Still I Roam

Fun Fact : Laos

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:48:32 +0700

Laos is the only country I’ve ever had to pay to leave.
Costs about $1 to cross by land.

No word on what the fee covers, where my receipt disappeared to or whether or not that was simply a side hustle by the man with the stamp in his hand.

"You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving..."

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 11:03:00 +0700

“

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral.
You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly. Amen.

”

- Aaron Freeman

januaryseraph: Bixby Bridge…. home. Cali

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 19:01:46 +0700

januaryseraph:

Bixby Bridge…. home.

Cali

April 5, 2013

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 00:44:00 +0700

Let’s see here. What did I do today?

• Made some stickers for this week’s photoshoot in Belgium with the new pro rider team for Liquorbrand

• Cut out of work early for a side gig interview

-sweated-

• Sat in a taxi and got intimately re-acquainted with Bangkok traffic for 2 hours

• Shook hands with the fellas at startup lingerie and bdsm outfit and chatted about their branding projects. Went well, of course. How do I keep getting myself into these places.

-sweated-

• Met up with ms. Cha at the airport and had some mediocre, yet supremely sufficient, Mexican food on suk 11

-sweated-

• Had a few drinks with Ms Kim and company for her 22nd birthday. This is the girl that chatted me up at immigration about a year back. Haven’t seen her in person since then, but damned if she isn’t as sociable and hospitable as ever. Good people. Felt good to have a drink with a big group of people that I don’t work with. It had been a minute.

• Then I taxied home in the night- which I always enjoy- and spent a little time stoking my wanderlust on tumblr, in preparation for this month’s trip around s.e.a.

Good work, good biz, good food, good friends, good night.

Your mom is a definite article.

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 23:42:00 +0700

It’s not whether or not my student thought it was funny.
It’s whether or not Iiii thought it was funny.

Photo

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 22:38:00 +0700

Photo

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 16:27:37 +0700

likesbears: romantickissing: carlosbaila: Marina Abramovic...

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 08:16:03 +0700

likesbears:

romantickissing:

carlosbaila:

Marina Abramovic meets Ulay

“Marina Abramovic and Ulay started an intense love story in the 70s, performing art out of the van they lived in. When they felt the relationship had run its course, they decided to walk the Great Wall of China, each from one end, meeting for one last big hug in the middle and never seeing each other again. at her 2010 MoMa retrospective Marina performed ‘The Artist Is Present’ as part of the show, a minute of silence with each stranger who sat in front of her. Ulay arrived without her knowing it and this is what happened.”

I’m trying so hard not to cry.

eta: The video is even crazier. Wow.

dearfabel: Thank you @lovelucyfurr for sending me this. All...

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 08:35:35 +0700

dearfabel:

Thank you @lovelucyfurr for sending me this.

All the cool kids are doing it.

The discount-connect hustle

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 01:45:28 +0700

The discount-connect hustle:

Say you live in Denver and you’re headed to Bangkok:
You book a cheap hop from DEN to LAX then book your own connect to any number of special deals from LAX to BKK. = mucho savo. Seems obvious, don’t it?

texnessa: gardensgrey: You won’t see Hillary Clinton in the...

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 19:28:06 +0700

texnessa:

gardensgrey:

You won’t see Hillary Clinton in the same light ever again. Read Meryl Streep’s introduction of Hillary Clinton during the recent 2012 Women in the World conference:

Two years ago when Tina Brown and Diane von Furstenberg first envisioned this conference, they asked me to do a play, a reading, called – the name of the play was called Seven. It was taken from transcripts, real testimony from real women activists around the world. I was the Irish one, and I had no idea that the real women would be sitting in the audience while we portrayed them. So I was doing a pretty ghastly Belfast accent. I was just – I was imitating my friend Liam Neeson, really, and I sounded like a fellow. (Laughter). It was really bad.

So I was so mortified when Tina, at the end of the play, invited the real women to come up on stage and I found myself standing next to the great Inez McCormack. (Applause.) And I felt slight next to her, because I’m an actress and she is the real deal. She has put her life on the line. Six of those seven women were with us in the theater that night. The seventh, Mukhtaran Bibi, couldn’t come because she couldn’t get out of Pakistan. You probably remember who she is. She’s the young woman who went to court because she was gang-raped by men in her village as punishment for a perceived slight to their honor by her little brother. All but one of the 14 men accused were acquitted, but Mukhtaran won the small settlement. She won $8,200, which she then used to start schools in her village. More money poured in from international donations when the men were set free. And as a result of her trial, the then president of Pakistan, General Musharraf, went on TV and said, “If you want to be a millionaire, just get yourself raped.”

But that night in the theater two years ago, the other six brave women came up on the stage. Anabella De Leon of Guatemala pointed to Hillary Clinton, who was sitting right in the front row, and said, “I met her and my life changed.” And all weekend long, women from all over the world said the same thing:

“I’m alive because she came to my village, put her arm around me, and had a photograph taken together.”

“I’m alive because she went on our local TV and talked about my work, and now they’re afraid to kill me.”

“I’m alive because she came to my country and she talked to our leaders, because I heard her speak, because I read about her.”

“I’m here today because of that, because of those stores.”

I didn’t know about this. I never knew any of it. And I think everybody should know. This hidden history Hillary has, the story of her parallel agenda, the shadow diplomacy unheralded, uncelebrated — careful, constant work on behalf of women and girls that she has always conducted alongside everything else a First Lady, a Senator, and now Secretary of State is obliged to do.

And it deserves to be amplified. This willingness to take it, to lead a revolution – and revelation, beginning in Beijing in 1995, when she first raised her voice to say the words you’ve heard many times throughout this conference: “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights.”

When Hillary Clinton stood up in Beijing to speak that truth, her hosts were not the only ones who didn’t necessarily want to hear it. Some of her husband’s advisors also were nervous about the speech, fearful of upsetting relations with China. But she faced down the opposition at home and abroad, and her words continue to hearten women around the world and have reverberated down the decades.

…

She’s just been busy working, doing it, making those words “Women’s Rights are Human Rights” into something every leader in every country now knows is a linchpin of American policy. It’s just so much more than a rhetorical triumph. We’re talking about what happened in the real world, the institutional change that was a result of that stand she took.

…

Now we know that the higher the education and the involvement of women in a culture and economy, the more secure the nation. It’s a metric we use throughout our foreign policy, and in fact, it’s at the core of our development policy. It is a big, important shift in thinking. Horrifying practices like female genital cutting were not at the top of the agenda because they were part of the culture and we didn’t want to be accused of imposing our own cultural values.

But what Hillary Clinton has said over and over again is, “A crime is a crime, and criminal behavior cannot be tolerated.” Everywhere she goes, she meets with the head of state and she meets with the women leaders of grassroots organizations in each country. This goes automatically on her schedule. As you’ve seen, when she went to Burma – our first government trip there in 40 years. She met with its dictator and then she met with Aung San Suu Kyi, the woman he kept under detention for 15 years, the leader of Burma’s pro-democracy movement.

This isn’t just symbolism. It’s how you change the world. These are the words of Dr. Gao Yaojie of China: “I will never forget our first meeting. She said I reminded her of her mother. And she noticed my small bound feet. I didn’t need to explain too much, and she understood completely. I could tell how much she wanted to understand what I, an 80-something year old lady, went through in China – the Cultural Revolution, uncovering the largest tainted blood scandal in China, house arrest, forced family separation. I talked about it like nothing and I joked about it, but she understood me as a person, a mother, a doctor. She knew what I really went through.”

When Vera Stremkovskaya, a lawyer and human rights activist from Belarus met Hillary Clinton a few years ago, they took a photograph together. And she said to one of the Secretary’s colleagues, “I want that picture.” And the colleague said, “I will get you that picture as soon as possible.” And Stremkovskaya said, “I need that picture.” And the colleague said, “I promise you.” And Stremkovskaya said, “You don’t understand. That picture will be my bullet-proof vest.”

Never give up. Never, never, never, never, never give up. That is what Hillary Clinton embodies.

Read the fuck out of this of the night.

School shooting in my hometown.

Sat, 12 Jan 2013 01:26:00 +0700

School shooting in my hometown.:

There was a shooting at my old high school this morning. In my tiny home town. Maybe it was yesterday? The time difference still twists me up. The outline of the story go something like: Emasculated male walks into a room with the specific goal of exacting revenge on an individual who had been repeatedly “bullying” him. [one wonders what a subordinate baboon would do in a similar situation] That kind of thing.

It was entirely surreal hearing the words “Taft Union High School” in a brit-african accent on the BBC all day. Privately, it really did feel dream-like. Truly surreal to hear the international broadcasts that I listen to- specifically to feel all the further away from my little town- talking in some depth about things in my real life. Just going about my work day, listening to stories of Assad, Syria, “The Financial Cliff”, and the words “Taft High School”.

It reminded me of the days, when I was a little kid, when I had these day dreams that all the world were robots, and they only awoke when I came near. I looked around the room as if to say, “Are you guys hearing this shit?”… of course not. I was inside my headphones.

Very strange day

Death in the air

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 01:40:00 +0700

My grandfather passed away today.

And the only two peers, in my age group, within my circle of friends that have ever passed both died this past year. Both of their birthdays happen to be today.

That feels a little heavy.

I’m not a religious person, so I don’t take solace in the hereafter. But I can appreciate the perspective their passing has given me. And I appreciate the tangibility of their absence. And I can honor them for being my friends and teaching me this important lesson; for reminding me to love and appreciate the people that choose to share their time with me.

for Charles, Nick, and Hollie

This and a swear jar and I’ll be all set for 2014.

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 09:03:40 +0700

This and a swear jar and I’ll be all set for 2014.

"You don’t know anyone at the party, so you don’t want to go. You don’t like cottage cheese, so you..."

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 23:20:30 +0700

“You don’t know anyone at the party, so you don’t want to go. You don’t like cottage cheese, so you haven’t eaten it in years. This is your choice, of course, but don’t kid yourself: it’s also the flinch.

Your personality is not set in stone. You may think a morning coffee is the most enjoyable thing in the world, but it’s really just a habit. Thirty days without it, and you would be fine. You think you have a soul mate, but in fact you could have had any number of spouses. You would have evolved differently, but been just as happy.

You can change what you want about yourself at any time. You see yourself as someone who can’t write or play an instrument, who gives in to temptation or makes bad decisions, but that’s really not you. It’s not ingrained. It’s not your personality. You personality is something else, something deeper than just preferences, and these details on the surface, you can change anytime you like.

If it is useful to do so, you must abandon your identity and start again. Sometimes, it’s the only way.

Set fire to your old self. It’s not needed here. It’s too busy shopping, gossiping about others, and watching days go by and asking why you haven’t gotten as far as you’d like. This old self will die and be forgotten by all but family, and replaced by someone who makes a difference.

Your new self is not like that. Your new self is the Great Chicago Fire—overwhelming, overpowering, and destroying everything that isn’t necessary.

”

- Julien Smith

(via kaleidoscopicjuvenile)

(via gettingahealthybody)

Rama IX, 2012.

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 11:22:19 +0700

Saw an exceedingly rare and coveted occurrence in Thai culture. I was able to see the King in person in his motorcade out of Siriraj for his 85th(?) birthday.

It is so rare, and so highly regarded just to catch a glimpse of the monarch in this country. The two friends I tagged along with had gone into their late twenties having lived in the same city as the King and never managed to catch a glimpse. It was a very special, awe inspiring look at community. Very moving. Thousands of people coming together to place their national pride into a living, breathing person that they can see right before them. It was actually quite moving to be in the center of a sea of people with a single, unified goal through the night.

[I know, Americans: But temper your politics. This really was something completely aside from all that]

For me, it was a completely exotic experience- drenched in community, and deep solidarity and all of it colored by the shared delirium of sitting, uncomfortably, together on the hard asphalt in the tropical heat. It was really something else.

[Dictated in semi-delirium but not read]

-J

Brit visits 201 states - without flying

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 23:03:00 +0700

Brit visits 201 states - without flying:

Why didn’t I think of that.

januaryseraph: One of my home cities :-)

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 12:35:16 +0700

januaryseraph:

One of my home cities :-)

You don't post enough.

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 22:06:45 +0700

I concur.
And thank you for noticing.

I almost got deported out of Russia the other day.

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 20:13:00 +0700

.. and other true and amazing tales from a coupl’a days ago …