Imagination with the seawall.

The Seawall is a fitness, meditation, and history lesson all in one. I began to think about the bridge, my bike, the sea wall itself. How long would it take me to create this if I started at square one. To go from caveman to this. The invention of concrete, the shipping and the means to ship it, the science within it, and the strength of it, the addition of colours and the ability to create those, to discover them. From nothing the jump seems impossible, yet civilization as a whole began here, and has come to this. Incredible. So many historical human inventions and advancements culminated to the creation of this bridge. So. Much. Time. The little steps along the way, the smaller bridges, the weaker materials, all growing and expanding, to eventually get this. The jump from nothing to this is such a feat of mankind. It really shows our capability’s together.

Even my bike, the discovery of the wheel, the structure, the smooth ride, tires, air, brakes. To go from a blank slate to this is a great thought experiment! The idea of how many years it would take of creativity and guess and check to go from beginning to this. Well, since the beginning of humanity, to this. The evolution of it all really caught me today!

The sea wall itself, the amount of labor, concrete and man hours to build this thing. The machinery, and the countless days to build the machine, all for something which is so overlooked by so many. The craftsmanship…

Its also a wonderful thought imagining the mountains, the birds, the ocean, all exist along side us. We didn’t create those, and if we wernt here, they still would be. All this beauty, the vastness of the ocean, appreciated by the little seagulls on the rocks…Its a real gift to be able to experience this, to witness this universe. To think being a bit closer or further from the sun, and it would never be this way.

A lot of respect to Native Americans. To intersect with nature, enough to survive but not to destroy. To use the land to survive, what independence. They were self sufficient with maybe 100 people, yet the amount of people it takes to get food, medicine, heat, clothing, entertainment, to assist in birth, to teach in MY life, is so many! That all was contained within their tribe. To meet those needs today touches so many peoples lives. I cant imagine the number of people who my existence in small ways comes in contact with. Simply buying a phone, goes through so many food chains, so many people, law makers, tech people, hardware people,  shipping, factories, warehouses, just to get to me. And that’s one purchase of a day. Unbelievable.

I think if I was the only one on this land, how would I survive? Kill a bear? I don’t see wild animals. I feel so detached from an environment where I can survive independently. I am safe here, but completely dependent. The system does feed me, clothe me, but I really reflect on my farming ideas. I imagine the self dependability. I could grow my own potato, my own eggs. I feel I internalize the system, I become creation. Today the machine picks the veggies, bakes the bread, feeds the animal. Incredible that the next step in independence was the factory, yet lately, I notice the craving next for me is that self-independence, replacing the robot with myself, in a time when A.I. and technology doing those roles seems so un-debatable.

Even the ship, imagining one man creating that behemoth, the amount of life times of discoveries put together to create that. So under acknowledged…Its not ‘natural’, its not a tree trunk on the water. But its what it is, a wonder of something. A pinnacle of something. A reflection of creativity, industrial or not, still creativity.

And my clothes. To grow the cotton, design the pants, every piece of this culture entails so much creation and people before me.

The plumbing and the electricity of this city, inside EVERY city. Beyond complex, and nearly everyday it works. Maybe one day it wont, for a few of us or many of us, or it will, for a long time, who knows. The fact that millions upon millions use these systems, practically invisibly, effortlessly, flawlessly, without any added effort by us, is a real wonder to me today. Humbly performing day after day, lightbulb after lightbulb, sink after sink.

The planes in the sky, even they blew my mind. The unfathomable complexity that we can consider within the most basic day to day. The plane ahead, the boat afar, the ground underneath.

These inventions of our civilization don’t get enough spotlight. These everyday background pieces that go by us, so easy to miss…

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The big in small, the small in the big

 

 

If you are shooting for the big, you resent the smalls, but the smalls are the doorways to love, the beginning of a happy greatness, a book is a collection of 1000 lines…and a line a connection of beautiful words…

the fruit teaches the seed…

look at an apple, in the middle is the seed, surrounded by fruits…around the seed grows the fruit…the seed expands…by not getting bigger, but by having more protection, more resources

the seed stays the same size

the seed can lift itself up the tree…

drop an apple seed on the ground, and years down the road, there are now 1000 seeds hidden in the apple fruits above…where is the original seed? is it embedded in the bark? is a small micro piece of it in the tree?

how bout the soil? its impossible to separate completely the soil that was first on this planet from the soil that it is now…you can pesticide it, over exploit it, but it still has some original dna from its birthday, perhaps billions of years ago, and how bout before that, before there was soil, or water, or earth, what dna was around then? maybe in the air which was converted to matter… how has that morphed to still be around today, in micro spots…almost un measurable, but in terms of truth, its probably there, from the beginning of time, before big bang, what was? is the big bang like a breath, and we are simply on the out breath…are we existing in some being so profoundly greater then us, that billions of years is a second for it…its hard to imagine…if thats the case, then the true distance of some stars must be so unfathomably far, farther then we can ever imagine, imagine that…our simple invention of butter and bacon and dance and shavers and water bottles and head phones, minuscule, not even worthwhile or honest to such a force, to such a truth…thats hard to conceptualize…it puts perspective on our inclination to sweat the small stuff…bus times…scheduling…appearance…hourly pay..they all seem so insignificant…perhaps that is our lesson…what is significant if its not things…(even though these things have a timeless piece in them that is hard to recognize at first)…what human emotion is important…joy..love..adventure

enjoying our lives…having a fun time…not getting stressed about the little aspects of our life…grateful  for the shower, even though planets and other things exist around us…its a funny world we live in…to be calling our needs luxuries…that being fed is a luxury, that being housed is a luxury…its so normal to us…we can almost convince ourselves that the world is so mighty we dont need to care for ourselves

and that is the balance…between protection, salvation, security, and meaningless effortless bliss and love…

the pendulum of safety and ecstasy, of brilliance and mundane, of the micro particle of forever in everything, and the decaying of products, lives, inventions and ideas…we decay, yet we are forever… an aspect of forever that can never be destroyed, can never be beaten out of something

the hammer that beats the nail even has it, the lion eating the deer,

its hard to imagine our lives to will face challenges…how will we adapt, how will we conceptualize them, how will we justify them, will we loose our sanity? will we find a way to relax, to be accepting, but also, finding the timeless in the unthinkable…understanding in the questions that have no answers, in the mystery perhaps greater then our answers, our answers are bandaids on the true pain of being apart of the unknown…we justify, knowing were wrong, not accepting we live in total darkness of truth, and that IS the truth…

in the world whose mechanics are so foreign to us, like the ant understanding car mechanics…how do we really, really, come to that humbleness, that we are that unsure, we are that unaware, that small. That simple.

But as this all began, if you shoot for the big you resent the small…this perhaps is all true above, but to use that as a reason to resent the small will make you blind…the small has to be just as sacred, for from the small was birthed the big, the big perhaps was once a small, and the big expands, even on a speed far greater then we can understand, a small piece at a time, embrace the small, and the big, and realize understanding them is not necessary, understanding we dont understand is really all one has the capacity for…