Head In the Cloud

Spent the day at Microsoft, meeting with folks and touring their campus.  I just thought I'd log today as the day that I've been convinced that the cloud is taking the world... well, by storm.

Also, for the heck of it, here is a cloud-related song from a cloud-related indie band:

Why So Commonplace?

Naming things can be incomprehensibly difficult, as anyone with a new pet, child, garage band, or blog can attest.  A quality name, we believe, can be that small but vital push towards glory, laud, and honor —while a poor name can doom the recipient to failure or even worse: outright mediocrity.  (Freakonomics contains a fascinating chapter on literally “poor” names. Excerpt.)

I have decided to rename this blog The Commonplace.  Three notes on why I chose this title:

1.)  When I was teaching high school, I was introduced to the concept of commonplace books.  I quickly became a staunch believer.  From Wikipedia:

Commonplace books (or commonplaces) were a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. Such books were essentially scrapbooks filled with items of every kind: medical recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas. Commonplaces were used by readers, writers, students, and humanists as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts they had learned. Each commonplace book was unique to its creator's particular interests.

And a further description from Robert Darnton’s article "Extraordinary Commonplaces:"

Time was when readers kept commonplace books. Whenever they came across a pithy passage, they copied it into a notebook under an appropriate heading, adding observations made in the course of daily life.… [Ordinary readers as well as famous writers like Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, John Milton, and John Locke] broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. Then they reread the copies and rearranged the patterns while adding more excerpts. Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities. They belonged to a continuous effort to make sense of things, for the world was full of signs: you could read your way through it; and by keeping an account of your readings, you made a book of your own, one stamped with your personality. (The New York Review of Books, December 21, 2000)

 The modern blog is simply the commonplace book revisited.
 
2.)  I think there is value in telling the story of the small, everyday moments and interactions that make up the bulk of our existence.  A few quotes about taking commonplace events and making them unusual, and unusual events commonplace:

"In my plays I want to look at life - at the commonplace of existence-as if we had just turned a corner and run into it for the first time.
Christopher Fry
 

"Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job."
Jean Cocteau

"I'm saying look, here they come, pay attention. Let your eyes transform what appears ordinary, commonplace, into what it is, a moment in time, an observed fragment of eternity."
Philip Levine

"Let us dig our furrow in the fields of the commonplace."
Jean Henri Fabre

3.) Finally, I would like to think that this blog will eventually become a forum where people gather; a virtual commons.  And in our discourse, when we disagree, it is my hope that we do so from a common place.

Filling The Empty Page

"You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study.  He applied to the academy of Fine Arts and later to the School of Architecture. Ever see one of his paintings?  Neither have I.  Resistance beat him.  Call it an overstatement but I’ll say it anyway:  It was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square canvas.”                                                                                         -Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

I find writing to be daunting.  Well, not writing itself as much as starting to write.  As an undergrad, whenever I had to begin a new essay, I couldn’t face the white emptiness of a blank computer screen.  I would begin to write on an unlined piece of paper, folded in half portrait-style (that’s “hot dog” for those of you counting at home) because it cut down on the empty space.  I would write in pencil, rather than pen, because it made the initial free-flow of ideas seem less permanent, more open to change.  And I would write outside—at the park or on the balcony—because it just seemed to work better that way.

In her book The Habit of Creativity legendary choreographer Twyla Tharp spoke of this process of beginning something new:

To some people, this empty room symbolizes something profound, mysterious, and terrifying; the task of starting with nothing and working your way toward creating something whole and beautiful and satisfying. It's no different for a writer rolling a fresh sheet of paper into his typewriter (or more likely firing up the blank screen on his computer), or a painter confronting a virginal canvas, a sculptor staring at a raw chunk of stone, a composer at the piano with his fingers hovering just above the keys. Some people find this moment-the moment before creativity begins-so painful that they simply cannot deal with it. They get up and walk away from the computer, the canvas, the keyboard; they take a nap or go shopping or fix lunch or do chores around the house. They procrastinate. In its most extreme form, this terror totally paralyzes people.

She goes on to say that the best way to counteract the paralysis inherent in new ventures is to form a routine or habit (hence the title) around the activity.  

And so... I’ve decided to take this writing thing seriously.   I am committing to writing something every day, be it prose or verse, inane or serious, proprietary or from something that has influenced me.  When I’m at my computer, I’ll post it here.  While not everything will be worth your time, it is worth mine, and I hope you occasionally find things to enjoy. 

Grammie and Grampa

For my grandparents' 60th anniversary:

When I think about my grandparents…

I see natural wonders—Devil’s Tower, the Grand Canyon, and Crater Lake—as well as the great palaces of the world: the Cow Palace and the Corn Palace. I see a needle-point wall hanging, whose loops are gradually filled with the names of grandchildren, and a yellowed comic about a destitute man explaining that his wife collects dolls. I see bubble lights, and puzzle pieces, and the countless stars of an Echo Summit night.

I hear the San Francisco Symphony playing animal noises and cousins telling knock-knock jokes over the CB radio. I hear dice rattling frantically in a tin lid and a church choir belting out their Christmas program. I hear hand bells, and the clatter of Scrabble tiles, and sleepy tales of Lake Wobegone.

I taste pink Jello salad with walnuts, and the distinctive flavor of a tall Jim washed down with a rootbeer float. I taste several weeks’ worth of bearclaws and sandwiches from a cooler, but also High Tea scones. I taste Chex mix and Danish butter cookies and soft serve from Sizzler on my birthday.

I smell the warm steam of Cabin waffles, mixing with smoke from the morning fire. I smell November turkey and December salmon, and sulfur bubbling out of Yellowstone mudpots.

I feel the heat of a long car ride through the Badlands and the chill of a September afternoon at Candlestick. I feel a well-worn “Cookie Monster blue” carpet and the rough ribs of the Yellow Room’s bedspread. I feel tip-toe hugs and bent-over kisses, and hands held for grace, in short… I feel love.

Reunion

So, I am quickly coming up on my 10-year high school reunion, which I'm actually really looking forward to. (Last night I dreamt that it was being held in the supermarket by my house. Not much seating, but the food was great.) Anyway, I was spending a lazy Sunday afternoon listening to Prairie Home Companion (which would make it seem like I'm coming up on my 50th high school reunion) when they read "The Fire of Drift-wood" by Longfellow, which I've excerpted below:

The Fire of Drift-wood

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

...We sat and talked until the night,
Descending, filled the little room;
Our faces faded from the sight,
Our voices only broke the gloom.

We spake of many a vanished scene,
Of what we once had thought and said,
Of what had been, and might have been,
And who was changed, and who was dead;

And all that fills the hearts of friends,
When first they feel, with secret pain,
Their lives thenceforth have separate ends,
And never can be one again;

...The very tones in which we spake
Had something strange, I could but mark;
The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.

And now the thought of my reunion is fairly depressing. Thanks a lot, Longfellow.

Neo-Eo

While this may not quite live up to its original 3-D showing in Tomorrowland, it is definitely worth the next 15 minutes of your allotted surfing time.