Monday: An Up and Down of It (or an in and out of it)
A woman walks into a tiny coffee place in which I am the only patron.
The woman waits for her toddler of a grandson, who holds onto the door frame of the entrance to steady himself, to follow her.
Dressed in a blue smock, blue pants, and a large blue sun hat, the boy looks to have figured out standing as long as a week ago.
“It was his father’s,” the woman says of the outfit when asked. Thus the style and stylishness. The clothing is thirty-year-old.
“Dashing,” I say.
With that, the boy lets go of the door frame, crosses the threshold and penetrates the interior.
Tuesday: Amsterdam-ia
Not built for cars and trucks, the small streets here mean you will often see both parked in funny spots and sometimes even in a bike path when the driver is making a delivery. That is but one of an endless series of “mostly this, but sometimes that” urban realities that mean where you bike or walk is not super obvious or may change from day to day or hour to hour. Your daily commute, in other words, will invariably include decisions you have to make, decisions that go beyond your choice of route. (How you move through a semi-circular maze means you usually have some hundred different possibilities for getting from any A to every B.
The decisions you make in the moment because someone is delivering veggies or about how to get from where you are to where you want to be increase the sense of freedom. Sure, sometimes this can be an irritation—how could you park there? Damn, I got lost again—but the alternative of a linear trip in which your only choice is how to reduce road rage is a prison by comparison, a place of power frustrated, not freedom enacted.
Wednesday: At The Bottom of The Internet
The smartphone subsuming us without hesitance or questioning confirms the danger of any particular tool or technology is not the thing itself but how quickly we accede to what feeds our lizard brains.
Obviously, manufacturing is better than craft because I see more shiny objects as a result. Obviously, roads are better than paths because I get to go vroom-vroom with my car. Obviously, a phone I carry with me is better than one at home because I am always connected.
And now no one has enough, nature overheats and we all feel alone.
Ah for a little long-term thinking among the masses. Who will hack that?