Episteme

Some times it's hard to ride my bike around town because where I live is a medium size town where everybody drives cars (alone), lives in single-family detached homes, and wouldn't ever ever ever take the bus even if they were given a lifetime supply of Twinkies and a million dollars. Because of that, everyone drives their cars, even though a barrel of oil is trading at $112 a barrel (I saw that on the CNN news scroll at the gym around 0630 today), we have a small problem called global warming promising to end civilization as we know it in like 20 years, Americans are fat, and all the other bad stuff that comes with driving (cell phones - please why??), the only people who ride their bikes around towns are elementary school kids and crack heads. And me. Because I live down the street from a half-way house where men on parole are getting a second chance at something (which for the most part is OK because they mostly keep to themselves) and because everyone who isn't 8-years-old or a junky drives their car every where, I usually get cat calls or someone in a car who doesn't know how to drive with a bike practically runs me over.

Continue reading "The Problem With Just Two Wheels" »

Posted by Dawn at 06:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jamie Tarabay is leaving Baghdad after two years there. She runs the bureau for NPR. I like listening to her because despite whatever awful conditions exist for her, she manages to uncover these really great stories about friends trying to save each other from death squads, sons raising ransom money to save fathers they will never see again, the hell, basically, that Iraqis live since the U.S. can to "liberate" them, or whatever the U.S. came there to do. I heard that she is living and I'm surprised she lasted so long without getting killed, but maybe I'm just under estimating her or I'm speaking about something I don't really know much about. I wonder what news from Iraq will sound like now. She is pessimistic about the future Iraq, though, and doesn't think much good is going to come from the Bush Administration's little experiment of implanting democracy in the Middle East. Busy, busy busy.

But when I heard that Jamie is pessimistic, I realized I am too about a lot of things. But should I be. The fact that being "green" is in vogue has only added to my anxiety about the future and the world and whether civilization as we know it will remain for the coming generations. The fact that environmental preservations has been honed so perfectly to the individual makes me feel increasingly helpless about actually working for a cleaner world. To think that one person's actions make any difference is just absurd. Governments, corporations, these entities hold the key to reversal in climate change or clean water for everyone or clean oceans. I think the message of individual action - using more energy efficient light bulbs or recycling everything - comes at the expense of aggressively demanding government to fund research programs into alternative energy or ratify Kyoto, or better yet write the next pact on global climate change. If we all switched to Priuses tomorrow and only shopped at Whole Foods it wouldn't make much difference because the rest of the world wants to consume like we Americans have for the past 50 years.

Continue reading "Clean Life" »

Posted by Dawn at 07:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is a fitful time for me. I can't say whether it's because of the war in Iraq, the impending environmental crisis, Alberto Gonzales, but I just get this feeling from time to time like I'm doomed. Joan Didion in "The Year of Magical Thinking" wrote that people who are going to die know it; they some get notification of their death and are aware that something will happen. I haven't had that feeling but I'm feeling like the time separating me between death is a big black blob. Time does that stuff, you know, speed up or slow down depending on something in theoretical physics that says when it feels like time is going slow, it actually is. I used to console myself by thinking that no matter how awful a day was going, it's still the same 24 hours as all those really great days I'd spend strolling along the canals in Utrecht or having a beer(s) in San Francisco.

But that's a lie I told myself. Those good days go by fast because time is actually moving faster. I used to also think that all the madness in the world would be solved by progress. Wrong again! Read this and you still what I'm talking about. It's like there is something about human beings that just make it impossible to stop murdering each other over God, land, resources, honor. The movies have let me down. I always thought there was hope for humankind through cinema. Or literature. Sometimes I wish this blog would write itself.

Continue reading "Time For..." »

Posted by Dawn at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The truth is, I dreaded the big 3-0. I counted down every single day until my birthday, plugging age 29 into the exercise machines with relish every time I went to the gym. I felt like I wasn't going to be able to fit into this new age group, that I was still different, that I didn't want to explore this new stage life had to offer.

You could chalk it all up to the power of youth, feeling like you'll lose your charm, or your strength, or you'll soon be old and wrinkled, or whatever. But for me, and I think for many others, 30 is also a time to evaluate yourself, which can be quite oppressive. You start to say, who am I now, and what have I accomplished? Is it good enough for someone my age? What are my peers doing, and am I as good as them? Am I as smart, and have I used my life in the way I should have up to now?

Continue reading "Ageing Gracefully" »

Posted by Kim at 04:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My generation has horrible handwriting. It's not like my grandmother's cursive or my mother's polite script. I can't even write proper cursive and I hate handwriting notes because I can hardly read them and the person receiving it certainly can't. When I was a well-mannered young girl, I would write thank you notes to family who sent gifts for my birthday, and my mother would always tell that while it took grandma two weeks to read my awful handwriting, she appreciated the card.

There was time, long before mine, where letter writing was practically an occupation; it was who people communicated their private thoughts to others because it was kinda hard to it most other ways. So people learned to write proper letters, which once discovered a few hundred years later, are published in books to remind us all we'll never write letters like that again.

Continue reading "The Lost Art of Letters" »

Posted by Dawn at 01:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Through technology, I am slowly (not quickly) falling behind. I don't feel guilty anymore like I used to over unread emails, unattended podcasts (dozens and dozens begging to be listened to), blog entries to write, interesting things to read, websites and blogs to check out - I never had any of these problems before...before...I can't even remember. I've always had a computer but with the proliferation of so much cool stuff, I have convinced myself I have time for all this stuff when I barely have time to make dinner at night. OK, I always have time to eat, but how do I cope?

I started unsubscribing to most of the emails lists I was on because I hadn't read them in months and I only kept them because I was convinced there would be some precious morsel of information I need, even though I rarely bothered to actually read them and figure it out. As the pile of "interest things" I committed myself to reading, writing, thinking about, pining over increased, time, the amount I actually have, has decreased in proportion. It's not like I got six extra hours everyday to actually do all that stuff. Nope, I had six fewer hours or six hours of more work to complete.

And despite having boundless information at my fingertips, ready to 24/7, I don't even need friends anymore there's so much to online, I didn't who Art Buchwald was until he died. And I still don't really know much about him other than he's dead now.

Posted by Dawn at 07:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As strange as it sounds, my life in the weirdest place on earth is getting a little mundane. Age, like Dawn says, changes you - it's not university classes and growth so much anymore as doing the little things we need to do to keep living. So much of life seems to be just that, maintenance. So what about the higher meaning, expression, sacredness? How can we live in a space like that if we're not artists, or monks, or philanthropists?

With the daily repetition of it all, it feels like we get used to things that aren't really consistent with the way we saw the world before. What does it mean when we see people suffering and don't or can't help? If a poor person is begging in the street, should I give her money or not? How do you weigh personal risk along with the idea that you might just be perpetuating begging, and the fact that you just might not feel like digging in your pocket for change? Helping people just doesn't feel convenient anymore, walking by is easier. Then the routine doesn't change. Just outside, inside, eat, sleep, out again.

Continue reading "Patterns" »

Posted by Kim at 03:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

These past few says, huh. My car wouldn't start because I didn't drive in a few days and it's been cold (for California). I hate being ignorant about things I own and to be honest, my car terrifies me. I wouldn't know what to do if it broke down other than throw money I don't have into fixing a problem I probably could have solved if I knew a little more than I know now.

I already feel winded by age - this entire year having gone by before I could even really get around to do something with it - and now it's the holidays, which make facing the revolving calendar even more difficult. But over time I've slowly come to accept this and not be so fearful of the changes when I can't see them coming for what they are. War won't make me famous, famine won't make me a star and in those sentiments I am reminded by what Ernest Becker explained as our innate, inexplicable desire for immortality bound up on our fear of ourselves and dying.

And the year always makes me wonder if I should be setting off on a different path, working some place new, talking with a new accent or maybe dye my hair and get glasses. I found a poem I write in the car when I was cleaning it out after getting fixed so it would start (cars make me completely mental. I hate being ignorant about something I own and use everyday and I can't even fix it if something basic is wrong!) but now I've missed place it. I want to post it here, my amazing poetry because, well I've never done that before. But that for another posting.

So when I feel completely mental from my mechanical inferiorities I think of this picture of Lake Vaeleren in Norway from my friend's cabin. I know this stuff, travel, hiking, lakes. I can do those things. And it makes me realize I'll be fine, just fine.

Posted by Dawn at 08:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just want to say that I have good excuses for not writing for like months. Work, social life, work, sleep, forgetting my password to the site... Anyway we are both back as dedicated bloggers and we want to redevote ourselves to Episteme's piercingly insightful yet humorous view of the universe.
Like globetrotting Dawn, I also got on a plane and it was awesome, but not quite as awesome as her trip because I just went home and got a bunch of my stuff to bring back to Mexico. Here is a small selection of the stuff:

When I got back to Mexico I realized I really liked it here in spite of undrinkable tap water, safety concerns, stark income gap and not being a native Spanish speaker. I love where I live and I love how the sun looks through the smog at sunset.

I am also getting more into the art scene here and have been visiting some of the city's great museums, so stay tuned for that. It's a mixed bag, this place, but there is beauty in the mess of it.

Posted by Kim at 07:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I worry too much about the universe, at least that's what I realized the other day. You know, my place in it, your place in it, what life is really about, blah, blah, blah. And now all this crazy news surrounding Wikipedia - what does it all mean? So when I'm gone on vacation, I've promised myself I will buy a new journal and write in it. I haven't written in one in like two years. Looking back I realize all I really missed documenting was my neurotic worry about the universe, but maybe if I really write about this stuff on a regular basis I will uncover the source of my mental...ness. Probably not. But it's worth trying. I often fantasize that a long time in the future some archaeologists will uncover my obsessive scribble and realize that maybe total mind control wasn't such a bad idea!

Posted by Dawn at 07:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I heard shots last night from my apartment.
It was about 12:30 am and I was already sleeping but it was right outside and I snapped awake. I realized I had been dreaming a few different dreams at once, most of them about murder and crime. I don't know if I heard a shot before that while I was sleeping and it went into my dream, or what, but when I woke up I was thinking about dead people. there were a bunch of cases, and it was like a documentary with a running commentary by...well...me.

I was saying that only a few of the cases were ever solved here in Mexico, and they were only the really obvious ones, where the person was caught red-handed. Then there were the pseudo-obvious ones, where people made it look like suicide but it wasn't. I was looking down at a man dead on the ground with his elbows crooked, his hands up by his head.

Continue reading "Shots" »

Posted by Kim at 05:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Why does archeology have to be on display behind the glass windows of a museum?
Why do I go to the Museum of Archeology in Mexico City with a friend and find out that she likes the area where modern cultures are on display, where the models have bodies and faces like hers instead of the tall skinny manequins she sees in stores, but she says she doesn't know why? Why does she insult indigenous culture as "naco," yet wants to look at it inside of a prestigious institution?
Let this be the place where I say that I've had it with the self-hatred of Mexicans who aren't white like Europeans, with the idea that indigenous culture is interesting to learn about, as long as your ancestors weren't Maya or Nahuatl or Aztec or whatever.

Continue reading "Get me out of Jim Crow" »

Posted by Kim at 07:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Like most people who work for a living (Paris Hilton can be forgiven, that bitch), I think often about work. What does it mean to work and why must work be done at a desk? Of course, not all work is done at a desk -- maybe the best work doesn't need a desk -- but I need a desk to hold my papers and remind me of the many more desks I will encounter as I toil in my formidable years to create, well, create something at a desk, no less (maybe I'll write the history of the desk).

Author Enrique Vila-Matas' riff on Melville'sBartleby in Bartleby & Co. is by far one of the most prosaic and funny takes on working life (Office Space excepted), or just working. This is one of my favorite passages:

"I am full of doubts. The only thing I am suddenly now sure of is that I must change my name and call myself AlmostWatt. Oh, I don't know how important it is that I say this or something else. Saying is inventing. Be it false or certain. We invent nothing, we think we are inventing when in fact all we are doing is stammering out the lesson, the remains of some homework learnt and forgotten, life without tears, just as we weep over it. And to hell with it."

How many times I have stared idly at the flickering computer screen and thought that? What am I working for?

Continue reading "Perhaps The World's Greatest Worker" »

Posted by Dawn at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Maybe this is upside down, I don't know, but this is Gerhard Richter, who oscillates between photo realism and abstract, but regardless, is always precise. When I took this picture, I didn't write any information down about it, its title, the date, but no matter. I wanted to take this picture because the texture and colors and composition make my eyes vibrate. I don't think I need a better reason, do I? Someone once wrote, "Art is useless", but, reader, I politely disagree. Nothing that makes your eyes vibrate is without meaning.

Filed under Art

Posted by Dawn at 10:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This story in the March issue of The Believer (yes, I'm about a month behind in everything, thank you), reveals to me much of the intent of this blog. It isn't always clear to me because knowledge is hard thing to quantify, and a bit of a process at that, but this manifesto, the "Reality Hunger: A Manifesto" by David Shields, quantifies succinctly all these works of literature that fall under different ways of thinking. What's most impressive is what this guy has actually read: a lot of long, complicated books, but good ones at that, few of which I've managed to eyeball.

Continue reading "Art at the Intersection of Life " »

Posted by Dawn at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As this blog evolves, our thinking and reasoning on our project will too. This is really about quantifying knowledge and I know I envision this blog as a the footnotes, in a way, to a larger book of ideas. OK, that's how I think about it now. But I'm bound to change my mind. Since this is very much about the workings of our brains, I'm posting a Q&A Kim and I did via email between March 7 and 13 when she was en route to Mexico and we were discussing what we'd like this blog to be. We did it with the intent of explaining to each other and others what this is all about. Enjoy!

Continue reading "Work in progress" »

Posted by Dawn at 09:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

About Me

When my plane touched down on the runway in Mexico City, I was writing in my notebook, trying to keep the pen moving in spite of all the forces of inertia that were moving my pen away from the paper and pushing my letters out of formation.

Continue reading "Kim, page-bound " »

Posted by Kim at 05:09 PM | Permalink

I'm a journalist by profession and study. Now the study bit, well, I learned the most about journalism by being outside of class, but in all honesty, I consider myself a bedroom philosopher. I did my studies at San Francisco State University, perhaps the most wonderful city in the world, where I started to learn my life’s lessons. Lectures. Art. Bars. The best classrooms. And I had some amazing professors who indulged my whims.

I also credit my penchant for bedroom philosophizing from my year in Europe. There everyone likes to start dinner by asking, How do we reconcile our basic animal nature with our limitless intellectual capacity? Needless to say, I would sit there with my mouth agape and go home and lay in bed and wonder, How do we?

I often complain that I have too many problems because I read too much (I complain often, too). Reading too much means I ask too many questions and I’m slowly coming to the realizing that none will be answered in a way I find satisfying. But maybe some will be. But, reader, you know what? Just asking the questions I will be asking here is a relief in some way. It’s a relief because other people ask them too and in places other than the bedroom.

Posted by Dawn at 02:12 PM | Permalink