Bigger Dreams, Less Hope

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Just heard a story about how the industrial stretch of highway 101 south of San Francisco was referred to as the road for people with bigger dreams but less hope. It was in comparison to the more scenic highway 280 which parallels it.

The comment made me think of the current state of America coming out of the industrial age. The industrial age, with its dependence on science and technology, ushered in an era of “prosperity”, in which more people had access to stuff quickly and in bulk. The first “ready-made” clothes came out in America with the help of sewing machines.

And now, highway 101 is lined in industrial buildings, and it is one of the most lifeless, depressing sections of highway I’ve ever traveled, especially compared to 280. People, in their fear and need for security, jump on technologies as their ticket to big money. After all, if a million people buy your t-shirt, or your app, you won’t have to worry about money for a while.

But that ship has run its course, at least in industrial manufacturing of goods in America. The talent today is all over software products, chasing green there. Food products is yet another disgustingly profitable industry. By food products, I mean subsidized mass-produced wheat, corn (HFCS), and soy making their way into sweet and savory food mashups that actually have negative nutritional value but light up the right brain chemicals.

Human ingenuity, when used to create money via products, can be a force for evil if not checked by society. This is why government is necessary. Unfortunately, it is possible today to also buy politicians.

Anyone who gives a damn about our country needs to be alarmed about how our radical experiment in democracy is being decroded by corruption via corporate influence in government and media.

A society must be healthy and educated in order to govern itself freely. Corporate greed has created food products which are making Americans sicker by the minute and more dependent on profit-driven pharmaceuticals, a double-win for corporate interest. Corporations have also become experts at misinformation in the Information Age, creating an unhealthy democracy which also doesn’t know who to trust or listen to. As a result, Americans are becoming more and more divided, as bullshit walls are thrown up to protect oneself. As Abraham Lincoln noted, a divided nation cannot stand.

The world needs us to end corporate corruption. Now. We can start by not giving them our dollars anymore. Buy from your friends and family. Put your money in trusted credit unions. Move your stocks out of businesses which contribute to our ill health and misinformation.

Join me in getting educated about how we can take back our health and our care for one another. We can and must do this. We can’t wait passively any longer. The evidence in favor of total corruption and ultimate union demise is overwhelming. This is the Tipping Point.

Dreams are big but hope is getting smaller. Time to un-industrialize. Turn consciousness back on. Breathe life back into our people and our economy. Restore hope.

What Can You Make? – Forget China

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Maybe we should just let China produce all the products, do all the large-scale manufacturing.

Perhaps it is a sign of civilization for a country to relinquish inhuman repetitive manufacturing labor and graduate to idea-making and love-infusion.

China wants to make its country a consumer economy, to have its people buy its stuff. Great! Let them!

Gone soon will be the days of ready-wear clothing, cheap knick knacks, products stamped out from molds. The products of the future will be one-of-a-kind customized for specialized needs. We might as well get a jumpstart on this now. What does this look like for you? Who (or what team of people) can make exactly what you need? Go find them, and put them to work. We will save more money in the end in higher quality products and less waste-management. Local money gets reinvested locally. Someone near you has a manufacturing talent you might not even know they have…just ask!

What can YOU make?

Eye Experiment (day 3?)

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Mostly just wore one contact lens in right eye so that both corrected to near -1.25.

Stopped gazing at own hair obsessively after each notice (25-50 times?) Next, to stop entirely.

Forgot all eye exercises. Worked on extra blinking all day and read print on a far wall for 10mins with constant relaxation and soft blinking focus.

No obvious permanent improvement. Extra blurry leaving house at night after computer work.

Killing Two Birds – Eye Experiment Update

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EXPLETIVE

Just realized I have to break my hair-pulling habit in order to improve my eyesight. I preferentially pull my hair on the right side, likely causing more strain on the right eye (the worse eye).

This is a blessing in disguise.

To re-post what I put on my Facebook page this morning:

“You blink only half as many times in a minute when staring/squinting at a monitor/device. Eyes need to blink to stay relaxed and healthy. How can you tell if you’re squinting? Blink for a minute more often and feel the difference.”

Most likely that staring at an object the size of a split hair would fall under “squinting”, or at least eye strain with reduced blinking…no wonder I have eye problems… :-p

Would be fun to see eye data on other compulsive hair pickers…

Everything All Together At Once

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Getting drawn-in to a drunk stranger
The body’s chemicals igniting
The myriad of processes churning
My electrical, my bacteria, my structural, my forever
Chattering observer
An annoying tour guide
But someone I’m quite attached to
We have fun together
But sometimes
It all starts to unravel again
And I fear being pulled into
The all-connected bliss
Where I cease to exist again
Because in that network
Nothing matters
Whether you live or die
It makes no difference
Because it was all just a merry dream
Row, row, rowing your boat
And with a foot in both worlds
Each vying for your full attention
You’ve got to avoid the stuff that tips your boat over
Because being a drop in the ocean is helpful
Only so much as it enables you to live
Your most awesome earth experience
So that
As the tension builds
Upon the billions of years that brought the sun’s light to our synapses
We are realizing
We are caught up in each other’s dreams
In this age of information
What can light do?
Where can light go?
And why should light care?
Because I’m only a third of the way there and I’m already
Tiring of the trivia, tiring of being half-animal
And half-enlightened
But at the same time enjoying the show.
Playing my character to the best of her ability
And constantly looking over my shoulder at what our expectations are creating.
The trick seems to be becoming easeful
Peaceful
Useful
That seems to work,
And accepting that being human means
You’re tempted by oblivion
But exalted by engagement

Eyes and Feet Experiments

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I have two ongoing body experiments right now that I wanted to journal about, lest I forget my progress.

Feet Re-Sculpturing

I am currently 2.5 weeks into changing the way I walk, so that my “flat feet” develop the proper arch support to carry my big-ass frame.

Things I’m starting to realize: I typically put most of my weight in my heels when I walk, then let the rest of my foot sort of slap down. I figured this out by wearing flat ballerina-type shoes for a few days in a row while doing a ton of walking:  my heels began aching and I began dreading each step.

Then, I remembered my father’s voice from childhood: “Stop stomping around the house.” “Walk more quietly.” We had a trailer house and footsteps in one end of the house could be easily vibrated through to the other end. I had no idea what he meant at the time. I thought it felt weird to step softly or tiptoe around, so I basically ignored his rather good advice.

My feet always felt and looked “flat” growing up. My feet would burn and fatigue quickly during activities where my foot was confined to a straight forward position, like ice skating or roller skating or skiing, or if I had to do basketball shuffle drills for any length of time where you stay on the balls of the feet. But no one understood the issue properly enough to address it with me I suppose.

My feet are large (size 11), so this may account for me getting “lazy” about using them.

A side effect of not properly rolling forward onto the front pads of the feet was that my posture had to adjust accordingly to keep me centered. My butt sticks out farther back, my stomach pushes forward more, and my shoulders are more forward. As a result of my slightly forward shoulder posture, my shoulders became more unstable, likely leading to my shoulder ligament tear my junior year of high school, and subsequent 2 shoulder surgeries. I tried to “fix” my posture in college by sitting up straighter, which just ended up in me looking awkward to people, like I was trying too hard to sit up straight. I needed to sit up straight from the ground-up.

Also, I sustained many injuries to my ankles, especially in basketball games. This can be explained by the fact that my feet would flop down, and they lost their innate ability to “paw” the ground front/back and side-to-side. As a result, if I caught an edge of anything, my atrophied feet muscles were of no help, so the next joint up got the brunt of the force: the ankles.

My experiment, which basically involves:

  • Wearing flat-soled shoes
  • Walking “softly”, rolling completely onto the balls of the feet
  • Keeping the toes and heels pointing forward, preventing foot eversion in my case
  • Keeping the feet hips-width apart (two fists’ width) rather than my tendency to walk like a supermodel, one foot in front of the other, as I was taught to by television at a young age

…is teaching me that I haven’t been using my lower calf muscles at all to walk. My lower calves BURNED for about the first 2 weeks of my experiment. Granted, I spent the first 2 days walking entirely on my balls of the feet and barely touching the heels at all, to see if that was better. I decided that, no, the heels need to land very softly.

What I notice when I walk more correctly, is that I feel taller, lighter, and like more work is being done by my feet and calves to walk. Much more energy out of the lower legs. Finally TODAY, the lower legs have adapted to the work and do not feel as sore anymore. And my belly comes in slightly.

AND…I am developing a little arch in my feet already! I took a picture tonight. I will have to find some old pictures of my bare feet from childhood, if possible, for comparison, then I will post them. I know I have pictures of my flat footed footprints after walking at the beach and it looks like bigfoot has stomped through there, rather than that cute little arched footprint most people should have.

So far, so successful.

Eye Experiments

Today I decided to utilize the -1.25 contact lenses I have for my left eye, for my right eye only (currently -3.00). If I don’t wear a left contact lens, then both of my eyes are roughly at the same -1.25 level of blurriness. This feels much better to me than wearing the -1.25 correction in both eyes. I feel like my “good” eye was just taking over for the weaker eye when it was adjusted to 20/20, so with them both at the same level of sight, I expect I can progress faster with my focus and relaxation exercises, which I started doing on the MUNI. It’s only Day 1, so more progress to come, I hope. My left eyelid is slightly lazier, I suspect because it has had to compensate more in its life. I’m hoping that by “fixing” my vision, that I will also improve my appearance by both eyelids and eyebrows raising similarly.

Downtown SF

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Working a valet job I found a neat urban pollinator project near 1st and Harrison in San Francisco.

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A great use of an empty lot.

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Downtown San Francisco is quite picturesque. Here’s a couple more shots I took today before and after work.

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I like that living in Berkeley actually makes me spend more time in downtown SF :-)

Dogs vs. Cats (a hypothesis)

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Had an interesting talk with my hikers today about animal psychology and my theory on why dogs and not cats are man’s best friend.

My hypothesis has to do with the fact that a cat’s heart rate is much higher than a humans’ (150-200bpm resting pulse vs. 60-70bpm for a human). Cats are a bit more high-strung-they operate on a higher frequency. Large cat trainers will tell you that you must always be “present” around cats. This keeps them relaxed.

It’s similar to walking a dog. When a dog is being walked and you give up your leadership position, either by letting the dog walk ahead or getting distracted by checking your phone, talking, etc., the dog loses respect for you and takes over leadership. A dog wants to know that the pack is safe and packs need their leader. A dog may get anxious if put into a leadership position when you ought to be leading, and will react by being “bad”: pulling you, wandering, etc., attacking other dogs. They are just nervous.

Cats always are on high alert. I think this may have to do with their heart rate. If you lose focus around a cat, the cat will perceive you as unstable/unpredictable, and therefore a threat. My cat is basically half feral so I think she is a great example of this instinctual behavior. The cat may seem to suddenly “out of nowhere” attack or do something unpredictable. Usually, this is just because you simply weren’t paying attention. You weren’t on their frequency. Rabbits and birds have even higher heart rates than cats, and this behavior is similarly exaggerated. Their nervous systems are simply running on a higher frequency.

Dogs, with a frequency close to humans (60-150bpm) probably fit us like a best friend because they are easier to predict. Higher strung/high energy breeds (like pit bulls) exhibit more quick-turn tendencies which may explain why they are the black sheep of the species.

We are comfortable with animals we can relate to :-)

Random Thought of the Day: Our Bodies Are Not Ours

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It occurred to me while brushing my teeth tonight that we are caretakers or custodians of all the cells in our bodies. If a tooth falls out, or a piece of hair, our “soul” doesn’t go with it (soul=awareness in this case). So in effect, we are taking care of something outside our”selves”. This is a revelation that can “allow” us to treat our bodies with more compassion. You wouldn’t harm someone else. Your body IS that someone else. Let’s treat ourselves with the same good and careful care we give others.

Create You

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Sitting next to a group of Spanish speakers on BART, reminds me of how wonderful my life is. Sometimes, I’ll look around and everything is how I want it: I’ll be surrounded by interesting objects, people, perfect environments. As if I had designed or directed it myself. Because I kind of did design it myself. I kept moving until I found a place that would make me happy more often than not, and at times, constantly happy for days on end. A hot young French man spins French hip-hop for us while we lounge lazily on soft pillows among friends; an Italian man who loves pizza and art says hello (ciao) and invites me over; a Californian friend comes over to visit with her charming and cute little daughter running around, borrows costume clothes, opens a bottle of wine and looks up youtube music videos with me.

Life is good.