post apocalyptic wasteland or post-postmodern paradise

2374, the year human history begins to wean itself from the digital dark ages, or not. throughout most of human history, when we come to periods of great technological (including industrial) advancement we tend to race forward as if we're driving a car by only staring at the speedometer and the fuel gage.

there's more to it to that.

there's more to technology than "faster," "better," and "easier."

what do you do when that technology fails?

what do you do when the lights go out?

what do you do when you see yourself standing there, looking at an empty abandoned grocery store, trying to figure out how to feed your family?

we often spend so much time and so much our lives buried in the business of the next that we fail to notice where the road is going ahead and what we've left behind.

i'm not a luddite. i write software, i use the internet, i blog, i read the paper on a kindle, but i also have a love of the analog world around us. my office fits in my backpack and i travel the city (mostly a coffee house near my house) as a vagabond worker. getting things done while the rest of the world moves around me, indifferent to the world beyond the tips of their fingers, or their digital pocket masters (DPMs or "smart" phones, if you like). but i already miss books. i hate that trees need to be pulped to create them, as i would miss trees more if my world was filled with books and no forests. i love the mechanical masterpiece of a quality analog watch.

balance. i suppose i desire balance and sustainability.

without taking time to acknowledge how dependent you are on a system, and think about how you could live without it, you make yourself a slave to that system. that's great as long as that system continues, and continues to take care of you, or allows you to take care of yourself.

look at the global financial issues of the late twenty-aughts that continue to rattle around in the global economy. to pick on the poster-child of the day, look at Greece. it is easy to point fingers at the excesses they were living with and the many problems that exist in their system, but how would someone from an agrarian society look at our lives if we look up to find ourselves in what may be an immanent collapse?

we really are cattle at times (sorry, but it's true. i wrote we, not just you) marching to the beat of marketing and propaganda that sings a tune to our desires, without taking the time to simply stop and look at *why* we're making decisions, or if we're really making decisions at all.

i'm not pessimistic, potentially a cynic, but i don't see us breaking free of any system while we stand with our feet firmly locked in place with our face buried in the immediate matters of the day.

it takes you.

it takes nearly each and every one of us to take our lives into our control.

it takes you to no longer assume you will be taken care of by your system, or that your system is run by operators who inherently care about the outcome of your life, as long as you continue your function in the system.

we blindly see revolution in revolt, regardless of the outcome.

i ask of you no more than i ask of myself.

stop and smell whatever flower you pass, at least on occasion. throw convention to the wind when convention doesn't fit your life. find yourself, beneath the layers of facade you've built to fit into that round hole.

go square peg, go!

change the world. make it better.

know your limits, know your dependancies, and if you want to continue to rely on a system, take an active part in maintaining it or reshaping it.

stop sitting there waiting to die.

you're better than that.

i hope this finds you well.
.jason

on racial discrimination

have you seen the memorial for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.? it's awesome in my opinion and i really hope to take my girls to see it along with the rest of Washington D.C. some day. all of the news about the opening, etc. got me thinking. a lot.

now, you shouldn't need a disclaimer but i'm going to throw one out there anyway. i can't stand bigots. i don't care what color, faith, sexuality, nationality, etc. it takes a rather egocentric a[hem]hole to think that they corner the market on what is good and right based on what are mostly external to who they *are* as a person. so make sure you don't catch yourself thinking i'm a racist, i'm just going to talk about racial discrimination from a neutral point - if there is one, and oh yeah, i'm a white guy. but i did grow up in a predominantly black neighborhood until i was about five and the prevailing wind in psychology would suggest most of my personality developed in that time.

i remember there was a white kid my brothers age that hung out with him, and that the only kid that played with me didn't really want to, but the other kids didn't think he was "black enough."

the 70s kind of sucked.

i remember that one of the only other white families in the neighborhood are the ones that stole the first color tv and stereo my parents bought a few days after getting them.

the 70s sucked, and white people sucked then too.

in 2000 i walked into a restaurant where i was the only white patron, i didn't realize it at the time but i felt far more comfortable there than i feel when i walk into a restaurant with nothing but people who share my skin color. i don't dislike the color of my skin or anything about me, but i don't like it that because of my skin people think i don't understand what it's like to be discriminated against. those are some of my earliest memories, and it's just the way life was for me back then.

but back to my point. are Americans who happen to be black ready to have a white minority?

it's going to happen, sooner or later. i kind of look forward to when we all get past this and race isn't an issue and we all blend into a nice middle ground and then we'll only be able to complain about eye color.

so back to the question. can all of America regardless of color put aside standing up for someone who 'is like me' or 'looks like me' with no other insight to their color? can Americans look to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream and work on it together? or will we regress into a photonegative shot from the 1950s?

it's a serious question and worth thinking about. however you feel yourself a minority, could you put aside those feelings should you be thrust into the majority and be the person you say the other side is not.

can you adjust your mindset to fit around your solidarity becoming not much different than the ramblings of nutty white folks who think they are better than others because of their muddled European mutt heritage? that's where it goes you know.

if you can't let go of those feelings of mistrust of those who look different than you and a belief that it's "OK" because "the man" kept you down, well, not really you, but your older relatives maybe, then you're going to end up being like the people who are (or who you imagine are) the problem.

you see, Dr. King envisioned a world not where there was mistrust of some and trust of others based on skin color, he imagined a world where we didn't give a shit. his philosophy wasn't based on division, but unity. i think that would include our current idiotic debate about sexuality and marriage but i didn't know the man. i wish i did.

i don't care what color people are, i welcome you all and i will raise my children to see past the external to see who people really are, not what they look like or sound like.

are you willing to do the same?

i hope this finds you well.

.jason

close your eyes

close your eyes
feel the ebb and flow of life settle
as music
and words
wash around you in like the tide on an empty beach.

find your place
you can find peace in chaos
life in an otherwise barren existence
and love in the breeze

each time we move
it is an act
a gesture
of art
expressing all that resides
in our minds
sometimes hidden
but ever present

find the music that lies in you
and shake off the burden
the yoke
of all records of wrong
but not of danger
and clear the clutter from your mind
that you may see past the end
of your face
and find all the beauty that is around you
and has been
all along


.jason

on disconnecting

i've come to a realization, and it's left me little choice but to walk away from my "smart" phone.

the addictiveness of ubiquitous information accessible via a slick interface tucked away in my pocket has, whether i like it or not, crept into, and obscured the world i love.

i enjoy walking down the street taking in the world around me, i enjoy just sitting there watching my daughters play, even if they aren't interested in playing with daddy for the moment.

i'm sure it's not this way for everyone, but at least i can admit it - when you spend your life filling all the formerly empty and quiet moments with check-ins, +1s, comments, and 140 character partial thoughts, you start to speed things up into a frenzied blur of non-stop activity… no quiet moments to reflect… no time to just sit, think, and be washed over by the world around you.

that's a tragedy, for me at least. the allure of new marketing (and don't be confused, the success of almost all of these things centers around marketing) is strong, you feel like it's a great game - letting your friends know where you are and being able to know where they are, finding other places to get a bite when your out of town or exploring your home town, finding out if the capital of Djibouti really is Djibouti (it is).

the pull is immense - and it reminds me of MUDs back in the early to mid 1990s. what's a MUD? for those who don't know, think of a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) but all text based. i lost *far* too many hours while at university because i felt like i needed to play, i wanted to play, and i was potentially letting other users on the system down when i wasn't there to help fight a battle or just troll around. of course, it didn't help that initially the courses weren't challenging enough for me to feel the need to study, but that rapidly changed, and i walked away.

this really isn't much different. consider me the canary in the coal mine for when things get a little toxic for actually living life - i'm not abandoning google+ or plurk for that matter, but i really want is to spend more time with my family, and more time writing. in the end, i won't care about the deals i got at [chain restaurant] for checking in there frequently (and therefore advertising for them), i won't care about making sure people know my immediate thoughts on an event, i won't care about capturing and sharing photos immediately, but i will care about staring into my daughters eyes and letting them know that daddy is here for them, is present in their lives, and that no beep or ping is more important than being in the moment with them.

so yeah, i'm sending back my current android phone after evolving through the path of the original iPhone all the way to the Nexus S. i feel like i'm insulting Nokia a little bit, but the N8 i'm getting is a little rough to use and enough so that i hope i don't turn to it for much more than checking my calendar and mail if i need to. i spent months looking for a phone that would give me 3G connectivity, allow me to tether - the main reason i want the data speed, see work email (i work remotely), and be an old non-touch screen style device. sadly, i couldn't find one, so the N8 is the next closest thing. i'm hoping the clunky old interface will give me a chance to stop if i start unconsciously fiddling with it. i just don't think it all really matters that much to me, and i know my brain will miss that instant gratification, but we all need to work on patience anyway.

i'll keep on reducing it until it goes back to the background. my family and my life comes first, and your advertising and social networking are beyond insignificant in comparison.

take care, and try to keep your eyes open. i hope this finds you well.
.jason

and where are you?

my mind is aswirl with the events of our ever changing world. i have so much that flows through my mind at times that it's hard to keep one set of ideas from trampling another.

Mohamed Bouazizi, could you have imagined how many lives would be effected by your protest? one man, the sole provider for his family since the age of 10, pushed beyond the limits of what a person should accept, responds to having his only means of income taken away by police by doing the one thing he felt he could do to show how absurd the situation had gotten. after finding no recourse in his local government, he lit himself on fire on the 17th of December.

this wasn't a nutty guy who's been waiting to torch himself. those of us who only know of him through news reports can't really know his full midset, but it's clear he was providing for his family and had that ability taken away piece by piece over many years.

he poured inflammable liquid over his body in a public place and ignited it.

perhaps we should all think about *that* for a minute.

what followed (and is continuing to unravel) in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Iran, Bahrain, Libya, and other countries was clearly not the work of one man, but more a tipping point that shows how very many have been sitting on the teetering edge of acceptance of the world as it is versus the desire to help make it what it should be. of course, all actors in this are surely not pure of intent, but there is such a movement in the people that it shouldn't be detracted from by the ill works of the few.

since this is mainly read by my friends and family in the United States, i pose a few questions for you to ponder -

where are you? are you riding through life meandering, staring at the ground directly in front of you just trying to make it to the next step? when you have the chance to take a breath, are you also looking at the world around you with open eyes to see where you're going?

i want to sidestep the obvious and looming political and or religious threads that can spawn from this line of thought, but i do find myself being courted by those thoughts.

in a world of 144 characters, i'm not sure you've made it this far anyway. we all have so very much to keep us doing so very much, and i'm not here to stop you from that. i see so many people feel there are in such a bad way, and i see so few appreciating what they actually have.

have you had your scales and produce taken from you by the police with nothing left to lose?

do you make the march of a million tiny steps that take you far from the path you want to walk just to appease people who don't really matter to you?

i know people who have lost battles with health, and those that are still fighting. some have to feel like a poorly armed rebel battling cancer in what used to be *their* body, and at times it has to feel like there is no option left but to set your will ablaze and quit.

but even knowing that i still feel like you should never quit and give in. seeing the birth of my second daughter and the group effort of our family to bring this new child into the fold, i know that i can't see myself quitting. while the greater movement in reaction to Mohamed Bouazizi and others terminating themselves have set others in motion has been life altering for so many, and hoping that these changes will be a great gain for the rights of individuals, i can only use these as motivators in my life - not a reason to arrest forward progress. i ask you to set yourselves in motion before setting your life, your desires, your body, your career, your core on fire. even if you must eventually lay down to be rolled over by the things you battle in your life, remember that they can never take from within you that which you do not give them.

there are a lot of bastards out there. some are dictators, some are diseases, some are unseen internal torment, and i ask you to fight them before you find yourself alone on a precipice with no protest left but that of lighting yourself on fire.

i know that we teach others about ourselves comes more from what we do than what we say, and for my few friends, my family, and my children, i need to keep to the business of doing and being who i am - not reacting to those who are not.

i am elated that i find myself with two beautiful children, employed so that my wife can afford to work the unpaid job of caring for our children, with shelter from the weather, with no legitimate want when it comes to feeding ourselves, and with no reason what-so-ever to default on taking care of my family, my body, and my friends. sure, i we'd like to find a different home eventually, preferably making better use of the space it has instead of having space for the sake of it, but we are quite fortunate where we are right now. all of that can change in an instant, and that is why we have to stay true to who we are. it's as much for a revolution as it is for keeping us out of the trap of keeping up with other peoples definitions of happiness and success.

i hope this finds you well, and if not i hope this helps you decide to find your way back to who you are.

.jason

before we part

the splitting of rock pulls my focus
back to the reality before me
i stand in a world of logic and emotion
flooded by both
invading my senses
coloring the world around me

i pull with all of my heart strings to keep it one
to fight the logic that knows the inevitable conclusion
of each life
even my own
and that of my children
and their children
a conclusion inescapable and irrefutable
yet hidden from our hearts
as the weight
can crush the strongest of supports

i still cling to the senses and memory
of time past
hoping
for one more conversation
one more lucid debate
for a look that conveys more understanding
than my words could ever explain

all we know has passed
all that teaches us is past
we cannot react to a future unknown
we can only make our future past filled with even more love
in respect and admiration of those
who are not here
to share their love of the world anymore

we can let the pain and hurt of those that have hurt us
disappear into the past
and look forward with the knowledge that we too
will eventually
return to our origins
to the air around us
to the ground beneath us
and if we are so inclined
we may leave works to inspire love in others

that the work of one rose can create such life and joy
and is responsible for all that i feel and know
i am eternally grateful

facebook, we're breaking up.

it's been done for a while, you know. we've been trying to make it work, but really just passing each other in the hallway - aware of each others presence but not really recognizing each others existence. it has become a lame excuse for keeping up with one another, as we peer at one another with voyeuristic eyes nodding to one another occasionally, but overall fading out of existence.

you seem to feel like *you* are the only important thing in this relationship and that you make the rules. well, that's fine, there's just one less person to play in your game.

don't worry, you probably won't notice. we've faded far enough from one another that the impact of my not being there will be less than the impact of CBS canceling "Swingtown"... oh, you watched that show? well, just one more reason.

so here we sit you and i.

a crossroad and i'll chose the one less traveled by
to look forward
to live in the now
to find who is there and who is not
and to see what you cannot.

i will live, and those that know me will know of it,
and for those that don't
i'll simply cease to exist.

not a bad proposition really.
i'll still be around,
just not here
in the cluttered
messy
dusty
attic
filled with memories and ghosts of the past.

so i leave you with
this.
my thoughts
my address
and a certain sense of freedom.

and should you seek to find me i will be found,
but should you seek merely to watch
and sit by
on autopilot
this is one stop the train will pass by
gliding along the rails of the internet
silently
running

and we will be better for it.

.jason