldn't understand why, even though he never said much, the room fell silent when his mouth opened). We're getting better at modelling. Everything. Behaviour, brains, weather, traffic jams. Much of that is because we can get our grubby little paws on gazillions of terabytes of storage and we can move bits around faster than my lovely little Chinese hyperdaughter can smash fine china plates. Accurate modelling means that now, not only can we bottle up the past to play over and over again in achingly Technicolor detail, but we can lean into the future. We're getting better at knowing what will happen. So if we know what's about to happen, when are we? What's that Laurie Anderson lyric? "History is an angel being blown backwards into the future." In a song dedicated to Walter Benjamin. Who wrote this.
At which point, to use an ironic turn of phrase, I realized I didn't know whether I was coming or going. But I was pretty sure that those stinging little jabs of snow on my eyelids as I stumbled up the last snowbank before sliding under the wheels of a (thankfully stationary) SUV in the parking lot of my not-completely-pedestrian-friendly campus, were not the least bit digital. They were right there making my flesh hurt. And I was glad.
posted by Colin at 9:53 PM
3 Comments:
Come stay with me. I have excellent coffee and WiFi. I also have lots of coastline and mountains on the horizon, and bald eagles and deer. Seriously, come.
That's a brilliant offer. Better be careful -- you never know what gnarly old hippie will end up on your doorstep. I've seen your pictures, Nina -- it might be hard to leave. Got room for 8?
Eight would be a tight fit, but you don't all have to stay in my little house--there are lots of options. The offer stands. And this is gnarly old hippie heaven.
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