Janus

January is a curiously charged month, named after a two headed Roman deity, Janus: the god of transition. It is said that one head looked to the past while the other to the future. Now that we are well into February, at the cusp of Valentine's Day (incidentally named after a Roman, martyr no less), I thought it would be safe to look back with one of my heads. Most people have at least two - figuratively - without implications of divine powers. What we do have is memory and the ability to synthesize.

Following in the footsteps of December which is packed with various celebrations, January is a time to reflect and reboot, which is why people like to make resolutions. Until recently, my attitude towards this custom was one of cynicism and mild contempt: why do we need to assign a particular time of the year to introspection and action? I realize now that without this tradition, even less of us would try. We are after all a society of short-term memories. The Romans had it right.

Long-term memories require more work, physiologically speaking, in that they require synthesis of new proteins and the creation of new synaptic pathways. Short-term memory creation relies on existing materials. As we wander further and further away from January, the memory of why we made resolutions slowly fades. The few individuals who make the transition from short to long-term are the ones who will effect change. Society relies on this minority to evolve, which is why these changes take such a long time to occur.

I've hesitated about presenting the following example, but the memory of the unfortunate Saudi blogger being flogged for his posts is becoming a distant memory, even though he continues to receive his punishment as I write.

Children are gunned down at an elementary school in December. In January, strong cries in favor of gun control and better mental health services are heard. Politicians promise action. Two years later, mental health care continues to be underserviced although the Affordable Care Act has placed a stronger mandate on insurance companies. A dozen or so states have passed some form of gun control legislation but all the federal bills put forward have failed to pass. The gun lobby remains strong. Most people forget until the next massacre, and then they forget again. Whether you agree with this presentation of facts or not, memory manifests as a two-edged sword: our survival depends on our ability to forget while at the same time facilitating our slow demise.

Marsala necklace

Well that was cheerful. Sorry. Please forget this post. You will.

You can argue: "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." (Alice Roosevelt Longworth)

I will say something nice and frivolous. Pantone's color for 2015 is Marsala. Named after a type of fortified wine, right up my alley! January should have been named Dionysary (totally made up by me) after Dionysus, the ancient Greek god of wine whose celebratory feast happened to fall somewhere between December and March. What a fortunate coincidence. Perhaps next time I will write about the 50 shades of Marsala.

It's a Fascinating Life

The plan or lack thereof, was to skip this month's post. The December air, besides being cooler and stormy, vibrates with joy and madness: a discordant crescendo of goodwill, obligations, shameful consumerism, overindulgence, stress and bad driving. Last week, we were possibly facing what seemed to be a heavy cream shortage on the islands, caused by a combination of delayed shipments from the West coast due to bad weather and the increase in eggnog intake. These are some of the unexpected challenges of living in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Due to my marginal activity on Facebook, friends occasionally take pity and post on my timeline. The most recent addition was a great tongue-and-cheek quote "You have your own blog? Your life must be all kinds of fascinating", with a photo of Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. Indeed, not counting my secret room where everything is edible and barring the use of hallucinogenics, my life is fascinating! Isn't everybody's? Let's look at what fascinating really means. I took the time to google the definition. Its Latin origin, "fascinum" means spell or witchcraft. Ironically, usage of the word as an adjective has risen significantly since the 16th century, peaking not around the centuries of witch hunting but strangely around 1925 and from the late 20th century onward. Are people becoming more self-absorbed, spellbound by their own greatness or is it that they have the means to put it out there for everyone to see? Let's go back to Willy Wonka and his world of imagination and creativity. Moments of life are not relentlessly and continuously captivating, that would be exhausting. There is a difference however between valuing extreme or thrilling experiences over the seemingly mundane, such as teeth brushing. Somewhere in between lies everyone's fascinating life, a life in which the individual is present, thoughtful and appreciating of how the natural world offers us its often inexplicable, marvelous beauty. If you are reading this and know me, you must also realize your good fortune of living in a part of the world that allows walking the path of self-indulgence instead of the one requiring sidestepping land mines.

As we bid farewell to 2014, let us remember and sort out what is important and what is not: this process is truly fascinating.

I leave you with a link to another writer/blogger, one of millions with fascinating lives:
http://thehumanist.com/commentary/left-behind-an-agnostics-christmas-carol

Hello 2015!

White Elephant

"Be running up that road, be running up that hill, be running up that building if I only could..."

-Kate Bush (Running up that Hill - Warning: tacky 80's video)

This song is playing on my iPod, and I'm am running on a stationary elliptical machine, getting nowhere naturally, and looking at the same white building, week after week, year after year. Like a Jedi knight, I see my goal, the lurking, gargantuan mechanical white elephant, manifest yet forever out of reach...To illustrate, please compare my view (from 24hr Fitness in Hawai'i Kai) to that of the Imperial Walker (The animators who brought the AT-AT Imperial Walkers to life in The Empire Strikes Back based their movements on elephants). What can I say, I'm kinda nerdy.

See? Naturally, its stomping legs are hidden by the trees. Stealth move.

I have for you yet another completely delightful piece of trivia: the white apartment building is featured during the last 3 minutes of the original Hawaii 5-0 Episode 21 "Nightmare in Blue", Season 6 (1973).

Focusing on the metaphorical white elephant facilitates the burrowing within the [my] continuously degrading network of neurons. Due to the vivid nature many dreams, taking the time to conjure up details in order to decipher any meaningful communication is often a futile and frustrating exercise. On the rare occasion when done so successfully, they reveal nonsense of comical proportions. I am here to tell you that further distillation may start the cascade required to kick start the creative process or a realization. This is indeed a thrilling moment to stumble upon effortlessly, to be yours alone to savour and without relevance to anyone else.

However, I am writing to share and this part is fun, at least to me. Awakening from a dream in which I have neatly arranged boxes of thousands of bamboo chopsticks on a sidewalk: a public protest of forced societal compliance or feeling secure about my place among many? Despite the philosophical premise, I am suddenly hungry, my appetite nudging towards devouring an assortment of sushi, with chopsticks of course. I love sushi. In Hawai'i, we have a local delicacy called Musubi, which consists of SPAM on rice held together by a strip of nori, or as I like to affectionately call it, heart disease tied up in seaweed. Regardless of the somber analogy, the colour combination is esthetically pleasing: black, white and pink. Classic.

In a moment of clarity, I knew I had found the perfect use for the vintage rice beads purchased many years ago. Voila the Musubi necklace, with Web Jasper filling in for nori and pink Rhodonite for...you know what. It's all about making connections.

May the Force be with you. Strong the Force is.

Design and content copyright by Andrea Corwin ©2014. All rights reserved.

Going Postal

This is a story: no links, no photos.

A trip to the post office is not usually eventful. I wouldn't even have made it to the post office had the online service not been able to complete my PO Box renewal payment. Spending the morning by myself, this was to be my first human interaction of the day and was least of all prepared for an assault.

An older man was the sole customer in line as I walked in, readying his envelope on the counter. As a gesture of politeness I waited for him to complete this task and go ahead of me. He responded equally and signaled for me to go ahead, adding that he had more time than money. Feeling the need for a witty response in uttering my first sentence of the day I countered by saying "so do I". He quickly moved a few steps closer, gave me the once over and asked if I would be interested in earning a little extra money. Clearly, I appear to need more money, and here I thought that I was relatively well dressed for a simple errand. Whoa! Was I being solicited standing in line at the post office? I declined politely yet he continued by offering two CDs for me to watch. I quickly glanced at the tellers hoping that I would be called to the next available booth, but no such luck...yet. I was kicking myself for engaging in a conversation with this man. Since I told him that I was not interested in making money (ha, right) he changed his approach, and I quote "What would you do if you needed a lawyer, let's say the shirt you're wearing today came back from the dry cleaner with a spot on it?". Really, this is your hook? Any reasonable person would ask the dry cleaning service to try removing the spot and if they were unable to do so, to offer amends. I'm not sure what disclaimers these businesses have, but I'm sure to look into it now! In any event, I would hope that there would be less drastic solutions to resolving this matter than involving a lawyer. Instead of articulating this response, I simply counter with "Nothing", believing that brevity was the solution to shutting him down. (Perhaps I should consult a lawyer and sue this guy for unwanted solicitation? As always, these thoughts come long after the event.) With a look of incredulity, he continued to hypothesize, "if you were given a ticket for some traffic violation, would you pay?". "Well, yes (hesitantly)" say I. Again, he appeared flabbergasted but unwilling to give up. Unfortunately, with my adrenalin on the rise, I snapped and started on a tirade about how accidents happen and everything that was wrong with this country was due to people's unwillingness to accept some personal responsibility and litigation being a chief evil, clogging the system, wasting time, energy and money that could otherwise be used more productively. Mercifully, I was interrupted by the post office teller: "Next"!

Do I need to go out more often so I don't appear like a deer in headlights, an easy target? As irritating and surreal as this entire episode felt at the time, I look back on it now and appreciate the unpredictability and random drollness of societal exchanges. How is this helping with my creative energy? Next time, I must find a solution to paying my PO Box fees online...

Content copyright by Andrea Corwin ©2014. All rights reserved.

Blogger's Block

Blogger's Block, sounds like some urban Lego kit don't you think? It is with this premise that I plan to approach the topic. Upon seeing the title, what was your first thought or interpretation, if any? Will she be writing about a street housing bloggers exclusively? Is it like Writer's Block, a commonly recognized term for staring at a blank piece of paper/screen? In this case, "block" implies something negative, preventing you from moving forward. Indeed, we all experience "blocks" in all facets of our lives. What if we thought of "block" as a piece of Lego, which would allow us to build or piece together ideas, just as I am doing right now?

I am painfully aware that the introductory paragraph is littered with question marks, but also note that each question is followed by a statement, if not necessarily an answer. What I am trying to say in a less than erudite way is the following: when faced with an obstacle, your body/mind identifies a stressor, and with that comes the fight or flight response. Ah...is it possible to choose? Not always in the physical sense, but certainly intellectually. I will be the first to admit that I gravitate towards flight, such a lovely word, implying levitation and movement. Fighting sounds aggressive and not altogether pleasant, unless that's your thing. In an ideal world, I would like flight to meet fight.

Enough with the battle of words (i.e. fight) and allow me to present my simple solution. Choose your flight behavior in such a way that it allows you to clear your mind but not stop thinking about what is personally meaningful. I can't tell you what that looks like for you. Maybe it means trolling or posting something on social media or the internet, a shameless plug for what I'm doing. Seriously though, my top two flights which invariably lead me to fight are exercise or a glass of wine, sometimes both but not at the same time. Then I do something silly with my bead inventory as Halloween is just around the corner. So that's how it went for me yesterday and why I decided to write on the subject. The exercise was the catalyst, not the wine, in case you're wondering...

Design and content copyright by Andrea Corwin ©2014. All rights reserved.