"ALGORTHMS" 3/14/2016

There once was a man that tried to teach me how to solve a Rubik’s cube. I was not receptive. Years later, I do not know what sparked me to pick one up. But I did. Many youtube videos, colored sketches, and google searches later, I taught myself how to solve one. At first, each algorithm was an enormous feat. I was afraid to proceed to the next because of messing up the levels I had already solved, (with much help from the university of YouTube). Eventually, I was solving time after time. Without lubricant, the squares began to loosen themselves up.  My record time is a little over 90 seconds. And that is nothing in the world of speed solving.
 
I am currently flunking the only math course I need to stay in school. I am not a mathematician in any way (despite being attracted to it as a universal language), but the way I view the cube is through language, color, and movement. Something about it feels analogous to the world of fine art and communication. I am not my own puzzle, but sometimes the experiences I go through feel like a never-ending sequence of algorithms that I am desperately trying to acclimate myself to.

I’ve solved this children’s toy I don’t know how many times. I love to whip it out to show off because so many people tend to project lack of understanding onto nothing more than stack of 27 colorful cubes. What I have found from solving something I have no real business solving other than to rub it in other people's faces, is that the cube is not what's complicated. It's the human mind that is complicated. 

It’s not the feeling of solving it for people or even for me in my own time, that I love. It’s all that nonsense in the middle: the time and the journey that changes each time. The thing I’ve always loved most about the Rubik’s cube is that you build from the centerpieces first, then onto the edges.  My only advice to solving one is to keep in mind: the first algorithm I ever memorized, is the same as the last.

That's the only technical thing I keep in mind when solving it. The rest is out the window.
 

ⓣⓞⓐⓢⓣ M A S T E R speeches https://20atapodiumblog.wordpress.com/

Ⓟ I N T E R E S T https://www.pinterest.com/sydneyhall2000/my-latte-art/

No Sunset Like a Malibu Sunset 4/25/16

Once upon a time, I hopped a flight to Cali. I boarded my bus, one of 2 passengers, not including the driver. We road into Port Hueneme as I sang quietly to Marvin Gaye's Sexual Healing. The driver asked if I was a singer. I laughed and put my ear buds back in. I spent some time with my Auntie Darlene and Uncle Terry. They taught me a plethora about history. I travel to be a linguist. They travel to be historians. We talked about space stuff too, and more about history. They'd had alot to share about history, of different places around the world. It made me think twice about how I choose to travel on my next trip. We ate pasta, drank cream sodas, toured Port Hueneme,  Malibu, Venice Beach, Lala land, Ventura, Hollywood, Santa Monica.  I had a great conversation with one of my relatives about gentrification/over-development and real estate over an unexpected smoke. My cousin is a world renowned surfer and her entire family tandem surfs. She was even sponsored bySector 9 the longboard/skateboard company of my dreams. They let me long board a bit around their back yard.

Terry, Darlene and me listened to a lot of Beach Boys, Yardbirds, Smokey and the Miracles, Paul Simon, The Beatles. We watched a documentary about Both eras of the Bee  Gees. Terry likes to play bass, Darlene had a Zither very similar to the one I had at home. We floated in and out of stores and beaches and talked to new faces. I exchanged information and climbed the giant sandhill off PCH near Mugu Rock. I gave away an American Spirit to some guy who serenaded Darlene and I with his own version of Sublime on the beach right before I stripped down to my bikini and dunked my head into the water as I balanced the soles of my feet on pointy rocks. There were times when I just kept quiet. And listened to Rhye on the roads while we road through mountains and valleys. My favorite memories were SLEEPING effortlessly and picking lemons from a lemon tree. The last photo I took was from a disposable at Ventura. On my flight back, I reread Khalil Gibran's, The Prophet. It's the only thing I've ever reread in my life. Upon landing, there was an elderly couple next to me holding hands as they slept and the plane jerked back and fourth.

It's amazing, the moments you capture without other people noticing. I like to notice people and places. I see things that I want to write down. I saw that in Southern Cali, the sun and the moon shine at the same time. No matter where you are.

I've noticed on every flight I've ever been on, whether it's east coast, west coast, China, Mexico, or Montreal, the weather will never change the fact that the sun and the stars remain glistening above the skies we think we know so well. There could be rain, sleet, snow, or lightening. We've seen it all. But some things will never change.

"Je Pense A Toi" 5/1/16

This is going to come off pretentious: but I just dish on phone etiquette for a minute? Text messages are cheap, emoji's are way too addictive, and guessing the intent of every other sentence makes me crazy. I can't stand applications any more, they take up a lot of data, and I can never remember any of my passwords.

It may be a little odd but I'm still in the 90s era of typical phone calls, post cards, and packages in the mail. I love the unexpected, especially when it's (dare I say), anachronistic. When I lived in Montreal, my Nana and I used to be pen pals. Her idea. It was the highlight of my day opening up letters upon letters of her perfectly hand written calligraphy. I love having pen pals abroad. It's always refreshing to get notified of a postcard or package that came in it's own time from somebody just wanting to check in and see what's up. I get pretty mid-evil with my letters, it's another art expression. I send film photographs, music, jewelry, and drawings. I've always felt it was the best way to show somebody that you are thinking of them. Contrary to what technology tells me, I still believe in the power of audible words, fancy cursive, and sloppy handwritten notes. Given the age we live in, it's almost en even more extraordinary gesture than it was back in the day. Take time out of your busy techno lives,let your friends and family know that you're thinking of them.

The Sandlot 4/29/16

(Click here for nostalgia)

Sometimes I question the popular mantra "forgive and forget". I don't think you can forget a blow so critical you thought about forgiving someone for it. Still, I do believe in giving grace. I loved that time Obama delivered an oratory on "Amazing Grace". I was moved to tears because grace is something undeserved but I never like to carry anger with me. None of us should. When you truly forgive someone for something, it's like you are setting yourself free from the injury of what they did. I know it's hard, but when it's especially hard to set yourself free, it helps to think about all the times you were at an earlier stage of your evolution and people forgave you for it. 

I was discussing with a friend recently: how many times are you willing to forgive someone? As I recall she said 2, and going any further would make you into the fool. I think that's true also of many scenarios. I like to split the question down the middle, how many strikes will you forgive someone for? And how many strikes before you walk?  I like to say ∞ to forgiving, to save you the trouble of lying awake at night in anguish indefinitely. However, for that last part, 2 maybe? I mean, that seems reasonable to me.

"Oh La La"- Faces 4/29/16

I've been thinking a lot about remorse and how much of mine is to time I'll never get back. First-times I'll never get back. Moments that could have been magic.

Having the ability to just be in the present is easier said than done (in my case at least)...but wouldn't life be much cooler if we lived at a higher dimension? We could pick and choose our moments. Even those that had gone. I know it's all too human to discuss, as everyone feels this way to some extent, but these days I find myself saying more and more, how I would have loved to have chosen differently, said differently, done things a little differently. If I did, who would I be and what would the world be? Would there have been a butterfly effect that rippled across the universe? I've lied awake wondering what all of life might be like if I'd changed my mind about things, or better, made it up.

Serving and Serving 5/5/16

This message was given to me on a receipt from one of my favorite customers. I cannot remember what it means. Something about old and new friendships.

I was having a talk with my roommate the other night about the kind of humanitarian work she does. Sometimes I feel like the work that matters the most you do for free, or for a stipend, or for not very much. It's one of those backwards things about life I think. When people in casual conversation ask you how much you get paid and you can't give them an answer. The hardest and most humbling work is the kind that throws you a bone. I never fancied sitting at a desk, my butt starts to get achy. Love to wear turtle necks, blazers and trousers often but not every day. I like my work to serve people, but not through a computer or over the phone. There is nothing wrong with liking that kind of thing,  I have friends who love office life.

For me, I always liked to be moving. I loved volunteering in college and even before college. You lose yourself in the greater picture of what you're doing.

There was one service job that did pay. I wasn't planting trees, raising money, or awareness. I was serving food and coffee. And I always went overtime, making fruit skewers, and writing Chinese characters in my lattes. Most people I've worked with hate serving, but I loved it right down to my very last day where unfortunately, I never said goodbye. I didn't know how to.

I loved to sit and listen to how people's day went. I mean, I had no choice. But apart from my job description, I quite enjoyed learning about other people outside of myself. I loved to learn how to say "Thank You" in another language. I infuse the game of order-taking with really cheesy jokes and quirky innuendos. As cheerfully cynical as I am, those mornings, and nights were the most magical. The pay was alright, but a part of me didn't want to leave. I loved the dim lights and annoying music playlists, the restless chatter that grew miraculously from the silence of 6am, roaring at 12 o clock noon, and simmering towards evening shift. I loved writing messages on receipts for people or reading the ones people left behind. After making a new friend through serving, I'd walk away after an elaborate goodbye and play the guessing game with myself on how they'd choose to follow-up. Will they leave a note? Will they leave a number? Will they follow me to the POS? Will they come back and sit in my section? Will they invite me to sit with them?

I felt like I had a window into people, and like I was in the midst of a grand epicenter of interwoven cultures, paradigms, ideas, and experiences.

It was always guessing. I think my favorite thing about serving people, while it was not the type of service I was used to, I still felt very close to the community and I still like to believe that whatever work I did made a difference to somebody. However small it might have been. It was the only job I held where I never knew what to expect. I was like a surfer, learning to adjust to whatever tide came my way. Even when business was so fast, and I thought I'd internally combust, I never lost sight of how a smile and simple physical or eye contact could impact somebody's day. It's the very little things. Really.

Those days were full of wonder but everything for it's time I guess. I don't know how much my spirit is worth. My work has graduated to a multitude of different projects. At one point, both community and corporate. All in all I just like doing. Whatever I do, whether or not I get paid. I wish that was how the world could be. Every so often, I have the luxury of meeting someone else who likes to just do. I'm glad that I left my job as a server. Serving in a global or political capacity is very different. It is about information, awareness, and having a platform. Yet still, when I align my experiences with volunteerism, with my mentality as a waitress, I find a profound connection with the way I've approached both. As if they were one and the same.

I am unsure whether that's a reflection of something in my nature or a commentary on the stalemate of working class America. I believe many of us ideally wish for meaning in our job description, but when work is just "work" that thing that you dread waking up for, it's common to separate work from the altruistic, meaning. Many people have mouths to feed and are struggling just to break even, Many people are trying to restructure their lives in whatever way. 

Is it possible though, that all positions no matter the pay grade (or whether or not they pay) have an essence of that fulfilling meaning? What would serving have been like had I not viewed my customers as people, and instead looked at them as dollar bills?

And I used to tell myself that until I could make enough money to live out my dream of going somewhere, Thank you, would be the next best thing to living that dream of traveling.

Hence, here are some ways to say thank you that I picked up from waiting tables:

Kitos (Finnish)
Ich Danke Ihnen(German)
Danke(German)
Dankjewel(Dutch)
Obrigada(Portuguese)
Salve( "Cheers" Portuguese)
Sante ("Cheers" French)
Grazie (Italian/Maltese)
Grazie mille (Thanks a million)
Yegeneyeley (Eritrean)
Arigato Gozaimasu(Japanese)
Domo Arigato(Japanese)
Salamat(Tagalo)
Terimah Kasih(Indonesian)
Xie Xie (Mandarin)
A Wanu Kaka (Fon)
Merci Beaucoup (French)
Tousand Tag ("A thousand Thanks" In Norwegian)
Takk(Norwegian)
Sukria (Hindi)
Chokran (Arabic/Also said in Sudan)
This (as "Thank You" and You're welcome in Sign Language)
Efharisto (Greek)
Hvala ti (Croation)
Dios bo'otik (Yucatec/Mayan)
Gamawo (Korean)
Qathlo (Klingon

I Sometimes Get the Blues 10/8/16

I've been learning the blues. What I love about this genre, is the element of call and response. Once one learns the scales, they can have their own dialogue.

Blues is soulful. It is eclectic and free, a precursor to Jazz. When it comes right down to it, sometimes I can't find it in myself to engage with people. I find myself too emotionally fragile to engage in the practice of call and response. That being said, I still need an outlet. Though I am not great (yet), blues allows me to cope under tremendous stress and sadness. Whether it's listening to "Little Wing" or practicing the A minor penatonic scale as fast as I can.

Gadamer once proposed that language, or the art of conversation, is nothing more than a volley of ideas and an expressed need to reach a conclusion. Language is a volley, a game.

When I try to emulate a call and response on my guitar, I have the power to create my own game of dialogue. I feel completely at ease, and can experience interaction in a whole new way.

The Cruel Cycle of "Sorry", The Procrastinating Place-holder for Change 5/3/16

I used to be an excessive apologizer, even when I owed no one anything. It was an unfortunate side effect of being a people pleasure, wanting to be liked, and not knowing how to handle screwing up. Until in high-school ( junior year to be exact) I had the opportunity to play, "The Lady In Blue" in For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Wasn't Enough.

My most beloved spoken word in this masterful and painfully real automatic screenplay by Shange was "Sorry". As I delivered this passionate Soliloquy wearing my mom's royal blue 80's off-shoulder dress-thing with bell sleeves the words of the Lady In Blue echoed against every rib beyond my diaphragm. Reverberating through the walls of recollection for years and years to come until one day I became the Lady in Blue. The Lady in Blue didn't need no more sorries. She just wanted people to come correct.

There are times when I do want a sorry more than anything. There are times when I spit-up 2-3 sorries a day on accident, followed by a nasty bile of self deprecatory berating. It's an awful habit, truly superfluous. But for the most part, sorry can be worse than f***. It's one of those things that people get a little bit too comfortable saying. So to you (yes you!) who find yourself on the path to being a serial apologizer, I challenge you to rinse your mouth out with soap, eat something repulsive, pop a rubber band against your wrist, or twist that tongue up in a knot--anything to prevent uttering the word sorry. Whip out your thesaurus (.com for millennials) and find a surrogate effective immediately, because If the sorry train is your main mode of transportation, you should probably get used to walking, cuz it's way more healthy. You're better off.

Because next thing you know, your sorries will be replacers for rebuttals, precursors to your excuses, and place-holders for much needed behavioral change, or worse, invitations for others to walk all over you. Sorries can even lead you to self pity for your wrong doing. Or vice versa, for others to feel justified in their wrong doing.

Don't get too comfy. Resist all temptation to let your ass sink softly into the metaphorical temperpedic cushion of "Hurt, apologize, repeat". It is now time for you to "get on with it then" and face the strange chachachanges.

Words are only sounds with attached relative meanings. They are there to help break the fall for our actions but they don't make up for them. The sad truth is, that like the Lady in Blue, some of us don't need sorry anymore. Some of us have sorry greeting us at the front door. Some of us see a little bit too much "sorry" on the daily, and it's getting to be overbearing and stalkery. Some of us got sick with the "sorry" flu and are in dior need for the master cleanse. 

As my father and his father before him put it best "Don't ever apologize. Just shut up and change your behavior." Don't let your sorry become an eventual jeremiad (thesaurus.com word of the day ya'll) for why you treat others the way you do. Don't let it be the disclaimer for your complains about yourself. Don't let it be an invitation for people to not take you seriously. Just flat out eliminate it from your vocab unless it is to foreshadow change and better days...because the best way to make it up with someone you care about is simply to own up (listen to this song by Darondo) and be better. Spare others by saving yourself. Don't let your apologies keep you from evolution. 

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FUTURE PRESENT PAST.

What a convenient title to describe my 2016. I've been in the mid young adult-hood identity crisis where I am caught in a web of possibilities for my life with no reassurance of where I'm headed. I don't believe in the philosophy behind generations and shared experiences, but I am almost positive I am not the only one who feels this at some point during young adulthood and even into middle age.

I often wonder if in my younger stages, I was best off sitting back and learning from the mistakes of others.

But when I wake up and read my morning prayers, the skimm, and whatever has made the NPR headline, I have to remember that my feelings are limited to the first world. No matter what chaos we attribute to the world, no matter where we are, it could always be worse. It's important not only to be thankful for where you are in your present. But to be thankful for your past, and the grand abyss that lies ahead. We as people, are not our struggles. We are our truths, and our ability to open up to the world, even in pain so sharp it hurts to move. Our reality, whatever circumstances we're in is all we really have going for us. So as my friend Amy says, Own that, you have nothing to fear. Own your struggle, work your battle scars, walk confidently- into the unknown.

"Hip" 4/16/16

I've met a lot of data vacuums in life. Absorbing words off the pages of philosophy books and most likely better at math than me.

I've met a lot of travelers who have been to the Nile, over-layed in Stockholm, and experienced coffee culture in France but still cannot say thank you in any language let alone their own. You've read the classics. You've seen movies from Svankmajer to Jodorowsky. You're reluctant to volunteer a topic unless it's tailored to a big name. Reluctant to accept a rebuttal unless it's backed up with ethos. Every poem you write is on symbolism and identity. And if the struggle isn't real enough, you manufacture one.

Every sunrise has some hidden meaning for you to get introspective about. Everyone and everything that passes you by is up for your critique.

You think shrooms have enlightened you. I am not undermining you, but I will say, I hear way too many young folk double dutching with the word "enlightenment" these days and yet still all too prone to missing the point in any topic of conversation. It doesn't take a 12 hour trip to understand the cosmological principle.

I hear too many people frowning on public and home schoolers who's education has "failed " them or the high school/ college drop outs who "gave up". Too many drop-outs dishing on college students. Those who chose to be sedentary, or had no means to travel leisurely deemed close-minded. Those who listen to one genre of music labeled dull. Those who follow trends deemed followers...maybe. Not for me to call. I dress pretty weird, but that don't make me special.

I love astrophysics and respect quantum mechanics but I proudly own up to the fact that I haven't memorized the light-year formula (yet). I'm just as close to knowing how far Kepler 186f is from planet Earth, as I am to knowing where my degree in painting and my Chinese minor will get me in life.

But there is a difference between "education" and "foundation".  A fine line between "data" and "realness". I will say that none of my college years amounted to the one I spent working 2-3 jobs and 16 hour shifts too busy to pick up Bill Bryson books, chat about Milan Kundera, too broke to go back-packing in Laos or swimming in the Sea of Stars.

Whatever Kierkegaard passage you've memorized for cocktail hour won't mean a Thang until the words echo inside of you. I readGibran's the Prophet 3 times before I actually got over it's cryptic poetry, and allowed his words to move me. I never took hallucinogens to reach "enlightenment" but Life gave me too many Ego Deaths to allow you to pass judgement. I smoked a ton of spliffs but I was always sober when reality checked me.

Sorry world for my personal contradiction, but I find Nietzsche just okay, and I still can't spell his name right without Google. I've skimmed enough philosophy and studied enough religions to know I'm just as close to knowing whatever dharmic steps ensure I reach my purpose as Gadamer was. I make up my own philosophy through my foundational truths and that's only if I got one to tout. I may have not traveled the globe fully but I can say thank you in over 15 languages, and that I learned from bussing tables and closing out tabs at 2am in the morning.

I am not perfect and I am not better, or smarter, or anything ending in the suffix "er". What I am is hip to what I am.

So take what I'm about to say as the grain of Yes Organic salt that it is:

Data is not cache. Big words don't mean big ideas. Accolades don't make you more credible. DMT won't make you more "enlightened". Travel don't make you more worldly. Philosophy won't make you more cultured and understanding. Your tier of education or lack thereof won't guarantee your success. Clothes don't make you more special. Over-analysis don't make you deep. Ambiguity don't make you more avante-garde. Music won't make you cooler. Stop missing the point in every conversation. It's you that makes you, you.

*Glances up from computer screen and remembers this song*