divineguitar

An interesting venture this summer was Cinque Terre, a place I’d imagine would slide right into the ocean sooner than later without maintenance.  One of those books that changed my life, The World Without Us, I see it in real life here, both somewhere to marvel at the creations of humanity and marvel at the powers of nature in the same view.

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books -Walt Whitman

Cinque Terre

A wise sage delivers this message via google talk.  This reminds me to beat stress and re-balance life, and understand when you’ve become busy just being busy and work to do something about it.  Life’s too short   I haven’t written all summer despite amazing things always happening….I hope to break the gridlock word by word.

A few weeks ago we had the amazing opportunity to see Mt. Fuji, another world.

Mt Fuji

If I had to sum up life for the summer in a post, it’d resemble something like the Transfăgărășan road, and the stark differences in seeing it in real life vs. the lens of a navigation system.

It’s had its twists and turns and excitement, not to mention a brilliant vibrancy.  It’s the difference between seeing something from a wiki page and actually being there.

Ceaușescu built the ‘road to nowhere’, over the Carpathian Mountains — We stumble on it by accident, logic to us to go ‘this way,’ navigation system told us to go ‘that way’, ‘that way’ wound up being a breathtaking drive which culminated by heading down this road filled with switchbacks — Little did we know the road was only open 2-3 months out of the year due to snow fall.

Transylvania is just as eerie or more so than all the folklore tells — Dracula, majestic falls, and a culture not yet touched by homogenization, its amazing.

What we saw, touched, tasted, smelled and felt

What it looked like on the navi, I’ve always thought this is a machine takes the excitement out of a trip, but this time it lead us there.

Making a blanket generalization it seems as if everytime I try to capture the spirit of Europe in a song it meanders back to A Lady of a Certain Age.  Seems as if Europe is way ahead when it comes to a balanced and integrated approach to life, a feeling and a history that’s too hard to put down in words.

The macro worldview has lost virtue, Europe appears to be at the forefront of setting the reclamination of virtue as its goal, dragging the politicians, oligarchs, and technology along with it.  It has a great set of invisible hands guiding the path.

The ability to keep rediscovering that goal personally is a constant challange.

In the past I was excited to be a technologist, the days when I mistook productivity for efficiency.  Paddling hard with the daily grind, I forget what’s important and unique….I lose the hunger to transcend, and you forget that there is no true winner in a finite game.

The goals then and the goals now are extremely different, as we all struggle to determine just what is the goal of the 21st century man.

Earth, From a Smallville Kryptonite Induced Lens

Public Spaces in Stuttgart – Fantastic for people watching

Stuttgart Schlossplatz

I can’t recall the time (if ever) I went to a party that started at midnight, so a new experience was in the works Saturday night. Perkins Park VIP, we make the trek for a birthday party.  I forgot that people actually stay up late these days, looking around going ‘wow,’ this place (the whole city) is packed!

Two drinks, two hours, I’m toast, but what a cool experience.

Perkins Park Stuttgart

Thinking today about the quote ‘the truth of the future will be told not with the pen, but the eraser’ — I guess it applies to credit leveraged personal and sovergn debt, but more in context of true ‘social’ initiatives.

A paraphrased story goes…

Some Harvard hot shot is sitting in a room for of military generals, talking about all these great things, social networking, crowdsourcing, functioning organzations — all of them nod in accordance, ‘good idea’ they say — The punchline from the Harvard bloke ‘What stands in the way is YOU, and this will all happen when you are gone, and not a minute sooner.’

This got me thinking about the simple principles offered by this guy that would save money and make the world a better place, but as always, we are our own worse enemy. 

This got me thinking of the company ‘The Eraser’, one in which meets with the head of the state and says things like you have 5 portals at this place, we’re shutting off 4 of them, the return on investment is ‘THIS’ for turning all the stuff off.  These sentiments are kyrptonite to the ears of some, so you wouldn’t engage in these point counterpoint arguements with the entrenched, hence you wait for the time when these ideas are ripe on the vine ready to be heard.  The time will come.

Bon Jovi played for the first time in Bucharest Romania, he said “thank you for the patience, we’ve waited 30 years to play here.”  While much of the world needs the pen, the developed world needs to learn how to use the eraser.

Bon Jovi - Bucharest Romania

Back in the days of being a desk jockey in Austin Texas, I always dreamed about living in the Euro zone.  Now here, the roaring tempo is something that which I never could have imagined.  Life decisions catapult you into the realms of possibility, often I ponder that quotation that goes something like “I’m struck between wanting to make a difference in the world and wanting to enjoy the world.”

Balance is always important, and over the years I’ve dropped the word often.  I’ve always thought it to be the main key, but perhaps at this juncture in life the events of the day look like spinning plates.  Got 6 or so plates spinning, and onlookers go, dang, that’s pretty tough, what’s going to happen….only to grab another one and start spinning.

Tonight was the first ‘couch and cheetos’ night in how long I can’t recall,….it was splendid, as I looked out the window and admired the beautiful spring day, I wonder how long and how many plates will continue to spin, past present future.

Wonder how many plates Thom York is spinning.

While you make pretty speeches,
I’m being cut to shreds
You feed me to the lions,
a delicate balance

And this just feels like spinning plates
I’m living in cloud cuckoo land
And this just feels like spinning plates
My body is floating down the muddy river

what a heck of a ride its been from Lord Anthony here at the Hollywood Bowl with the LA orchestra


to the same song in Vienna many years later in some gas tanks

Ev Williams said ’10 years of hard work will make you look like an overnight success.’  I agree and must add, as an army buddy says, ‘fight the tank.’

When a tank rolls into the equation, it must be taken out.  Battlefield psychology has proven this time and time again, and the people who reap genuine rewards are the ones fighting the tank.  One can take out some foot soldiers, destroy communication, or argue about which hill to take.  Meanwhile there are people thinking of clever ways to fight the tank, despite the odds.

For some reason it reminds me of my days in Shiner Texas, riding with the top down, enjoying the latest tunes I could get my hands on (before the digital revolution), consuming all I could get my hands on, giving everything a test spin.  Fast forward to now and there is simply too much information to consume, too many CD’s to listen to, intoxicated by possibility as Hugh would say.

If music be a tank, in Shiner I didn’t know what a tank really was.  Now, if music be a tank, I know a lot about them and know many varieties of both.  When both naive and seasoned, the battle with the tank rages on, and I’d say the stories and perspective are there to prove it.

The other night I sat down at the pub with two buddies, and we were literally exchanging war stories, not the scampering from bullets stories, but nonetheless interesting and unique experiences.  Makes me think that once the mind is expanded like that, its hard to go back to the previous state of mind.  You really didn’t know it all, you really didn’t have perspective.

Who solves these challenges of national transcendence?  Right now there are a bunch of foot soldiers romping around the globe, but not too many ‘intellicrats’ that know how to do this stuff well.  Everything is local local local until something bad happens.

Creating the global village requires taking that tank gun and tying it into a knot.  Randomness like Charlie Wilson’s War will still happen to fund ideological campaigns, but as stated, the endgame must be meticulously planned, then sustained for a long, long time.

In today’s environment crammed full of global possibility, the tank on the battlefield is reconciling governments and military while enhancing the ability of the good deed doer.  Once you’ve played in that game, its hard to go back to the sidelines, but life be willing, I’ll be on a the beach with hammock sooner than later.

I’ve got very little left to prove to myself, now just fighting the make the world a more civilized place.