Sunday, December 23, 2007

Hypnogourd, meta-mind

Posts since last time:

Discovery:

The main thing recently has been the SD/TJ Design, Plant, Harvest blog. I have been obsessed with it.

And fascinated with what I've been seeing about the world becoming more aware of itself, through blogs, maps, feeds, and the tools google, yahoo, others create to help this.

But I've been so obsessed, I've been using the computer too much.

My neighborhood friend, fortunately, has been rescuing me from the hypnogourd.

So I'm now in this space of being able to step back and think a bit more "meta" about what I've been doing.

Earlier this week I did get out and away to some wonderful places, and wrote letters by hand.

With the blog, the computer, there is endless fiddling that can be done.

And one feature leads to more opportunities for fiddling, and more visions of what it may be possible to create.

[and as great and world-owning as google is, this post editor still messes things up sometimes!! web publishing is not there yet??]

I'm not entirely sure where that sdtjdph blog is going, but I'm immediately excited about

  • simplifying the layout
  • mapping sd community gardens, and making it easier to map more and more things: sd canyons, the locations referenced in blog posts, fruit trees around town (reachable from the sidewalk or in public space). . .
  • And maybe helping make something others will very much want to use unlike my earlier efforts at experienceart, carfreeuniverse.

[do you want to collaborate, to help make it not a solo project? I've been having fun with the solo, choosing a name, and so on, it would be different in a group. . .]

I think what is happening with the blog is

the creation of a public space. It is meant to be a page where people meet, collaborate, and are able to go their separate ways, but they are all benefited by sharing a space with many others with different foci, yet a similar underlying goal.

"Design, Plant, Harvest" references the three things I at least sometimes neglect. Am I just "planting" (doing, doing, quick intuition, mindless fiddling), neglecting to design? Am I just designing (thinking, dreaming, hesitating in indecision), neglecting to plant? And have I planted, but never harvest--?

"Design", influenced by permaculture's emphasis on design, was the title briefly.

And I do want the blog to have more than just gardening info, but value having consideration of all the rest (land, water, energy use) rooted in the organic gardening, permaculture design metaphor.

But maybe all that will be left behind and the site will go in directions I don't forsee.

Maybe it will be no more than a demo that inspires some other project.

So, now is a time to stop and design what I'm doing--the aesthetics of working with the computer--what kind of experience do I want to harvest here, to help our mind, body have?

I came across a page last night (collecting google mashups: maybe this site) that said something like "why go anywhere when you can see more of the world through your computer?" I can feel that sentiment--and see though how the awareness enabled though the internet/computer is not separate from our being in the world.

When you do a search on blogger, or look at random blogs, and find many people in your city (especially nyc, sf: e.g., streetsblog, many many others) or even on your street, sharing--

Well there's a huge opportunity to improve awareness of the gardens, canyons, fruit trees and on and on in san diego--and of many efforts to do good things, to create great public space.

So, now, my task: avoid the computer. Consider where I want to go with this, and not just obsessively fiddle away.

Fitness has been good (thanks to friend breaking the spell). Diet/eating has been decent (incorporating some red meat infrequently, adding bits of butter with some things). Garden has been neglected. I've not spoken to my relatives about xmas. . . and could just let it go by and visit in January.

I've found some beautiful places to be--using the bike I found to get there--though I pass mindstretching expanses of bare (and in some cases, empty) pavement on the way, and think I may/ will die because of drivers here, biking on some of the busier roads.

Meditating, sitting, being, has been continuing too.

So, now, my task: avoid the computer. Consider where I want to go with this, and not just obsessively fiddle away.

Not where I want to go--

But to go into silence, to come back out, to consecrate more (?)

Not where I want to go--