War on Terror, my a...!

Glad to see my point of view mirrored in today's New York Times:

"The United States has a strategic problem: its war on terror, unlike its long fight against Communism, is not universally seen as the pivotal global struggle of the age...these continents are more or less united in a critical view of an American power routinely described as hegemonic and intent on using the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to impose what Candido Mendes, a Brazilian political analyst, called "a civilization of fear."

Indeed...

Reading is Overrated

First, a disclaimer: I am a very bookish individual. Like I imagine is the case with you, I have hundreds and hundreds of books. I delight in purchasing new and used books, particularly if they are reference books or if I can buy them exceptually cheaply.

Yet, I still think that reading is overrated. Here's why:

1 - Reading is usually NOT the most efficient means of accessing information. The best way is to talk to someone who has the information and in so doing, interacting with the data. Do you REALLY need to read that 500-word tome to find out what you need to know about, say, herbal medicine? Wouldn't it be more efficient to ask someone who is an authority on the subject? That way you might find precisely what you need to know and even question the source for clarity.

Of course, it might be useful to read a textbook if you want to master a subject. But even in this case, it is arguably more efficient to interact with subject matter experts.

2 - We overrely on reading to access "truth" or other forms of information. I believe it is literally true that all the answers we need can be found by going within. But we tend in this information age not to trust nor nurture our inner senses. In addition, our modern tendency is to buttress what we think we know by attributing it to some other so-called expert, e.g. "well, so and so said..." My belief is that recognizing the validity of the reading-accessed information is in actual fact a form of recognizing what we know to be true already.

If this is true for more abstract forms of information (e.g. "truth") it is likely also true for technical forms of information. I am not a Da Vinci scholar, but perhaps he utilized his intuition -- his inner sensing -- to discover his many technical contributions, many of which he did not find time to execute.

I don't mean to suggest here the philistinish view that reading is an inherently useless activity. Reading helps orient us, helps us discover -- in a sense -- what we know is true already.

Finally, gentle reader, I've hope you've enjoyed reading this!

Comments?

Task and Process

My current experience in the Game of Games confirms what I’d forgotten. There are poles: task and process. When accomplishment of task is impeded, issues of process are not being addressed. This is particularly true in groups, which often move to quickly to task while ignoring issues of process. To facilitate groups demands process skills, but process skills should always be at service to task.

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Four More Years

Well, democracy is great when your guy wins. Hard not to be glum about yesterday’s outcome. I take comfort from what one of my teachers told us when I and other westerners were struggling some years ago with life in a Japanese dojo. “No matter what the situation, we have to make friends, enjoy, do the best we can.” Four more years…

Election Day

Well, I have NEVER been so invested in an election. A Kerry victory today would be nothing less than a victory of light. Reverse, if Bush wins

Hung Over

In the afterglow of my “Afternoon of Poetry and Storytelling” with Ibou Ndoye, I am metaphorically a bit hung over. The reading was great fun – if a little undersubscribed. Yet my 30 days poetry collection remains about a third finished, work is sparse and I am back to the regular irregular. Just downloaded a tape of me pitching the Game of Games on a Rochester, NY radio station. A welcome antidote to a day of otherwise near-drudgery.

Playing the Deeper Game

I'm in the first week of facilitating the Game of Games developmental workshop. My thinking seems to be changing. I realize that what I've been seeking -- here and elsewhere -- are mentees, not mere licensees. I wish nothing less than to father a lineage, to pass down in that way what I've learned. To walk this path I need courage, an unwavering commitment to move against the grain. I search within to find strength to move through uncharted territory: warrior's way. It is time to junk a lot of stuff, mostly tired, conventional poses. It is time to break out of the box I've put myself in. It is time to play the deeper game.

"Hey, we're a star!"

star
Originally uploaded by Angelojohn.

This morning I was interviewed about the Game of Games by Stephen Jacobs, Professor of Information Technology at Rochester Institute of Technology and host of a show called What the Tech. Been a while since I'd done any voice PR so I was a bit rusty. My five minutes of airwaves exposure kicked in the memory of previous days and tricks I used to get on radio or TV. It is kind of a lifestyle and, to work, needs to be part of a regular routine. What it involves is endlessly recycling clips, audio tapes, video tapes -- any PR about you. Polishing these off and sending targeted cover letter(s). Leveraging every media appearance or mention into other, better media appearances or mentions. Repeating this endlessly.

In the internet, niche-market age, there are more outlets than ever before. With attention spans contracting in response to ever-expanding streams of information (and advertising), it is difficult to be successful without knowing how to play this game. But the rules fortunately areen't that difficult to master. It's more about persistence and confidence than anything else.

Of course, I can hear you smirking now: "Hey, if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?!"

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New Tools and Services

The internet, it seems, breeds new tools each day.

Current favorites:

Onfolio: I find this “content management” tool – enabling one to easily collect references in the form of links or whole pages – indispensable (translation: something I actually paid for). It makes collecting and publishing material for e-zines easy.

21Publish: A new tool, introduced to me by Fernanda Iberra, that enables group or community blogging. We will use this as the glue that binds gamers playing The Game of Games.


Aweber: There is a bit of a learning curve here, but this for me is the best e-zine service out there. It lets one craft autoresponders, which will be a necessary and central part of my efforts to create solo-games for coaching clients.

"affirmation"

open door
Originally uploaded by Angelojohn.

here
stumble forward
another try

push
brittle
bones
one more
time
up
crooked
streets:

hard-hearted
new york

here
cold
wind
slaps
hard
across your
face

water
falls
down
purifies
night
winter
once again
rain

step around
old
ruins
failed art
memory


step around
be
nimble
hurry
pick up
your pace


behind you
litter

all the times
you screwed up
picked yourself up
and walked

each time
sudden
dawn
blank
canvas
upon which
to paint

things
fall
apart
shatter
come back
together

life finds
a way
to open
a door

*******

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Reflection on the intro Game of Games

Ran a free, Emilio De Lia-ess, intro Game of Games last night. Six people all told. Worked real well, although people bitched about it taking more time than they anticipated, lack of structure and a few other things. Despite all this, all got a lot our of it. E-mails continued to go back and forth after the thing was over. Even the biggest complainer (being constructive, actually) claimed, "I really got a lot out of it." Know we are on to something. However, Emilio' sense of humor is missed. I think I'm a pretty funny guy, but he has a lighter touch in these circumstances than I.

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"Affirmation"

Ok, here's a working draft of the 20th poem in the Thirtydays series. BK, my best critic, tells me the poems he enjoys most are the ones mined from real life, containing real life details. He doesn't much care for these, which he likely views as an exercise in craft. He may be right. Anyway, it is quite a challenge to craft a paired down, word a line poem like this. Similiar, I suppose to hiaku. The skill comes in eliminating, paring the thing down to its raw essence. The goal is to say just enough, not a word more. This one likely needs some pruning, but here it is anway:

“affirmation”

here

stumble forward

another try

push

brittle

bones

one more

time

up

crooked

streets:

hard-hearted

new york

here

cold

wind

slaps

hard

across your

face

water

falls

down

purifies

night

winter

once again

rain

step around

old

ruins

failed art

memory

step around

be

nimble

hurry

pick up

your pace

behind you

litter

all the times

you screwed up

picked yourself up

and walked

each time

sudden

dawn

blank

canvas

upon which

to paint

things

fall

apart

shatter

come back

together

life finds

a way

to open

a door

Poetry, Again

Well, I started writing for the 30 days series again. I am reluctant to public it, need to get on a bit of a roll again. Dazzled by the Dodge Poetry Festival. Found myself comparing myself to others (sometimes favorably), and was entralled with the notion of dusting off my indifferent reputation in this area. In the meantime, I ready for my reading on 10/30 and the first developmental workshop of The Game of Games. If only I could make a bit of money from all this creativity...

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"I Cheated"

All day in front of the computer, doing necessary nitpicky things to finetune the promotion of the Game of Games. This also is the third day without a poem. In need of sun, a break, something... I decided to cheat and recycle an old poem, Hymn for Diversity and Spirituality. Be amazing if anyone really noticed it. Anyhow, I am looking forward to getting back to writing new stuff, although the rest takes some of the edge off. Well, maybe I need some of the edge taken off...

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Tech Blues

Most of the challenge of the thirtypoems project is technical. I spend all too much time screwing around with the website, taking out FP extensions etc. Makes me wonder about life in general. If I were free not to bother with technical things, I would likey be more creative. So, the trick is to offload these things and concentrate on what one does naturally. Of course, it certainly helps to have money to pull this off.

I am by my count around three days behind, counting the break I am taking today. I'm liking what I am writing, which is a good sign...

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Macros: Thirty Days Project

More than a creative challenge, the 30 days project now presents technical challenges. Because of my low tech, I first create, then publish on Ecademy, then cut and paste here. I am sufficiently new to this that I don't have the tech down to do this easily. The simplest thing to do is to abandoned the Thirty Days blog and just keep this blog. More elegent thing to do is to figure out a way to use the macro software I downloaded, although I am not convinced this will do the trick. I also have to start writing these poems earlier. As it is, I come down to the wire. Posted about 10 minutes before midnight tonight, for example.

Anyway, about the macros. I have thought for some time that a good sci fi story would be about a guy in the near future who makes macros for a living, macros that do very complex things. After a while, he has too many macros and at the same time wants a new challenge. So he creates a macro that controls all the macros. Then, I Robot-like, the macros take over.
Ah, this sort of thing's been done!

The third day of thirty days

In the third day of the "thirty days" project, I begin to settle into a kind of rhythm. I begin contemplating subjects in the early afternoon, then start to write in the early evening, finishing usually about an hour and a half before midnight. Most of the poems so far are akin to hymns, very little secular about them. Be interesting to see how this evolves.

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Bipolar Moon

Late night, nearly morning. The rythem of the 30Days/30Poems has taken over my soul. Up late, making connectings via Ecademy. Registering 30 Dayswebsite: the usual big plans. So many times, the big plans have crashed down. Down with the night face up on the bipolar moon. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in the pain of the crash, then the pain of all the people who have crashed across time. Breathe the healing sunlit honey-colored rain. Breathe in, breathe out.

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ThirtyPoemsinThirtyDays

So, I've begun this project -- creating 30 Poems in Thirty Days.
Would be good to start a concurrent project -- one part of my office cleaned on 30 days.
What is this thing about goals and setting targets? I wonder if this is a particularly contemporary, Western, particularly American thing to do. When I asked friends of a Buddhist master I knew of the master's daily schedule, they replied that he "lived the dharma." Meaning, he had no "schedule," as such, but instead responded to what was put before him.

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Is sleep overrated? Conventional wisdom says one needs 7-8 hours of consistent sleep. It also says that one cannot catch up on lost sleep. If this is so, why have some famous individuals needed less sleep? I have always believed that amount of sleep one needs depends on two things: a) constitution, b) among of contrast between reality and dream. In other words, if one is truly doing what one wants to do in life, then one has less need for dreaming and sleep.

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