Obama DNC Acceptance Speech

Moving rhetoric at the DNC.

I consider this the first presidential election to accurately represent my generation, having grown up in a community outside of Chicago, where my classmates and I were of the first of many different ethnicities to represent our cultures in largely white communities. It was an undeniably historic moment to watch him break through the historically untouched demographic of the power structure of our country and step into the role as a presidential candidate. "I know I don't fit the profile..." - I know how he feels.

I'm not for Obama because of his race, just as I was not for Hillary Clinton because she is a woman. I am for him because he is a critical thinker with principles derived from an unusual upbringing, and a tough but peaceful nature. My opinion doesn't matter really - I'm from Illinois and he's got us in the bag.

He evoked Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. towards the rousing end of his speech, which was what I was watching for. It is a pleasure to listen to an excellent orator.

And some of his last remarks were fitting for the theme of spiralling onward, and moving forward:

"We could have heard words of anger and discord,
told to succumb to the fear and frustrations,
but to people of every creed and color
Our destiny is inextricably linked
we cannot walk alone, we shall always march ahead
we cannot turn back
not with so much work to be done

We must pledge... to march into the future."

BMXes around town

I went over to Mikey's house to listen to music and watch tv, and wound up being around when he got his new bike! He found an aluminum bmx that was rode once before getting stored for a couple of years. We put in new tires and tubes, replaced the seat and put a chain tensioner on the dropout of the back wheel. Stoked!

True to form, Mikey will be customizing this ride to his exact specs. It's getting a new blinged out chain, some pegs and some sweet handlebars. This is the sort of guy who matches his shoes to his moped!

Hanging with Mikey is fun because we invariably feel like little kids who've been let loose in the city. The fridge is always empty except for grape juice, red bull and ice cream. Every time I've hung out at his house over the years, he's always used his small kitchen floor as a mechanic bench and once had all eight of his mopeds squeezed in there. This night, he was switching hard drives on his computers and had like 3 macbooks in different pieces as well, so there were a bunch of different specialized toolboxes strewn about. We sat on the floor and worked on bikes.


Sorry for the lame picture - my camera is still broken from the time I sat on it in a club.

There is something to be said for riding in an upright, laid back position. It's quite a nice change from the crouched over racing form that I am usually in when I am on a bike. Riding BMX style means that you can observe the street from a less vulnerable position and get around looking effortless, like its no sweat. All of the 12 year old boys on our block are envying Mikey's bike; I could tell when they gave us a stare down when I rode the pegs down the sidewalk.

Mikey's friend Britton got a BMX the next week. He replaced the brake and has plans for a new drive train, tires, handlebars. He doesn't care because he got the bike for like $40.


He's got the same rims as my friend Jeremy, who loaned me his bike when I visited Denver. It was the best way to get around, and I am so glad to have had the chance to be so stylish when I was there. I couldn't be around all this bike customizing without referring to this sweet ride:


Now that our old roommate finally picked up her cruiser from our back porch, I'm considering a new bike; its probably going to be something laid back and solid.

Ashes to Ashes

This morning I woke up in the woods, listening to the wildlife clicks and buzzing of the early morning face down on my pillow in a pool of drool. I pretended to sleep for an extra ten minutes so I could listen to the nature sounds and think my day through before pulling myself away off of the blanket.

We made coffee by boiling water in the kettle after using the last of the wood chips to make a fire. Everything was damp in the morning coolness. My soundtrack for this camping trip was the soundtrack to Imagine, the biography of John Lennon. I thought of the 9 bundles of firewood that we had burned through, remembering how heavy they were to carry and how as individual units they were almost as expensive as a gallon of gas. In that case our little excursion cost about half a tank. The oldest fuel, as much as commodity now as it has been from the beginning of time.

I stared at the hexagonal ash pit, into which disappeared all those logs, feeding a raging fire that warmed and nourished us. It was the focal point and center of our world for a short while, acting as our hearth, keeping away the raccoons and warming my feet through a dark night. When we arrived, the pit was still hot from the last time it had been used in a fire hours before, and there were old logs of white pulverized powder that crumbled apart when I hit them with a stick.

The ashes were a white shadow of their former form, light enough to disintegrate upon touch. The raging and spirited flames that swallowed all those logs extracted the energy to feed its strength, transforming all that wood into dust.

Jen and Brian tended the fire in a cooperative effort. They made a great team and were excellent at keeping the fire alive, stoked and raging. They'll be married 3 years this September and it was such a lovely thing to see the easy combination of their efforts in mesmerized concentration, sustaining the heat, feeding the flames, fanning them. Giving us insight on the concept of unified energy control.

As I stirred the ashes and watched the dormant buried heat bubble through like a volcano, I wondered what the next part of the process is. That heat was so live! What is ash and how do things like phoenixes and whatnot rise from it?

I looked it up. Ash is comprised of varying levels of metal oxides and minerals depending on what kind of wood you were using to melt your smores and cook your bacon. Burning the wood decreases the wood to 6 - 10% of it's original mass. I was guessing way less than than. The tree that produces the wood extracted the minerals and elemental necessities from its environment (the earth, and the air) in order to grow. The most abundant mineral in trees and ash is calcium, followed by potassium, phosphorus, magnesium and even aluminum. Because of this, ash has been traditionally reused as an alkaline subsitute for lime. This dusty mess was once valued as a fertilizer, recycling the nutrients that were taken from the earth by the tree to plant new ones.

How appropriate that the wood releases its energy like the force of the sun - in a very simplified way when Jen and Brian created the intense beating flames, it was relinquishing that solar energy that the tree had absorbed in a controlled way, leaving behind only what is necessary for the new generation of trees.

A 200 pounder

I was whisked away to Wisconsin before I had a chance to put my things down. My friends showed up on my doorstep and dragged me away - I wasn't even sure I even wanted to go camping and was secretly thinking up excuses to bow out. They weren't taking no for an answer though, and on the way up there I hugged my pillow and passed out with headphones on until we were in the next state.

When I woke up we were rolling into a campground lobby and I saw this guy:

200 lb. black bear

Georgian reporter gets shot, gets up, keeps on

War reporter gets shot while filming, continues unfazed.

The Full Moon of August

I watched Michael Phelps, champion swim racer, pull his way to a seventh gold medal in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing while competing in the individual swim medley. I could barely count or see his strokes, he was moving so fast, and when he pushed off of the pools walls he gained momentum that bounded him ahead setting another world record.

* * *
"There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music." George Eliot

My friend Dave called me and invited me over for a beer, so I dropped into Heaven Gallery (1550 N. Milwaukee). Inside the second gallery space were rows of chairs occupied by patient music lovers facing a cello , a violin, some kind of big xylophone, some microphones and a piano, all in front of the window that faces Milwaukee Ave.

As the musicians tuned their strings in a low cacophony and the audience murmured, I found a place to sit out of the way. The windows were closed and the room became quiet. and the first strings of the performance began with a violin and cello duo called Wild & Wulliman. Their first piece was called Amore Scaduto. Although I had straggled into the performance with an exhausted frame of mind, they commanded my attention from the opening notes. Picture your heart being played like the pulls of a bow to a string, the tension and release of the sound reflecting notes that move your emotions in ways that you can't even being to understand. I soon got lost in the music and began to realize different layers of complexity to all that had been on my mind.

I closed my eyes, and the musicians introduced themselves. The next song was titled Pastor Hick's Farewell, and was sung by the soprano voice of a woman named Mary Bonhag, accompanied by Evan Premo on the double bass. It's lyrics spoke of the ebbing of love like an ocean tide, and it took all of my will to contain my tears. The low strings are the ones that got me, rustling loose grave emotions that seemed to have settled inside me, lightening them up.

I was so happy to have dropped in. Music is the best thing for loosening tension and unwinding abstract notes... when words can't express all of the complexities that color our experiences, these chords and harmonies can.

Golden Mean

Interesting article on sacred geometry

Samurai Sunday!

Duel at Ganryu Island

With my dad across the world, engaging in the sort of ronin battle of sorts that he's been preparing for his whole life (long story), my brothers and I are left to entertain ourselves with our own discourse on samurai fighting techniques this morning as we keep our mom company. This is a clip from a series we watched Sunday mornings when we were little, from the epic life story of the samurai Miyamoto Musashi.

Bahai Bike Pilgrimage

I woke up feeling like a tighly coiled rope, my muscles stiff and uncomfortable beneath my skin. It had been a night of restless energy and angst filled sleep. I dreamed of gravity and pressure, of forces pressing in on me like the weight of being under a hundred meters of ocean water. I walked over to my neighborhood coffee shop to start my day as I usually do but with a long stone cold stricken expression, the kind of look that makes people avert their eyes when they see you. My phone rang. It was my bicycle friend.

"How do you feel about riding up to the Bahai Temple? I'm thinking about going up there today. Need some spiritual healing."

"I'm down," I answered immediately, didn't have to think twice. "I think that's just what I need on a day like today. We'll be bike pilgrims." I had been there before, rode the 16 miles during a late night trip with a group of midnight riders about 2 years ago this month. When I walked through its winding gardens under a glowing full moon, I knew I had to one day return to see the grounds on a sunny day. How strange to be compelled back during this moment, and how absolutely necessary too.

After taking care of some business I set myself to cleaning off the drive train on my bike, tuning it and filling it's tires with air. I packed my backpack with my lock, water jug, a dress and a towel, then stepped into my flip flops once again and rolled over to meet my friend.

The ride up to Wilmette began during the hottest part of the day, but once we started heading north on Halsted the cool breeze of the lake kept the sun from being too exhausting. Riding in the busy streets of a highly trafficked city requires absolute, intense concentration so it seemed like most of the time was passed focusing on just surviving in the bike lane. As the miles slipped by in quick succession, I began to feel the exhilaration of my bicycle's movement. It was like I was shedding the hard exoskeleton of despondency. Compressed into the low crouch of the pursuit position, I focused on the rhythm of my breathing. Before long we reached stretches of smooth road, and a song burst forth from my lungs. It was Sam Cooke's "It's Been a Long Time Coming".

At the end of Lake Shore Drive we got kind of lost in a winding path. Our route was influenced by avoiding certain high traffic intersections, detours past streets under construction. When I found myself cycling on a narrow sidewalk lined on both sides with construction fencing, with several large patches strewn together with plywood I started to worry that we were on the wrong path. I felt myself becoming more agitated, especially when I found myself pedaling on top of random piles of sand and puddles on what was becoming increasingly bombed out streets.

"Don't worry, look up!" said my friend, and just when I was about to start looking for a way off of that path, I saw the top of the dome of the temple.


My skin was covered in sweat and felt something like the outside of an airplane after a transcontinental journey. I soaked my towel in water and wiped the salt off of my face and cooled off until my heart stopped racing, before putting on a dress so I wouldn't be striding into this holy building looking like I had just stepped out of the gym.

This is the threshold of this temple. It holds to many of the forms of ancient temple building, including making the journey towards the inside of the sacred space through several spatial stages with its winding gardens.

Here is the view from the top of the stairs:

* * *

Inside, I breathed in the beauty of the architecture and watched the light filter through the windows. I read some of the mystic writings of the founder of the Bahai faith, who was said to have been a divine messenger. This religion is founded upon the principle of the oneness of humankind, espouses equality between men and women, harmony between science and religion, the abolition of the extremes of wealth and poverty, and a focus on universal acceptance.

Here is the most famous of the Bahai faith's sacred texts:
The Seven Valley and the Four Valleys

* * *

One of the things I prayed about was the guidance to find the right path, which makes the entire return trip kind of ironic in retrospect. After a long contemplative walk around the gardens, I was ready to leave. I was not thrilled about going down the same dangerous path that took me to the temple, and felt compelled to stay close to the lakefront. First we crossed this river, and Jimmy Cliff's "Many Rivers To Cross" went through my head.


My traveling companion did not exactly share this decision, and wanted to bike through the city in the interest of getting home quickly. We parted ways unintentionally within the first few miles when we got separated, so the rest of the way home I rode alone. It was just as well, as I was becoming fatigued and the rest of the trip was a focused sprint that took the rest of the energy I had. By now my lungs felt wrung ragged, and about to burst which replaced the dreadful hollow feeling that had been in my chest all week plaguing me. As my muscles burned mile after mile, my chest felt strangely enough as though there was an owl getting ready to explode out of it and take flight. I day dreamed about how nice it would feel to shower and put on some comfortable pants as I kept moving forward. Here is the view of the city from the beginning of the bike path and the last place I saw my bike friend:


It was beautiful, but the view just spoke of how far I had to go. I put my head down and pedalled.

My mind went on auto pilot and I quickly regretted not having any energy bars on hand. I did this whole 35 mile trip fueled with one banana and a quarter of a mango. I have been fasting since the weekend, and this made the journey that much more surreal. The only sounds I registered were the industrial vibrations of machines and the sounds of birds. Voices, traffic and all other sounds were drowned out as I kept my pace. I was becoming more and more lightheaded and focused all of my mental energy on keeping an eye on my path and staying safe.

I rolled in and felt completely wiped out. As though I had rode all those miles on top all of the muscles in the front and back of my torso. I earned my sleep tonight and look forward to having better dreams.

Fury in the Skies

Photo courtesy of Accuweather photo archives

Yesterday the weather in Chicago was raging. What began as a pretty calm and clear evening quickly turned into a violent, howling summer storm with gale force winds. (Winds of 94 miles per hour were recorded 3 miles off the shore of Lake Michigan) The weather report stated that there was something around 200 bolts of lightning in one hour from the storm. It hit fast and was ferocious, trapping me at the climbing gym with my younger brother and his friends for hours when the streets around the building got quickly flooded. I practiced tying knots and worked out my forearms and fingers on the rock wall - it was kind of a pleasant way to take refuge actually. The gymnastics team huddled downstairs with us until the sirens stopped. I peeked out the front window and watched the lightning rip with mad flashes all across the sky, making it look like the synapses of Frankenstein's brain. The sky was full of that unrelenting, merciless energy all night. We got home during a brief lull in the rain, but it got its momentum going once again and the windows were rattling scarily by the time I went to sleep. Mother Nature: more furious than anything anyone has seen.

I stared at the lightning and was mesmerized by the force with which it cracked the atmosphere. It was a thrill to see so much electricity in the air, there was an almost palpable charge. It made me think of the significant moments when I've stopped to watch lightning storms at critical times in my life- high above the ocean in a rainless electrical storm, across the Colorado sky high in the mountains. One lightning bolt contains 3 billion kilowatts of power, said to be enough energy to run a major industrialized city for months.

Looking at the way the ground absorbed the crackling bolts thrown at it through the ionosphere, with enough thunderous force to send vibrations through my body miles away - all those billions of kilowatts disappeared on contact- my thoughts turned to Nicolai Tesla, a discoverer of some of the most significant observations in the field of electrical engineering such as the fact that the earth is a conductor of electricity. He was also known as the "sorceror of lightning".

Said to have been born during an electrical storm, he went on to school the world (alongside Thomas Edison) on the principles of electricity. He devised a transformer which generates artificial lightning by increasing the voltage of a current which gets transferred between oscillating circuits. With this discovery we are able to harness the energy of lightning; now we can even make lightning ourselves. (!)

Tesla is ranked amongst my favorite mad scientists: I have a fondness for eccentric geniuses who advance humanity profoundly and exponentially with the work of their lifetime, yet die unrecognized and in poverty. It is heroic to my romantic nature; he was driven by a curiousity more true, sincere and primal than that which motivates the normal person. A curiousity which in itself drove the industrial revolution and allowed us all to better understand certain awe-inspiring forces of nature, at least the tangible mysteries of the physical world we live in.

Shouts!