Approaching Dust Storm - Flickr Connected

Approaching Dust Storm
Originally uploaded by Matthew Jolly.

As you can see, I've got the link to Flikr working. I've had a great deal of fun today uploading photos, tagging them, titling them, describing them. It will be wonderful to have this public archive--I hope that the current trend in free tools continues, and that we (as a group of people) continue to critically evaluate the roll and worth of such incredibly open appraoches to digital (intellectual) property.

Anyway (enough philosoblabba), the photo to the right was taken during an approaching dust storm, and what was particularly incredible about the experience was the amazing and complex contrast between the blue sky beyond the mountain and the darkness sweeping in on top of us. Lauren and I were at IKEA when the storm came up, and I remember walking through the parking lot with the wind pushing the carts around, and my hair.

Dust storms during monsoon are pretty common (July - late August) and people tend to shrug their shoulders, but on this particular day there were a number of neighbors out in the street, pointing at the sky, smiling, and in awe. Phoenix is an indoor culture--too hot most of the year to be where it is not air-conditioned--and so it's nice to see neighbors out of their houses, approximating 'community' more completely than simply being a cluster of houses next to a mountain.

Old Friends and I Never Call

I have old friends that I miss often, and that I never call (out of some strangeness). But I often look them up online and find out what they’re doing. Adam Golaski was published in McSweeney’s, I bought a copy and I’m incredibly happy for him--the work is beautiful and I feel honored to have seen early versions of the series from which the poems are taken. Sam Chuparkoff has added a couple more posts to some programmers’ message boards in a language that I don’t understand. Mary Speaker is back in New York after graduating from Indiana, and she’s a curator for the reading series called reading between a and b, which I’d attend if I lived anywhere near it. Gregory Alkaitis Carafelli has returned from Iceland, where he took some incredibly beautiful pictures that will be in a gallery in Philadelphia in less than a week. I don’t know where Andy Brown is—his name is too common to search for on Google. This is some very strange behavior, I know, but perhaps by posting to these places, some of my old friends have discovered me and are content to know I’m still here, breathing and thinking about them.

The Purpose of Writing the Days

I’m wondering about memory and the act of recording. I lose so many days to the dull wash of time and routine. There’s something here about the unexamined life, about the insanity of going through the same motions expecting different results. Lately I’ve given away whole nights, from dinner to sleep, whole thick round hours, to autopilot—sitcom or movie, sports or celebrity poker, DIY or reality TV. Not that there isn’t ‘information’ in television; not that it’s a complete waste of time.

Still, I imagine there are more rewarding ways to construct an evening. Young children spend those few moments before sleep reviewing their days for information—replaying the dramatic and the mundane moments. And there isn’t a learning curve more profound than that of children: they learn their language (the whole taxonomy of everything), the unique social mode of their culture, they practice and master a range of physical movement. As an adult I enter sleep through the door of anxiety—one that I have to force shut behind me.

I wonder if we lose the ability to learn because our days yield less information as we age, because we learn too well the ability to draw from parallel experiences and our lives offer up less of anything new, because we (understandably) seek safety and certainty over experience. Just last night my wife and I were wondering if we were happier as children. I said that our adult lives are more fulfilling, that we face more complex problems, that we’re in the position to build new things, to create the world, to realize dreams—that opportunity is paired with responsibility. I had a hard time meaning it.

So here’s a record--a review. I want to keep the ego out of it. I don’t ever want to tell myself something small if it isn’t clarified by wonder. If I ever write a memoir, I want it to be at an old age. And I want the thousand chores and dramas to be imbued with a quality like wisdom.

Mornings Here

I'm an apologetic smoker. Most weekdays I'm up by 6:00 and sitting on my back patio--coffee and smoke--by 6:30. Every morning around 7:45 a phone rings from a nearby condo. It's a high but soft digital ring--one long pulse and a longer pause. Usually whoever is at the receiving end picks it up after one ring. They anticipate the call. At 8:00 the woman that drives the early 80's-model BMW in the parking space next to mine leaves for wherever she goes--probably for work, but I can't be certain. (She won't respond when I say hello. The man she lives with does, but it's clear in the way he responds that he's only acting out a social politic for my sake.) A few months ago her car had a loose belt that whined for 30 seconds every time the car started. If I'd slept late, the car woke me.

I leave for work at different hours. My neighbors, however, participate in more structured lives. They receive daily phone calls at exact times, leave for work at the same routine moment. I imagine their mornings are clock-driven, exact moments for breakfasts of cereal and hot showers, alarms and goodbye kisses. And even for all of that, the morning that they walk out into is every day a different morning--the sun rising earlier or later depending on the season and the weather in flux.

I set my watch by their routines. The phone rings, and I look at the clock to verify the time.

Being aware of my neighbors' routines tricks in me the old questions about purpose. My friend Chris has said that it's all in the interpersonal relationships--by "it" he means all of it. He's Zen Buddhist, and serious enough at it to wake at four every morning. He leaves his home each morning by 4:40 and drives the twenty minutes into town for 5:00 meditation, which lasts one hour. I've always wondered if he has a cup of coffee before he leaves to meditate.

I started this post at 8:59. I'll leave in ten minutes for work. The temperature today will climb above 100 degrees. I'll probably get home before it's dark. A lot will happen in between that will seem incredibly real.