Things that Fly!

Live with Secrets.

posted by Rob and Lauren @ 5:30 PM 0 comments

Oppressively Normal (or The Status Quo)

In our lives we should always be seeking out dynamic variables. Uncertainty. Change. These are not the monsters we have been taught. I've thought of a couple ideas that work around this theme of status quo.

When I was travelling I started out writing these terribly long e-mails home describing the new places I was traveling to and my personal feelings towards them. They were awesome, I loved to write them and I loved to share them with my friends. Each day I made new discoveries and marveled at the endless possibilities. After awhile I started to write home less. Everything seemed more mundane. I felt like I had gotten used to traveling and that day to day events weren't worth writing home about; they were too "Normal" an occurance to be much of a story. I stopped looking for things that excited me and found just what I was looking for. This of course didn't mean that amazing things ceased to surround me only that I stopped looking.

I have this theory that artists, painters, writers, musicians etc. must on a fundamental basis be constantly challenging the status quo. One possessing any sort of creativty stands to lose a great deal if they fall into the rigid stagnancy that "normal" advocates. They must constantly be challenging the world they live in and discovering the limitless possiblities.

I feel like a little boy constantly discovering contradictions about the world. As a culture we value the idea the we are unique individuals but in reality so few of us embrace this notion. On some level we all subscribe to a cultural dictum that praises homogenous uniformity and simulataneously acts to scandalize ideas or thoughts that are "different". The truth is that the fringe keeps this whole system aloft. If our culture didn't have a small minority of people challenging the status quo then the idea of "normal" would fall apart. People would have nothing to compare their own wretched lives to and may in turn start to actually create their own unique worlds.

I feel like I have more to write about this, but it just makes me angry thinking about it. Maybe I'll come back to it later.

posted by Rob and Lauren @ 9:21 PM 0 comments

Variations on the Word Love
This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.
Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
This word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger-
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.
(Margaret Attwood)

posted by Rob and Lauren @ 9:34 PM 0 comments

A 5 meter wave would work it's way about half way up those Palm trees. It wouuld cover pretty much the whole island.

posted by Rob and Lauren @ 4:27 PM 0 comments

Staff from two neighboring resorts having a tug-o-war on the beach just in front of the bungalows.

posted by Rob and Lauren @ 4:25 PM 0 comments

Resort I stayed at On Phi Phi Island

posted by Rob and Lauren @ 4:24 PM 0 comments

I'm Listening to Exit Music (For a Film) -By Radio Head. I'm just shaking. I just read an e-mail from my dad about the 8.9 magnitude earthquake in Indonesia. Tidal waves swept through most of south east asia. Popular resort destinations like Phuket and Ko Phi Phi and Penang were hit hard with waves of water up to 5 meters High. This all happened this morning which would have been late last night local time for Thailand.

"In the midst of the Andaman Sea on Phi Phi island -- where The Beach starring Leonardo DiCaprio was filmed -- 200 bungalows at two resorts were swept out to sea, along with some of its staff and customers."

I've walked those beaches late at night and swam in those waters. I just have this terrible image of being swept miles out to sea late at night and not being strong enough to swim back to shore. I want to say I'm so glad that I'm not there, but after traveling those places I feel such sympathy for those kind people who treated me so well during my visit. This is a great tragedy.

posted by Rob and Lauren @ 4:14 PM 0 comments

Tiny Universes

My extra large cup is half full. My socks don't match and my mittens are worn. I have a lot of scarves but none of them really match my coat. I have cold hands and a rough idea.

I'm sitting at this park bench in the city watching people walk there dogs. It's the summer and it's warm and I'm alone. I get this crazy idea about freedom. It's the actual cliche idea of freedom. It might be the only real anti-cliche, often quoted but never felt or thought about. And this idea of freedom isn't so much about freedom at all but rather the contrast of oppression versus lack of oppression.

It's a pacifist way of thinking. Probably something programmed into me through years of exposure to the culture we live in. It's not the way I think anymore. I have realized that simply because I am not beaten or made a slave does not mean that I am treated with the respect that every human being should be given. Distinctions are made and opinions of better or worse are consciously or unconsciously harbored. The world is figuring out it's place hierarchichally--Asking each other "Am I above you?" They don't ask much else.

It's hard to break that line of competitive thinking. It's hard to not just give conventional thinking a new label. If you look at everyone else like they're a sheep, then you're treating everyone with the same sort of hierarchical classification that you've tried so hard to break away from. And that's the back breaking task; looking at everyone with actual freedom. Treating everyone with the fundamental knowledge that they are human just like you. And if you're not doing this, you're not free. You're in the middle of a park in the middle of the city, contemplating your own shackles.

posted by Rob and Lauren @ 11:05 PM 0 comments

Living in the Moment - Mason Jennings

I thought I could live forever here on my own
It seemed things were so much better out here alone
A lonely dreamer, a nonbeliever, now
I'm living in the moment with the friends I love
I knew i could feel more power living life without love
So I spent my days and hours looking for heaven above
The only thing that I found was my feet on the ground, so
I'm living in the moment with the friends I love
Money, why do you say what you say, you don't mean it
Money, why do you say what you say, you don't mean it, you don't mean it
Some say we'll all be rewarded when we reach the end
And all our lives will be recorded and replayed again
One day it hit me, this ain't a movie, now
I'm living in the moment with the friends I love

posted by Rob and Lauren @ 1:59 AM 0 comments

Tumblers and onion peels

I sometimes feel as though I'm on fast approach to a short run way without landing gear down. What is it you ask that causes such a recipe for disaster? This goes back to a story about peeling onions and each new layer being more brilliantly ugly than the last, yet beautifully satisfying in its new level of ignorance (or lack of ignorance as it is). And this is the price we pay for knowledge, in that it does not come cleanly.

I've been sick like whoa the last couple days. Flu caught me on Saturday and nearly killed me Sunday. I exaggerate a little of course, though the terrible thought of "death by flu" made me more scared of my 100 degree fever than was justly warranted. I'm not usually a baby about such things but I've been going through sort of a "Die Hard" phase lately. I'm harboring deep resentment about the stagnancy of my life. Eat, work, sleep, repeat. I know it's just not living, I realize life as a robot like that is more like death than like life.

And so lying feverish on the couch hallucinating I'm a rope like box with legs and the room is a new style makeshift game of tetris, I may have come to the conclusion that living dangerously would be the new way for me to live. But really who am I kidding I live dangerously all the time. Two creams in my coffee instead of three, it was risky but I did it. Switched brands of toothpaste, they need insurance for my sort of flare. You get what I'm saying.

So along those lines of dangerously peeling onions, I feel like I'm dangerously close to living dangerously. I know I can only circle the runway so many times before I run out of fuel and crash. And what's the worse that could happen? I could die (but personal growth doesn't usually move in that direction). The plane will crash and as I drag my ass away from the wreckage an enormously larger-than-physically-possible fireball engulfs the plane and then sends fiery plumes into the sky. After that I'm free to walk around instead of being cooped up on a plane. I think I got too into the plane thing and I forgot how this analogy effects my life. It's late and I've got a flu to fight.

posted by Rob and Lauren @ 1:55 AM 3 comments

On Staying Scared

I'm listening to a Old Hurricane Blues by The Mexican Hat Band. The name says it all. I'm feeling a bit crazy but I'm, as usual, constrained to my usual avenues of dispersment. I have just walked in the door from an evening of serving at Boston Pizza. I'm still in my uniform, and my coat is still on. I feel like a soldier in a battlefield taking a quick nap before heading out back under fire. And I could leave, I could get up and walk out the door and drive all night and all day until my feet are resting on a beautiful Mexican shore. Derlict of duty as the ocean laps at my feet. But I stay.

I have just plugged in my beeping cellphone, taken my coat off and changed into some comfortable warm clothes. Possible resistance is quelled for one more night. I don't know how long I can fend off these crazy impulses. They aren't crazy because I think that they're abnormal, just that this world is crazy and it seems the sane thing to do. And maybe I'm still talking like I don't believe in myself. Maybe I should start doing the things that I think are normal. I'm crazy not to.

I've changed songs now and I'm listening to Jammin' By Bob Marley. I wish that I had some headphones so that I could play this song really loud. So that I could dance awkwardly around a short cord. Have you ever done that, danced to music only you could hear?

posted by Rob and Lauren @ 11:29 PM 0 comments

My Own Story

I watched Ocean's 12 today. It was fun and exciting and left me exhilarated. But after digesting it a little I felt kind of empty. What happened to the exhilaration? Why can't I feel like that all the time? Why do I get a feeling of enjoyment and fulfillment from watching a plethora of sexy, well dressed actors get chauffeured around Europe. In my mind I know this is a very empty image-- something I expected my 9 dollars to deliver for a couple hours-- yet I still subscribe to the these forms of entertainment as a way to make myself feel good about my life. But in reality I'm really I'm just feeling good about someone else's life.

A change I would like to make to my life is to transform myself from passive observer, to protagonist participant in my own story. The more I think about it the more I realize that I'm 1/4 dead, and the more I realize that the more I want to get chance to play. I'm not asking to be the center of attention, I'm just saying that I don't want to watch other people fall in love-- I want to fall in love. I don't want to watch other people fail or succeed-- I want experience failure or success or both! Why not take everything in. I haven't experienced nearly as much as this life has to offer. Carpe Diem

posted by Rob and Lauren @ 1:28 AM 0 comments

Animal Monster

I'm Listening to a song called "Jumanji" by Animal Monster. It's the first real electronica song I've listened to and it's cast a spell on me. The extraneous beats are rumbling through my head and I feel more like a robot than a human being. But I feel alive.

Today a few girls sat down at one of my tables. They were all pretty gorgeous, and so my usual walls of intimidation came up. After serving them their drinks and meals as casually and unnerdily as possible I proceeded to clear their plates. I had seen them giggling and whispering as I walked by and checked on them while they were eating and so I wondered if my nervous demeanor was humourous. Then as I was clearing their plates one of them asked me if anyone had ever left me their phone number on the back of the bill. I answered quite stunned that nobody had done that yet. Not meaning to sound pretentious, but otherwise insighting more giggling. After they had paid (tipped 10 bucks!) I went back to their table and lifted the bill and on the back was a name and phone number.

I threw the bill out. I would be tempted to phone, but at the same time I don't think I handle rejection well--which is probably why I've isolated myself so well in life. It bothers me that something like that makes me feel good, a little confident. But I guess thats not bad. I suppose what bothers me about it is that it forces me to realize how fragile a self-image I have. I don't think it should take a bunch of giggling girls for me to think that I'm a beautiful person worthy of gratuitious attention. And what I'm saying doesn't sound very modest here, but I know for the most part I hold a pretty negative image of myself.

I don't really know what to do about that? Suggested Therapies? Want ad reads: "Shy waiter seeks beautiful girl to serve food and flirtation".

posted by Rob and Lauren @ 9:45 PM 0 comments

I just have 5 minutes

I'm at home, I'm about to walk out the door to go to work. My music is playing way too loud right now. I'm smiling and thinking about craziness. I just wanted to say to anyone who reads this today to go wildly. Maybe you've been holding yourself back a few days, or a few years like me, and maybe today you should let it go. Live Now without dead time.

posted by Rob and Lauren @ 5:25 PM 0 comments

CrimethInc

www.crimethinc.com Go to this website, click on the reading library link. Read any of the essays posted and be amazed.

posted by Rob and Lauren @ 2:24 AM 1 comments

I am an Anarchist

I don't believe in anything that doesn't agree with my own reason and common sense. I don't believe in the domination of humanity by governments, corporations, or other human beings. I don't believe that one global culture of consumerism is a diverse culture. I don't believe that I exist to make material gains. I don't believe anything I buy I'll be able to take down to my grave.

I do believe in love. I do believe in living out my life as joyously, and spontaneously as possible. I believe that the key to breaking down the rigid structures that exist to sedate our society, and enforce conformity, is to simply live my life outside of the predictable paths. I believe that it is my obligation to create my own unique path and to encourage that others create their own paths. It is my hope not for a better future, but an amazing present. That we all just live our lives not according to corporate agenda, or government control. Stop watching Reality TV. Start Living in reality. Stop protesting rights to gay marriage and simply start loving eachother. In as much as our lives are determined by protocol, we have the power to exercise freedom. In as much as the majority of us think we are free, we are oppressed and chained down.

I used to think that fighting the system was fighting someone or something. But it's not a fight you can bring to one person or one thing, you have to fight yourself. You have to be strong and screen your influences and inputs into your life from the toxic culture that pervades the very fabric of our society. You have to just live your life in the now and stop waiting for a better day.

posted by Rob and Lauren @ 1:28 AM 1 comments