Nathaniel Clark

An inter­est­ing set of thoughts, com­ing up at exactly the right time as I start to chide myself about not fol­low­ing through with all my vast plans for music, for life …

Before I get into it, here’s the arti­cle:
The Willpower Para­dox from Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can, July 2010

I might expand this later, but the oper­a­tive ideas include:

1. the ‘before me’ would accom­plish less by self-direction, more by exploration.
2. The neg­a­tive of this was: things could end up half-assed, if I didn’t push to con­clu­sion; and also, I took a lot of direc­tion from exte­rior sources (espe­cially insis­tent peo­ple and con­structed, fan­tas­ti­cal mod­els (like, ‘rock star’)).
3. The ‘recent me’ has been try­ing the oppo­site — exten­sive plan­ning, self-imposed dead­lines, revi­sion­ing, etc. (which has been frus­trat­ing and dis­ap­point­ing, and leads to inner rebel­lions thru the cracks).
4. The ‘recent-recent me’ has been ques­tion­ing this, and now (per­haps because I opened up myself to dis­cov­ery) a flood of infor­ma­tion and stim­uli has swept in to help (like this article).

Now — the arti­cle isn’t con­clu­sive. In fact, the exper­i­ment is a bit nar­row, and some com­menters point out some ques­tions that I think are relevant…

But I still get fired up at the poten­tial con­fir­ma­tion– and to wrap it up, I might talk about “Night Ski­ing” and how much we know by guessing.

I just have to post my lat­est horo­scope from Free Will Astrology

Here’s the really good news: CIA direc­tor Leon Panetta says there are fewer than 100 Al-Qaeda com­bat­ants in Afghanistan. Here’s the utterly con­fus­ing news: The U.S has over 94,000 highly trained human beings in Afghanistan whose express pur­pose is to destroy Al-Qaeda. I bring this up as a prod to get you to ques­tion your own allot­ment of mar­tial force, Gem­ini. You def­i­nitely need to make sure you have a lav­ish reserve of fight­ing spirit primed to serve your high­est goals. Just make sure, please, that it’s pointed in the right direction

So, a fine repast of words to break the fast of a colder night, fol­low­ing on the heels of the dark cof­fee of morn­ing. Echoes of some of the ecsta­tic ver­biage I myself have employed back in the vision­ary days of music and art. It’s a nice part­ner to the well­spring of moti­va­tion I feel this morn­ing, com­ing as I am out of a cloy­ing blan­ket of ill­ness. Things never look so clear, and hands are never so pur­pose­ful, as on the morn­ing after. So fit­ting to catch an affir­ma­tion on a day such as this:

This is my liv­ing faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to ques­tion, explore, exper­i­ment, expe­ri­ence, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, lis­ten, argue, speak, write, read, draw, pro­voke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, cre­ate, con­front, con­found, walk back, walk for­ward, cir­cle, hide, and seek. To seek: to embrace the ques­tions, be wary of answers.
- Terry Tem­pest Williams

Now, to dive into the com­putur­gi­cal world of ‘code’, where every word itself is an action, not trans­mit­ting so much as instruct­ing. More later.

Step­ping into a world of typog­ra­phy and orga­ni­za­tion, these have been the nodes of inter­est lately:

http://data.worldbank.org/
http://www.thenewhumanism.org/
http://www.npr.org/

This is a rough/simple ver­sion of where we are — sit­ting a few long blocks down from the For­bid­den City and Tiana­men, and right at the cross­roads of some heavy shop­ping areas. Ear­lier research sug­gests — though I can­not be sure — that the highly rated Da Dong Roast Duck restau­rant is very very close. Will con­firm tomor­row. Here’s the obviously-off-but-close plot of the path to the mythic Duck: google map.

Bad sleep the night before (what’s new?). Long long day of pack­ing, cook­ing baby food, sort­ing clothes. Baba help­ing with Lushkin. Katya “why can’t we ever do any­thing on time?”. Finally out the door, almost 7pm. Night drive to LA. “Munis” in the back — Mon­sters Inc. — red bulls in the cen­ter col­umn. In & Out on Ingle­wood Ave. — Katya wanted cheese­burger, didn’t real­ize. Ordered cheese­burger for myself, fries for her. Drop off Katya, Lucian, and Iryna at the LAX Ter­mi­nal 2 for Air China — drive to Long Term Park­ing. Change clothes under bridge. Wait for shut­tle — real­ize I for­got belt. Ran back to High­lander — missed shut­tle. Got belt. Wait­ing for shut­tle — Katya calls for water. Raced to High­lander, this time make it back to shut­tle. Shut­tle trav­els for incred­i­bly long time through the largest park­ing lot on earth — only to dump us off 100 yards from where I got on, to catch an actual bus to LAX :(

Get to Air China, no wait, up to desk — reser­va­tions are can­celled and no one knows why. Call Natashka in China — she’s busy work­ing magic over phone, last minute tick­ets… Katya some tears “why can’t we do any­thing right?”. Last minute before the tick­et­ing closes, con­fir­ma­tion comes through — we have tick­ets. Race through 1st secu­rity, then out to the gate secu­rity. Send Katya through first to inter­cept bags on the other side — real­iz­ing we have way too many bags for com­fort. Fam­ily becomes divided — Iryna with black back­pack get­ting man­u­ally screened, me with the baby food which must be man­u­ally tested … katya scram­bling to gather up all the bags, shoes, belts, etc.

Fam­ily recon­venes after secu­rity — Iryna sends Katya to buy water… young ciunter per­son from Air China comes to us — “we’re look­ing for you because you haven’t checked in at the gate yet.” She helps us to the gate — everyone’s already on board. we basi­cally col­lapse in cor­doned off area before the gate –all our stuff is over­flow­ing, blan­kets trail­ing, and Iryna wants food for the flight. They try to assure her there’s food on the plane and she unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cally agrees (she’s over-freaked at this point). We trun­dle on the plane with so much stuff in tow — car seat hang­ing, bags off shoul­der, blan­kets flow­ing, etc. — I am over-irritated with the amount of stuff, the jam­ming in the over­heads, the stum­bling over people.….….

spent long time get­ting car seat secured — finally able to tighten belt (but in a way that made it so so hard to open later). get baby in, baby freak­ing out more than a lit­tle, every­one finally shoved into their seats, take off.

baby doesn’t last too too long — though baby in seat behind strikes up a con­ver­sa­tion with him, they bond over the sin­gle fin­ger “1” … he gets very tired and cries — iryna tries to put him to sleep — arm rests don’t raise up in the front/bulkhead seats. Iryna lies Lucian on ground — stew­ardess says “you can’t do that — against reg­u­la­tions” iryna says — “only for a lit­tle bit” stew­ardess says “ok”.

they bring bassinet out — doens’t work. Iryna finally gets crew to switch her with oth­ers — so she can lay Lucian down on seats. two young chi­nese men come up and sit next to katya and i — iryna and lucian go back to 3 seats in a row. Iryna puts baby to sleep.

Katya musci and doz­ing. Me, can’t sleep. check on iryna & baby. watch weird desert city kung fu movie. mummy ban­dage fight. incred­i­ble tea. Liked sesame cookie — told stew­ardess — she sayd “really? maybe u just really hun­gry”. Air China the mosst help­ful ever experienced.

long night. no real sleep. iryna han­dles baby poop and food with usual exper­tise. she is amzing.

Arrive early morn­ing, bei­jing. amaz­ing air­port– shiny, lights, curved space. empty, walk thru entry/passports. gather lug­gage, stand in tran­fer line a few min­utes then real­ize… then go out thru cus­toms no problem.

Nataliya & Shu shu wait­ing with cof­fee (later learned this was bought night before, and reheated in AM). blue gumby-like mas­cot for Shang­hai … lucian likes … high fives.

hugs, laugh­ter, walk to car. car seat jammed in. drive from air­port to bei­jing down­town — first looks like Upstate NY, with some curved roofs every so often– same trees, brown col­ors, small snow, old indus­trial build­ings. Many nests in tree-top. License plates have eng­lish let­ters, surprised.

Get­ting ready– small, agile lap­top. Online back­ups we hope we can access. Installing server on lap­top to run dev sites. Drink­ing water.

Off to a soar­ing start, though sleep is still a cor­ru­gated sur­face. Pack­ing it up, pack­ing it in, try­ing to stream­line yet still be com­pre­hen­sive. Think­ing that expec­ta­tions are like putting a soft blan­ket on the future, but the future is like the cold vein of air that inevitably creeps in. Also thinking:

A mode is just a sequence of steps
– Nathaniel S. Clark

Try­ing to weave some new modes from old thread, to mix metaphors joy­fully. The wind is blow­ing; it’s going to be tumultuous.

I keep for­get­ting to men­tion (to the noos­phere in gen­eral) the “bloom”: here in the palm-and-desert aerie, we have the bless­ing of an early bloom.

This is always a beau­ti­ful shock to my inner-climate-sense, since I grew up in {was forged in the Iro­quois fires of} Upstate New York {and also sub­se­quently in the Mohi­can Val­ley of Waste­field, MA} where Feb­ru­ary is still bit­terly cold, and March is, more often than not, a slug­gish and grimy old Lion. Mean­ing: my inner senses do not ever expect to see soft green buds, light pur­ple umbrella-flowers, explo­sions of flower-cones, or rounded peaks of bell-like petals dot­ting the land­scape. But here they are, in this beau­ti­ful hybrid world of South­ern California.

Walk­ing through our favorite desert-in-miniature a few days ago, we were impressed to see the Yucca bell-towers, the Night­shade, the African Vio­lets, and the feral spike-balls of the Wild Cucum­ber. And, while not exactly a flower (though bear­ing a small tuft of flow­ers at the end of a stalk), the black sage has run ram­pant, weav­ing ten­drils of its par­tic­u­lar dry desert spice through the warm air.

I can’t help but wax a lit­tle poetic — it puts me in such a reverie, even while remem­ber­ing it.

More to write, more to remem­ber– but the day has started, so here we go.