Yes, the entire Industry.  Every one of the companies that makes cars, around the world, all of you.  We need to talk.

In 1985, my friends and I went to EPCOT in Disneyworld, part of our school’s annual “day off”.  Being 16 and enthralled with all things automotive, my friends and I headed to the GM pavilion, and I fell in love.  I was already crushing on a cute blonde classmate, but the new captor of my fancy was a three-wheeled transport called “the Lean Machine”.  It was a prototype that GM was working on, and for me it was love at first sight.  It was small, fuel efficient, relatively quick, and it just looked good.

Now, 24 years later, I still look back and curse the Detroit executives for not taking a chance.  It was a love that wasn’t meant to be.  As I matured, I learned that GM just doesn’t have the balls to be innovative.  They may think towards the edge of the box, but they can’t get out of it to save their corporate hide.

I read today that BMW is working on a similar idea called Simple.  That long forgotten crush reared its head, and just like hearing about the cute blonde classmate, I want this to be real.

I am their target market.  I commute 35+ miles a day, each way.  I hold the BMW brand in high regard.  I strive to be economical in my transportation habits, but still want the wow factor when I drive.     I would buy a Simple and drive it all over a major metropolitan city, just to show it off.

Commuter cars have a future, as more and more the small business sector offers employment opportunities.  My current employer has 150 people, spread out over a 50 mile radius.  Carpooling, while a wonderful endeavor, sometimes just does not work.  Smaller cars like Smart cars, and Minis don’t have the wow factor.  It doesn’t have to be fast, traffic is never going to go more than 65 on the best of work days. But a car does have to have an aesthetic, a look, something other than size.  A car has to have style. A car designed to carry one person, maybe a few bags of groceries, or an attache;  something that gives me the freedom to set my schedule as I see fit, and yet retain a sense of personality, and use less fuel; a car like that would sell!

The world has commuters, lots of them.  Cities are at wits end to provide public transportation, and even then you have to get from your home to the station to take advantage of it.  The time is ripe for someone, some company willing to be bold, be progressive, be cutting edge.  The time is now for a new definition of “car”.

And to any BMW executives who may read this, and want a test driver for the Simple, to show case it and prove it would make a head turning transport, call me.

I tried imagining the reasons for that spot.  I came up with a few.

• The “photographer” is really a dolt with a nice camera and has no clue what he’s doing, but he was cheap and/or a friend of the couple and agreed to do it, and they are too young to know that he’s incompetent.
• The photographer gets kick backs from the store owner when he uses the shop as a backdrop and thus creates subliminal marketing for the business.
• The photographer was from out-of-town, had only seen the five places that had been overused and didn’t know that there were better choices to be had.
• The spot was the site of the couple’s first kiss / proposal / meeting / other significant milestone.

I’ll never know for sure, but my money is on the last one.  Sentimentality is a powerful force, often outweighing aesthetics, logistics, rationality and feasibility.  While we must know where we came from to help us know where to go, clinging too tightly to the past is a detriment to reaching to greater heights.   America is at a significant turning point, and my fear is that nostalgia may be the millstone around our collective neck.

Chiefly, education on the whole needs to be redone.  Not reformed, but completely and thoroughly redone.  We cling to the idea that 180 days of  6 hours of class time is sufficient and adequate.  We embrace the tradition of summers off, crying “children need summers!”  No, they don’t.  They need down time, and recreation to be sure, and they don’t need the stress of 40 hour weeks 50 weeks a year, but they don’t need 10 consecutive weeks of summer.  A balanced year round calendar with extended hours would allow for teachers to do the work of planning, teaching, and grading at school, as well as  give the students more time to do their work and then enjoy their leisure when they get home.   there would be more opportunities for greater range of studies, allowing for more than just reading, writing and ‘rithmatic.  To quote from the movie Mr. Holland’s Opus “If all we teach them is reading and writing, what are they going to read and write about?”

I know that longer hours and more days will cost more.  Since I am not likely to be tapped to be Education Secretary anytime soon, my plan is more fanciful realistic but still it’s not hard to grasp.  Funding for schools needs to be taken from a general sales tax, not land and home ownership.  The investment in education needs to be born by more than just home owners.  Every aspect of the educational system, from pre-k to college entrance exams, the entire system should be reconsidered, deconstructed and rebuilt to address 21st century families, with a vision that we are preparing for the 22nd century, not just next year.

America became great not by clinging to the past, but by looking to the future.  We were a country of innovators, inventors, idealists and imaginations.  Our children deserve nothing less than that same chance to be great.

One rash of adornments I particularly dislike are the caricatures of family members on the back windows.  I’m not sure why it bothers me as much as it does, other than the risk of showing the world how many and what kinds of kids I have.  Every time I see a set though, almost always on mini-vans or SUV’s, I get the wicked idea to mock them.  I want to get a few sets, and have 3 of the Dad figures, 5 Mom figures, 7 older daughters, 4 older sons, a few younger ones of either gender, and then 12 of the babies, all strewn together to look like some communal polygamous army breeding like there’s no tomorrow.  Of course then I’d have to go to little league games, and soccer practices and park next to the other family depictions for the full effect to have maximum impact.  I’d want to take photos of the shocked and appalled reactions of the very straight-laced or the slight wistful longing of the closet kinks.  The fun thing about living in a Southern Metropolis is that you really can’t tell the difference at first glance.

The theme is clothing, and fashion, and all the things that we out on to express ourselves, the non-verbals of getting dressed.  It started when I attended a school open house, and was shocked and dismayed at members of the populace.  I had to go to the school straight from work, so I was in my slacks and a polo shirt, not overly dressed up or even really fashionable.  I was solidly aware that I was casual, but that I was at least conscientious about my appearance.  What made me cringe were women who dressed as if they were going to pick up strangers at a truck stop immediately after the event.  Worse were the grotesquely obese women who wore garments that would not be appropriate for a woman a third her size.  There is nothing sexy about seeing a roll of fat drape over a tie back halter.  The ass crack at the top of her jeans only made being caught in line behind her that much worse.

The next link in a chain was a photo of a 300 pound woman in a WonderWoman costume, unitard straining at the seams, cleavage that defied description pouring over the top.  It was accompanying an article about Dragon*Con, Atlanta’s largest costume party and haven of D,C and even B list celebrities.   While I can appreciate costumes and role play as much as the next person, perhaps even more than the next person, there was something not quite right about the way the woman posed and presented herself.

Next was waiting in line at a local deli, a watering hole for local professionals and college students.  The queue was long and I watched the parade of professions; suits, office casual, day off dressed down, skaters, punks and gym rats.  I felt like a lite version of Sherlock Holmes, deducing lifestyles from clues of jewelry, accessories, clothes and coifs.

While eating my salad, I thought back to my first job out of college.  I was required to wear a shirt and tie (yes pants too, damn them) but I had a bad habit of not buttoning my collar and just leaving the tie hang below the open neck.  I thought it was office casual, my boss thought it was slovenly and unkempt.  He gave me a copy of a book called “what do they see when they see you coming”.  It was a head to toe investigation of the little things that make a look pop or flop.  It was decidedly conservative and advocated very uninspired choices as to colors and patterns, but it made an impression that even things as minute as buttons can make or break deals.  But that thought, the questions of “What do they see when they see you coming?” has stayed with me for many many years.

Its an idea I am grappling with, as I am losing weight and getting fit.   My body shape is changing, the way clothes fit and hang is shifting, my way of thinking about fashion is evolving.  As I toss out clothes that are too big, I am making more thought out choices in what replaces them.  Where I once had more jeans than other trousers, I now have the ratio in reverse.  Hawaiian shirts and tees with graphics and slogans have been given up in favor of polos, oxfords, and solid colored tees.  Just a few changes, but I know they are the first of many.

I am also processing the semiotics, making sure that the signs I am giving are the signals I want to project.    I know that there are personal biases and individual experiences, and that no wardrobe will be universally admired and adored.  Silver bullets just do not exist, no matter how hard we may wish for them.  But there are social standards and the basics concepts of silhouette, proportions and fit; there are foundational concepts of what the clothes and accessories are conveying, and what the context of the moment may require.

Clothes may make the man, but the man chooses the clothes.  Who I am, what I am becoming, those are the things I want people to see and understand when they see me coming.

Once as a counselor, I sat back and watched the game, my curiosity and voyeurism outweighing my boredom for the moment.  A good game of blob, will last for about four rounds, and the rounds all last between 5 and 7 minutes.  The firs tminute or so was just three or four Not-Blobs being tagged, then the 2nd to 4th minute was this eruption of blobbettes forming and splitting, the real power of exponential growth made evident to an outside obersever.  The last minute, to minute and a half or so was the regrouping, the last stand for the craftiest Not-Blobs to fend off and dodge, to remain as independent as possible before  succumbing to sheer mass.  Then amid cheers and laughter it woudl all start again.

This week I watched a really cool animation explaining 10 dimensional quantum mechanics and how we go from 1 dimensional lines to 10 dimensional infinity beyond infinity (it makes sense after you watch the video).   What struck me was the idea of all of our choices and events making up our time line, how things split and split again and again to make up a dimensional definition.  The splitting and splitting again reminded me of the games of Blob, and the thought of the alternate realities all possibly existing in various timelines.  I wanted to somehow yell out “BLOB UNITE”  and bring all those various versions together somehow, that I could explore and experience what I had if I had chosen X rather than Y or & rather than Y.

SO if there are any theoretical physicists out there that read this, and are experimeting with pan dimensional travel, I volunteer to be the first realinaut.  I just want a really cool jumpsuit when I go.

The second element in the convergence is a conversation with a friend about Jean Paul Sartre and his quote “Hell is other people.”  I always took it as a statement that other people are infuriating and annoying.  Sartre explained later :

…“hell is other people” has always been misunderstood. It has been thought that what I meant by that was that our relations with other people are always poisoned, that they are invariably hellish relations. But what I really mean is something totally different. I mean that if relations with someone else are twisted, vitiated, then that other person can only be hell. Why? Because…when we think about ourselves, when we try to know ourselves, … we use the knowledge of us which other people already have. We judge ourselves with the means other people have and have given us for judging ourselves. Into whatever I say about myself someone else’s judgment always enters. Into whatever I feel within myself someone else’s judgment enters. … But that does not at all mean that one cannot have relations with other people. It simply brings out the capital importance of all other people for each one of us. (From the Imago playbill)

The idea that we know ourselves by how others reflect us, that we see ourselves in the ways others find us was a sobering thought.  I had hear long ago “we are not what we think we are.  We are not what other people think we are.  We are what we think other people think we are.”  and I’ve struggled with it off and on over the years.  I’ve had friends and family wonder about my sanity when I’ve asked them “What do you think I am?  How would you describe me?” and gave them permission to be blunt and honest.  Its been eye opening to hear the responses, and some reflections have helped me grow more than others.  Some of the least complimentary have been the most helpful to grow beyond just my own circle of expectations.

The two experiences started to coalesce, to ask the internal question “How would I pose, and what my sign say?”  To be honest, I haven’t settled, and therefore can’t put into motion submitting my own contribution.  The three ideas that are most prominent at the moment are:

“If the military knew how your brain worked, there’d be a SWAT team bursting through the door and dragging you off to some bunker somewhere.”  Told to me by a close friend knows the mechanations of my mind run in strange and unusual ways.  I think it would go well in a stark plain cell, the kind used in myriad movies and shows to illustrate the isolation of a person used as a resource not treated like a person.  That or at the chinese restaurant in which it was spoken, with the entry way brightly lit to obscure whomever may be coming in at any given minute.

“You are deep.   You leave deep impressions on people.”   This was told to me by one of the most amazing and wonderful people I know, who travels in circles that I can only dream of.  I’d like to be at the bottom of a pool, The water and descent lending their weight to the feeling of depth,  and with a hope of capturing the way her words have themselves impressed me.

“Just breathe”  I hate to admit but I get too busy, to wrapped up in doing what I do, and I often forget that serenity and peace is just a moment away, if I remeber to stop, and just breathe.  Breath is a powerful concept, holding mystical and philosophical power that reaches back for millenia.  I would see this picture on a see wall or beach break, in a brisk wind.  Hair toussled and wild, eyes closed, face into the wind, embracing the breath of the planet itself, giving over to the enormity of nature and being enveloped by the wind, breathing it in even as it breathes past and around me.

Ideally, a photographic talented friend who grab me, shove the poster board in my hands and then pose as fits teh SOTM that comes out at the moment.  I could see myself in their portraiture, gleen some glimpse of how they see me and would like to help present me to the world.

Hell may be other people…. but other peole can be a bit of heaven as well.

The past few weeks or so, I have been awakening, becoming more aware.  Not as a result of a program to awaken, but as a result of making life choices that have awakened me.  Eating better, exercising, thinking and making deliberate choices.  With each blink and stretch, I roused and while I may not be fully aware and awake, I feel I am much more so than before.

One chain of thoughts has been in my head, and when I was given the above quote, it rang inside my thoughts; not the jarring bells of an alram clock but more like the chimes in the wind.  Natural tones that call a spirit to wonder that are opposite the manufactured cacophony of imposition.  The chain is as follows:

We have but 24 hours in each day.

An obvious statement, but one that needs to be considered.  All of the great icons of history, men and women who changed the world, all of them had the same limit of 24 hours per day.  They choose rather to make the 24 hours they had count.  Part of that may have been being in the right place at teh right time.  Part of it is decidely making the most of an opportunity when it happens.  Whether it is dumb luck or focused ambition, the limitation is still 24 hours per day.  With so precious a resource, it makes one consider that making choices in how we spend those 24 hours is profound and important.

We have but one life, made up of each day passing into the next.

Until someone can define and capture the conciousness of humanity, that ethereal presence that is uniquely us, even cryogenically freezing our heads is not going to give us a second chance at living.  And should some brilliant mind find the way, managing a life is a skill that requires a deft hand.  Health factors, eating habits, exercise, meditation, rest and rejuvination, how we use our bodies, in all things we should strive to not just exist but to excel.  There is a world of opportunities available for a helathy body and mind.  Ignoring them and walking zombie like through our life is not truly living just surviving.

We choose how we spend our lives and our moments.

This concept was striking for me, as one of my weaknesses is that I want to be liked by everyone.  But as I examine my life, I see realtionships that are not healthy, just as habits and choices were not healthy.  There are toxic people just are there are toxic elements, and harmful activites.  Pruning my connections to people was difficult but I think it was in fact healthy.  I now see the need to be liked as a toxicity, that sharing my life and moments with those people who will enhance it rather than detract from it, is just a healthy of a choice as eating an apple while avoiding french fries.

I am sure that there are more links to the chain I will discover.  I feel the weight of them in my mind, I just have not examined them the way I have the first four.    For now I am grateful to be awake and alive, and even when it is uncomfortable, living life aware and awake is much more enjoyable than sleeping through it all.

I would prefer, rather to celebrate the people who make the moments memorable.  Very few moments happen in isolation, or on achieved solely on our own.  There are the support people, the inspirations, the confederates and teammates, friends and family, loved ones; the people who made them possible and make them special.  They are the raison de célébrer.

I know I will still mark occassions.  There will be milestones, events, annual reminders of high points.  Yet, I want to make more of an effort to not focus on the event, but the people.  I want to make toasts more personally.  I will choose the gifts for the person, the things that will touch their hearts.  Cards will be just the right card, and most likely hand made and crafted.  As I celebrate the people, I want to leave impressions in them, so that they know, without doubt that they are treasured and honored.

No more poorly done instant coffee that celebrate moments, I will now drink deeply of well roasted, perfectly brewed java that celebrates the people of my life.

For years now I have had a Momento Mori, after learning about them from a Medieval & Renaissance Literature course.  A piece of artwork that serves as a reminder that we are mortal, that today is the day to do what you will, as we are not promised a tomorrow.  Mine is a statue I found in Raleigh NC, a skeleton dressed in a sharp black suit, with a pensive look, hand on his chin.

Named SJ, for Samuel Johnson

I named the fellow SJ, for Samuel Johnson 18th century lexicographer who once said “The thought that one is to be hung in a fortnight has a wonderful way of concentrating the mind.”  It has been paraphrased as “the thought of one’s own imminent demise has a wonderful way of concentrating the mind”.  Either way, the fact that today is the day for action is conveyed and remembered as I get dressed and see SJ looming over me as I get ready for the day.

So I exercise, and I flirt, and I reach to people who make life enjoyable, and guard myself against those who take away that joy.  Life is a wonderful experience, I am strong and getting stronger.  To steal one more line from long dead writers “I went to the woods to live deliberately, to front all that life has to offer, and not when I come to die, learn I have not lived.”

]]> http://malkaviusrostif.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/momento-mori/feed/ 0 malkaviusrostif Momento Mori http://malkaviusrostif.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/drive-she-said/ http://malkaviusrostif.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/drive-she-said/#comments Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:50:41 +0000 malkaviusrostif http://malkaviusrostif.wordpress.com/?p=46 ]]> When I was 19, I had a rare and unique opportunity.  A friend of a friend ran a security driving training center, and I was given a six week course on how to drive as part of a security detail.  Thrilling stuff, and more useful than I could have imagined at the time, not that I am driving heads of state or celebrities as a routine but still, more than a few times I’ve been able to not be in a bad place at a bad time.

In the twenty-one years since that course, I’ve had two cars that could truly handle the upper edge of the spectrum of that kind of driving.  90% of how I drive is reminiscent of little old ladies, but when I have to drive fast, I torture poor automobiles.  Which is what inspired today’s post.

There is a maneuver that is used for getting ahead and away from someone who is following you, that is effective when done properly.  It requires timing and practice; and really is fun to do.  As you are driving on a multi-lane highway, keeping an eye to the rear view mirror to find the opening, keep a steady cruising speed just slightly below traffic flow.  As you see a space of about two or three car lengths to your left, and open lane left of that, you slide over filling the first third of the space.  Down shift into a lower gear to rev your engine and slow you down, causing the car behind you to brake and in theory jamming a few cars behind it to pin in your follower, then shift into the higher gear and gun it as you slide into the third lane and leave quickly.  Done right that quick down then up shift will boost you forward like a rocket.

The other day, I was in traffic and it was unusually light, and I saw the perfect opening for the above maneuver.  I moved my left foot to find my clutch, only to remember I was in a crappy little korean automatic.  I couldn’t down shift so I slipped into the upper third but let off the gas, slowing slightly but not causing the slow down behind me.  I moved left again and gave it the gas, only to hear the engine roar like a mouse and I accelerated with a modest 5 mph gain.  I moved ahead but felt like an idiot.  It was then I decided to start putting away a few dollars a day towards a decent car yet again.  I still drive like an old lady 90% of the time, but for the 10% I need it, I want that ability to DRIVE.