mikedickens.com
Thursday, July 16, 2009
from one phase to the next.
the pooter is being retired.
and life will continue on at mikedickens.com!
everything from here will move there,
but this blog will no longer get updated.
and so it was...
kerouac in On The Road:
from kundera's "the curtain"
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Now, are great dramatic actions really the best clue to understanding human nature? Are they not, rather, a barrier that hides life as it truly is? Isn't "insignificance" actually one of the greatest problems? Isn't that our fate? And if so, is that fate our good fortune or bad? Our humiliation or, on the contrary, our solace, our escape, our idyll, our refuge?
-Milan Kundera, The Curtain
wowww, holy shit, when i read that line i went searching for a pen, i had to underline it, and after underlining it and reading it again, i couldn't move forward, and now, 15 minutes later, i'm still not ready to move forward. the line compelled me to write, it has so much power and speaks to me in such a way that i was and am defenseless.
if you think about it, say, a wedding, is that truly a summation of the relationship between those two people? how about a divorce? how about a fight? or a series of fights? i know nearly every fight i've ever been in with a girlfriend either directly or indirectly stemmed from something in the past. look at the podium at the end of the tour de france, does that glimpse at the conclusion of the race really give you an indication of the significance of the race? is the drama in life really about the large things? is it about the birthdays and christmases or the birth of a child or finding a soul mate? and sure, bringing a child into the world can be a beautiful event, but isn't the beauty of raising a child when she's running around the kitchen, high on juice boxes and stops dead in her tracks, says, "i love you daddy," giggles, then runs off? where is that in the movies? or in novels? we're always given the big events, the milestones. life isn't a rolling wave of culminations, we're not always working toward our next big thing, sometimes the big thing falls from the sky. the drama is in the minor, amazing events of the day. the sun so bright in the morning we have to squint. that's amazing. that's life. when it rains for a few days and the grass is greener than normal, the leaves are stronger and happier. that's amazing. that's life. that kiss when you walk in the door from work. or opening the door at 6:12pm and smelling the smell of your house, the house you bought and built, that houses your wife and kids, painted by your hand and full of your dirty clothes. that's amazing. that's life.
that's the story i want to write and read. the stories that bring to light the significances of minor occurences. we live an insignificant life. it's true, and it's ok and it's wonderful. we simply have to open our eyes and realize how wonderful it is. artists help us do that.
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txt from greeley square park
Thursday, July 9, 2009
tired from a new york city night of grand marnier and rick's, i was alone in greeley square park in chelsea, i guess they call it the fashion district. the city was moving and beginning to smell like the summer streets, the chewing gum pasted to the tarmac and the hot dog stands selling chicken and pork and the taxi exhaust, it all blends together in a menage of mess and beauty. my friends were taking two hours too long in the apartment we were crashing in, i wanted to be home, and if i couldn't be on my way home, i wanted to see the city. so as they packed and talked and laughed and cleaned and remembered the night, i sat in greeley square park with 30 strangers and watched the sun reflect off the buildings. i had my backpacker backpack at my feet and i imagined being in barcelona, of hearing spanish all around me, and smelling the barcelona air, more dusty or dirty than manhattan, different. actually, i didn't imagine the smells. and as i sat there, i texted a friend, "i'm not in the mood to laugh, i'm in the mood to be tender." i wanted to be there with someone, and to feel their closeness and quietude, that sort of peacefulness i've only experienced when there's no need to talk. and i didn't send the text to her because i wanted to be tender with her, but because she knew me when i was tender and what it means for me to be that way. about a year and a half ago i called a different friend and told her i wanted to take a nap with her. i was sort of seeing someone at the time, but didn't want to lounge around with her because she would expect something of me, expecting me to be witty or loving or sexual or funny or sensitive or want me to listen (for god's sake we know women love when men listen! haa) but, sometimes i don't feel like being that. it's too much to ask, and yet despite not being willing to be that for someone, i still want to be around someone, be close to someone, but not have to worry about the complexities that occur laying in the bed with someone that doesn't understand my heart rate.
Read more...what does that say
i wrote, or started to write, three posts in june that i didn't publish, what does that say? it's a month of incompletion, of lostness, or, maybe not lostness, but misdirection, i was moving, just not getting anywhere.
i feel sort of drained. i need a respite. some time to get back on track. i've slacked on my workouts. i've slacked on some of my fun projects. i've slacked on thinking. i'm moving, but i don't have a direction.
i've got some interesting ideas for work that i want to flesh out, but haven't made the time. then there's my music blog, which is a genuine opportunity to build a community, and we've already got people interested, but i haven't made the time to set it in motion. i have about 400 books waiting for me to read, and 300 movies waiting for me to watch, and a family that hasn't seen me in a while or spent quality time with in months.
i have the most amazing friends a man could want, but i'm skipping out on a bday party this weekend and another the week after, i haven't talked to one of my best friends in a couple of months (he's got a new gf, which explains some of it, but it's mostly my fault) and i have someone new that wants more of my time, and i'm not willing to give it to her, and i haven't spent enough time at the pool this summer, or enough time researching barcelona, or enough time walking to get breakfast at the diner on saturday mornings when the sun's angle is sharp and the shadows are long and my disconnection only feels like a moment in time, only feels like another mood or another fleeting inconsistency. two weeks ago i went hiking with friends, and we jumped around like idiots and talked about women and their complexities and about adventure and seeing things and doing things, not just talking about doing things, i ended up jumping in a waterfall, and there's a lot to be said for my need to feel the rushing water over my head.
life probably sounds awful, but the greatest comfort is my existential philosophy, is the thought that i make this life what i want it to be. if i want to talk to my friends more, i pick up the phone. i don't wait for someone to call me and help me feel connected or special or wanted. i do it. if i want to get out in nature, i get up and go hiking, or i sit out on my patio and watch the lightning bugs flicker as the taxis drive into the madness of dc. if i want to meet her, i walk up to clarendon and get a drink and say hello. if i want to see my mother's face and my father's mustache, i drive 45 minutes. life really is a series of choices set before us, we have to choose, i have to choose to call elizabeth and hear her amazing voice and her tender laughter. i have to choose to workout and jump rope and play basketball and go to the golf range. i have to choose to fall in love and tell her she has centered me. i have to choose to write. and i have to choose to think. and cry and laugh and be afraid. i have to choose those things.
right now, i'm not choosing much. i'm letting the waterfall rush over me.
tree of life and so on
Friday, June 26, 2009
i wrote to my mother a month or so ago sort of apologizing for not seeing her more; i wanted her to feel that i wasn't actively avoiding anyone, and i know she wouldn't suspect that, but i felt that my absence needed to be explained to some degree. i told her i had slightly withdrawn over the last few months, focused on work and tried to spend my free time relaxing my mind. she replied by advising me to be careful not to distance myself from my friends and family too much, she wanted me to maintain my strong relationships because she knows their value in my life and told me she doesn't know anyone that has as many friends as i do. i read that and froze. do i really have that many friends?
i guess i do have a large group of amazing people in my life, all serving one purpose or another, all active in my life in some manifestation that works for what our friendship requires. i have friends that i only talk to once a year, or once every 5 years, but i think about them all the time, and they are active members in the shaping of my present state. there's a guy i worked with a few years ago that i've seen twice in 5 years, and every time we see each other it's like seeing a brother that was in the peace corps or something. we're off doing our own things, but he's instrumental in the person i am. i bumped into a girl i haven't seen in 6 years last weekend and nothing was missing and there was an immediate comfort. we spent a lot of time together for a couple of years and built an interesting friendship, two young, awkward artists rambling through life trying to make sense of it, and we bonded through that wandering. i have another friend that i haven't seen in two years or so, but she and i write little inspirational texts to each other every couple of weeks. she's an amazing person that has directed me to places and states of being i wouldn't have arrived at by myself. i have another friend that i talk to every couple of months, and she and i have the most bizarre, intimate conversations. we understand each other's pace, and at times need to be questioned and offered another reality, but we always get off the phone feeling lifted. and i have a friend that is great for those sort of life talks that guys need to have on occasion with other guys, those, "girls are annoying assholes" kinda talks. he's been in a long-term relationship and he has a perspective about relationships that i don't have, he's an insider. and i have a single guy's take, something he appreciates. he and i have 45 minute talks every couple of weeks and it's really strengthened an already strong friendship. another friend pushes me to be more active, is the greatest Doer in all of humanity. he just wants to Do Stuff. why plan it out and allow a greater possibility of not doing it? let's just do it and make it work. everyone needs Doers in life. i went to baltimore to hang out with a friend i haven't seen for a couple of years, he introduced me to punk and i had a great time. it was an opportunity to do something different, to see life from a different angle, and it was amazing. i wouldn't just get up and go to a punk show on my own volition, but because i have a "punk friend," i was able to get that experience. for the 4th i'm going to nyc and staying with a friend's family and then at her apt in manhattan. another friend, one i've already mentioned, also offered her place in harlem. how fortunate am i that i can say i already have a friend offering her place to stay? when i heard her vm saying my friends and i could crash there, it took my breath away. i realized at that moment how lucky i am, how amazing it is that i built and maintained such incredible friendships with people that they are willing to let me sleep in their home when they aren't there. and when i step back, it's not about having the most friends, it's about having the greatest friends, relationships with people that hit all sorts of levels, add all sorts of layers and have shaped me into the person i am. it's something i take very seriously and value beyond belief, something that i don't express to them often enough.
all of this comes about because i just lost my best friend. she and i can't be friends for a while. it's something that doesn't make me feel great, but something that she needs and something i respect. it won't be easy without her actively in my life, but what i've learned from reviewing my other friendships, out of sight doesn't mean out of mind. she'll float in and out of my thoughts for a long, long time, whether or not we talk or see each other. Read more...
lessons learned on a road trip to trafalgar square
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
i wake up some mornings, and it's different, you know the moment you open your eyes the first time for the day, well, sometimes i awake without opening my eyes, the awareness of a new day hits me before the new day itself, i lay unstirred, the sun hits my face through the blinds, i hear the morning birds, loud and alive, i smell the smell that's me, and i breathe, more than anything i breathe, slow meaningful breaths, patient breaths, and then i open my eyes.
i see my room, that's how i live, i still say my room, i don't have a house, and my apartment is shared, but my room, well, my room is my room, and when my eyes finally say hello to the morning light, i see my room. the walls unadorned, utilitarian as it is, it's beautiful, and comforting and exclusive.
showers on mornings like these make me feel cleaner and last a few minutes shorter, i need to get out there, be out in it, start the day, start moving in that direction, get to where i'm going. i feel lighter, my step is bouncier and less encumbered by my dreams, by the spinning madness that hypnotizes me every night.
on mornings like these, my walk from my apartment to my car feels new, like a high school kiss, and dawn is still that pinkish blue that only dawn can be, it rises into my courtyard, hits the maple tree and spreads out against the branches, and sometimes, on mornings like these, i stop in the courtyard, i stop and stand there, i look up, the clouds are there, or maybe they aren't, it doesn't matter, i'm alive and i have another day of life and i have another shot at finding happiness or experiencing joy or accomplishing something or meeting someone or having a conversation that i didn't expect to have.
on my education
Monday, June 8, 2009
it's really a source of discontent in my life, a struggle i deal with all the time. not a struggle like cancer or a dying kid, so no, it's not something i lose sleep over, but it's something i have to deal with considering all of my workmates have a degree and some of them have masters, and yet, if i were to get promoted, some may feel slighted because they have more education. i can perform better, be smarter, more efficient, more innovative and all those other business terms, but when you don't have a degree, people have room to question.
when i was in school the whole enterprise felt empty. i didn't feel like i was getting educated, certainly not receiving a complete education. a few classes brought me joy, made sense, appealed to my intellect. others were led by professors that needed to teach to continue to get research funding. most classes felt forced, students forced to take the classes, professors forced to teach. there was very little education, mostly it was repetition and memory and very little critical thinking. read two chapters, take a quiz. read two chapters, write a 5 page paper. listen to me talk, take a test. that's not challenging and certainly not sufficient preparation for the world i encountered after school.
so why is it a struggle? well, despite feeling that school was a waste of time, i'm now pressured into believing that it was valuable and holds merit in my current job, and maybe that pressure is solely inflicted by me, it's not something that i necessarily feel at work, but it's something i know is a factor at least to be considered. and in all reality, though it really shouldn't be, i'm honest with myself in knowing that it is. i would prefer the level of work i do or the level of expertise i bring to my position or my team or my company as the defining judgement, and it is, but it's only a part of the whole. and so what am i to do? go back to school and take classes in topics i'm not interested in? how would i justify my work paying for classes that i'm interested in but won't necessarily help my career? and the follow up question to that would be, wouldn't any class i take that i enjoy and that increases my cognitive understanding of the world help my company?
so i watched a video today on TED about rethinking the liberal arts in america. i've never thought about what constitutes liberal arts, what it means or why it has value, but after watching the presentation embedded below (not a very exciting presentation by TED standards, but informative none the less) i realized that i got a liberal arts education. i started with a major in information systems, took computer classes and learned to organize information, or at least was supposed to learn that. then i decided i would major in philosophy and history, and took a ton of those classes, studying taoism and kant and plato and descartes alongside learning the techniques of war throughout history and about vietnam and ancient asian cultures, i remember being bored in some of those classes and writing haikus and poems in a big yellow spiral notebook. then i decided i should major in education, get a teaching gig and have the summers off to explore and think and live. i studied facilitation and lesson planning. then became disenchanted with that and decided i should drive to california because that's where happiness was. and in all honesty, my education deepened there, felt more real there, i read 12 books in 2 months, watched amazing old films like the bicycle thief, and i meditated and sat in the park and cried while reading a poem traveled down my arm and wondered if it was stendhal syndrome, or if the history of my life and all that i've ever experienced combined with the weather and the time of day and the angle of the sun so that when i read those words i had no choice but to cry, that i had no option but to react to something that i found beautiful with tears. that was my liberal arts education.
i touched a lot of different disciplines. i soaked up what i thought was valuable, put it in my back pocket, and carried it with me. the education that i got while in school really and truly was invaluable, but not in the sense that most expect from it. i learned a lot in those years, how to be away from my family, what it feels like to come home to a family that loves you, and to actually understand that love, you know, sometimes you have to step away to realize how important something is, and college allowed for that. i broke up with a long-time girlfriend and learned to fall out of love, a lesson that i'm still perfecting (rather reluctantly) and tried to deal with the aftermath of being shunned for the first time in my life. it was an amazing period of self-actualization, but most of that is unaccounted for in the records, there's no piece of paper to be seen, there's no official document that certifies that i learned anything while being there. and it feels blasphemous and disingenuous and rotten. and it feels worse that i have heaped pressure on myself to go back and get that official document now, when i'm in a completely different place in my life.
aside: i remember sitting in the library shelves at umbc reading artaud, i was studying poetry and thinking about it in abstract ways, and artaud was fairly insane, but ingenious, and he also wrote plays, so i sort of combined the two and conjured up a play that would essentially take place in a huge well, it would require a one-of-a-kind set and whatnot. so i walked over to the theater section and looked for books on alternative theater, or abstract performance and found very little, but decided i would reach out to someone that might know more, and being in such an institutionalized place in my life, i contacted who? a professor at columbia. what response did i get? none. he was probably doing research.
my "liberal arts" education is the only reason i am where i am, and my education didn't stop when i left school. i worked construction for a few months, a plumber's assistant, carrying pipe and fittings and getting lunch and telling stories and taking direction and watching, more than anything, watching. i watched our foreman run the site, how he handed out criticism, how he spoke to us, how we all wanted to be his friend and do good work for him. i remember walking to lunch one day, i worked across from the world bank building, there were always lots of foreigners around, this english man noticed my "don't bush it" shirt (in reference to the 2004 election) and told me he approved of my sentiment, i had my hard hat strapped to my belt and looked dirty and the shirt seemed out of place to him, so he asked about it, and i lied, told him i was sort of doing a social experiment, i was interested in seeing how different the environment in construction was compared to corporate america, and he said he could tell i wasn't a typical construction worker, and i bumped into him a few more times over the next couple of months and we always said hello. but, what's funny is it really wasn't a lie, i was experimenting, only without a plan, i didn't take the job to experiment, i needed money to get across the country, but when given the opportunity i took away as much as possible. when i was a waiter for a summer, living out of my car at the beach, i learned a lot: multi-tasking, working under pressure, working under exhaustion, working under deadlines, determining expectations, team bonding/building, all sorts of business type terms that people go to b-school for. then i got a job in IT and learned the ins-and-outs of computer systems in four months. then got another job in IT and another and now i'm more business-oriented, with a twist of IT. my point is, without my diverse, liberal education, i wouldn't be able to perform at the level i do now, i wouldn't have the facility to do my job.
and now at work, increasingly, i feel that in order to ensure my spot, i have to have an expertise, i have to be really good at one thing, which is what higher education attempts to do, and what the presenter in the video below bemoans. i don't want a single focus, it's boring and predictable and not something i'm at all interested in. i'm fortunate to work on a team that is incredibly diverse and is tasked with incredibly diverse projects that really allows me to not only use the talents i have, but also develop the skills i severely lack. and though i think both my boss and company see my talent and trusts my ability, i still feel the gaze of higher education looking down on me, chastising me for not finishing, telling me my discontent in those college years should've been swallowed and i should've toughed it out and labored through it and walked out of there with a big white piece of paper that people frame behind glass and talk about at bars and on dates and at conferences.
is it ok that my education is unconventional? is it ok that i study more now than ever? that i'm more engaged in learning both at work and at home more than i've ever been? is that quantifiable enough?
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