Some sad parts about Whole Foods

I worked at Whole Foods a few years ago, and I was thinking last night about some sad realities they have.

1. They have a very good return policy, but generally, things that get returned are thrown out. I remember seeing anytime vitamins were returned, or any health product, it was dumped. Even expensive products or anything like that.
2. The breakfast from the hot bar, whenever it had left overs they would get dumped. They wouldn’t put it in the back for staff for example, and alot went to waste, everyday.
3. Whole Foods has a big recycle program open to the public outside. The issue is the companies that pick up these from Whole Foods have a no mix policy. If any plastic is in the paper recycling for example, the entire batch gets thrown away. It was usually only a few percentage allowance, and anymore and it would be tossed. It was really sad, the image of this sustainable, eco initiative, which behind the scenes would usually just go in the garbage anyways.

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Aushwitz

I went to Aushwitz because part of my family has been in a concentration camp.  My grandma herself went to Aushwitz, and was a survivor, due to her late arrival there. It’s extremely confronting to imagine growing up in such a world. What happened there, in smaller scales, happened in a lot of other places. It’s a dark topic. Dark theme. But it has a sort of importance that only needs to be addressed a few times to leave a lasting impression. It has a magnitude and gravity which is so encompassing and hard to believe.

I was in Krakow (the big city near to the small town of Aushwitz) and had a sort of emotionless readiness to going to the concentration camp. It’s so strange putting your clothes on that day, getting breakfast, it’s all so frivolous and innocent in the shadow of what you are about to see.

A few times I wondered if I should go. It’ll be too heavy, to unlike the no frills backpacker life I’ve been embarking on. I did go; I would have felt too conflicted to miss it. It was just that hard to go as an observer, imagine being forced to go, during the time many years ago.

Just the historical impact on my family during the war made me feel obliged. So I took the train, to this small town an hour outside of Krakow. The historical site was packed, and you had to have a guide to go in. It took a few hours to get a guide, so in the meantime I walked to the other part of the camp, Birkenau. Aushwitz is a two location camp. One was a work camp, the other an extermination camp /housing place. Aushwitz began as the small work camp, and expanded to the other camp called Birkeanau (It was in this camp where the majority of deaths occurred).While waiting the few hours for my guide I wandered around Birkenau alone for a bit. What a weird, gloomy, toxic place to find myself. The grass grows; the buildings are sparse and ghost like. Hard to believe the lives lived (if you could call it that) and lifelessness created in such a place. What an odd backdrop for an awful history of humanity. Wandering for a few hours, I returned back to Aushwitz to begin the tour. Walking through the office buildings, the housing areas. They had these displays of human hair, since everyone who arrived got their heads shaved. How many peoples human hair you could fit in this massive part of a room. Enough to fill a small apartment. A symbol of the magnitude of people.

When I was in Berlin before this, I remember seeing a photo of some Nazi’s at Aushwitz smoking cigarettes and having some beers. The caption said “Taking a break from mass murder”. Really struck me that moment, they looked indistinguishable from regular people, enjoying regular life. Laughing and having a relaxing moment. How brainwashed the times must have been back then. Really hard to understand.

I captioned abit of this in my journal at the time. It read:

If you imagine a regular prison to be housed with murderers, now imagine a prison full of innocent people, now run by murderers. Aushwitz was a very dark place. At its peak it could execute 4000 people a day. A small town a day, 365 days of the year, for a few years. A total 1.1 million are said to of died.

It was very surreal to be on one plot of land, at one point on the earth, the span of a house, where perhaps 100s of thousands of people have died.

The Nazis were propagandist. Misleading and downplaying every step of the way. “It’s just a shower, bring all your belongings.” It was a reality no one challenged, they had no belief it could be as it truly was. No one said prove those are showers, or prove you won’t kill us. Everyone marched into a room because of the story they were told, the humanity they thought people had to have. If they were told it was a gas chamber, they would riot, so lies were the easiest form of control. 

I couldn’t understand why other countries didn’t bomb the railways, bomb the fences of the camps, and disrupt the flow. It took years to walk onto the soil with the intent of helping. For years, governments felt their hands were tied, or simply didn’t know. I wondered about that.

They had a room, the size of a small closet, where they made people just stand. Where there wasn’t enough room for everyone to sit. Imagine 40 people in a tiny closet. For a few days.

They had German war criminals run these camps. The imagination of an individual like this, able to beat, yell, and practically kill at will, a license to act out his darkest fantasies. What tragedy that humanity let such people indulge like that. In the biggest housing of the camp they would have 5 people to a bunk. The bottom people had sometimes been eaten by rats during the night. People’s feces from higher bunks would fall on these people. It was a mud, blood, feces bath on the bottom bunks. 

Prisons would get cold coffee (I think more like black water), soup made of rotten vegetables, and a piece of bread all day. It sounds like I’m over dramatizing it, but I believe that’s actually what it said during tours and books I’ve seen. My breakfast was more than these people who worked sometimes 11 hour days, with the equivalent of thin Pajamas (not onesies) during cold Poland snowy winters. Since more people were arriving every day, the moment you couldn’t keep up, you were killed. Public killings, hangings, were all common. If you escaped, they would hang 10 of your cell mates and leave them outside for everyone to see. An unbelievable, and really, unthinkable world. They had a shooting wall at Auschwitz. You would be taken to this wall and shot in the head. It’s strange to see this wall. It’s just a wall. Without the story behind it then it’s just concrete. With the details, it’s human, deeply troubling, and a new understanding.

They also had an infirmary where they did medical experiments. How long could a baby go without mother’s milk before it died, what happens if you inject gasoline to the heart. Giving doctors an operating table, endless amount of test subject (aka moms, kids, etc.), money to experiment, tools to use, and permission to go as dark as you wanted. This place really was the bad side of imagination. 

Before going to Auschwitz, I imagined it as a psychology museum. An outward manifestation of the inward feeling of hatred, immense pain, un-regulation, dark indulgences. How much pain inside would it take to do this to people. I imagine in Nazi’s that it was a resentment and anger that was getting unaddressed, building more and more until places like concentration camps began to be their only ways to express that hate. There were no solutions in time for nonviolent ways. The mentality was so vicious.

They say we are a social species and that by nature we don’t kill other humans. How we justify killing humans is by convincing ourselves that they aren’t humans, and dehumanizing another. Once someone isn’t considered human, we don’t have to act with morals of equality. Calling someone a pest, scum, a virus, filth, transforms an equal being to something like a dangerous bug or parasite. How we bend and transform reality with these images and words in our minds. What we see, how we feel about something, is completely dependent on the words we view it with. The propaganda during these times was outrageous. “A loyal worker is a happy worker”. “Tell on your neighbour for reading certain writing, get rewarded”. “Work is freedom”- that was the message as you enter the gates of Aushwitz. Yet people worked to death. How trapped people were. Yet, protesting landed even Germans in Aushwitz. The penalty was so severe; families of political prisoners would be murdered if you escaped. For most, silence was a form of saving themselves and others. How they could march town to town and bring people to these camps shows how high the penalty for resistance was. Maybe they really had that much wealth and power. Guns and a willingness to use them. Companies benefited off of the war. Germany gave tax incentives if you moved to Aushwitz and started business. You could have Aushwitz slaves as your workers. All the gold, the art, and money of these prisoners were sent to the Nazis. They literally kept getting stronger the more they invaded.

 

…….

 

Everyday problems become so small in a world of Aushwitz

In a place of so much death and destruction

Of everyday people loaded up like cattle to die         

What a strange imagination history had

I feel I do so little justice to the true reality and information this place has

How to help…

 

…..

Return to today time:

Aushwitz was a different form of travel. Everything else up to this point was glossy and relaxing. Reflecting back, this was heavy, and a stark counter balance to all I had done before. I was curious, and that was the common theme throughout the whole trip. Aushwitz taught me a lot about the real potential of wrongs that can be done, and have been done. I learned how complex the world is, how strange and unfathomable some events in history are. And worst of all, most unsettling of all, it happened around 80 years ago. There are still survivors alive today. Are we a whole new world? 800 years ago maybe, but 80, I don’t know. The capacity to change from that extreme that quickly, that’s not long ago, we can’t forget that. That to me says a lot. It’s a very intense place. The lessons are still fresh. There are still humans alive today with scars from the times. My grandma passed away a few years ago, and I can only imagine what it was like to start your childhood in such a world, where your family is destroyed before your even a little girl or boy. The topic is relevant even if it’s historical. Hidden from our day to day psyche even if it’s true and important. Thank you Aushwitz for the reality check and the lasting lessons. May we value our lives today. People back then would give anything to be in a café, having tea, enjoying the life and freedom and safety we have today. That’s part two of this post. The confronting that we are so lucky in many ways. That our worst are so small compared to such extreme events and times. It’s a re-evaluation of our daily life. Remembering these hardships of the past is rethinking our hardships of the presents. For me at least it’s an exercise of my imagination, how lucky and blessed someone at the camps in those days would have felt to just wake up one day in my life. I feel more responsible to see that, to value it, to honour it. It’s unfair at times that to value my life more is to compare myself to someone who had it worse. Seeing the light of the world today by exposing myself to the darks of yesterdays.

STEM

Its amazing working in the library, seeing all the kids books on coding. As a kid those wernt around for me at the time (also kids books on reconciliation, environment, gender equality and diversity – much more aware times). It feels very interesting to see this big societal push for STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Math) jobs. Its great in many ways, yet I feel a slight sadness.

For one, STEM jobs by nature pay fairly well. As true as it is the future will rely on more STEM innovations, its also sort of glorifying a divide – those who have STEM educations and those who dont. If all aspects of society were paid the same it would be lovely, but there is a bit of a financial bias towards this sort of work. Sure – it takes education, which takes financial sacrifices and time dedications, but it still exasperates inequality. I just feel sad imagining a gap between the educated in this field, and those either uneducated, or educated in a field that is less employable or less in demand.

As great as innovation and technology is, it is overshadowing alot of the human connection and emotional aspects of life. I feel it would be lovely to have more of a balance of education in a practical tangible sense, but to also value a society where people have eye contact, small talk, and generally high levels of self esteem and belonging. Ofcourse these are hard to quantify, and dont pay the bills, and they just seem to be slipping by the way side.

I also find, there are so many job titles our there in these new fields. Atleast for me I feel I read them and just have very little clue what many of them mean – especially software or computer related fields. They all seem to overlap, and I suppose to me seem fairly ambiguous – I wonder if others feel this way.

Engineering.

Ive been reading alot about engineering lately. Today, I spent time learning about how drones fly, what makes helicopters work, how engines work, aswell how sail boats can move forward in the direction of the wind. Also, how ‘curveballs’ work in sports, like a corner kick going in the net. Alot of it had to do with fluid dynamics.

Air is a fluid, and is put in the category of aerodynamics. And in water it was hydrodynamics. It was fascinating though. Things I’ve never cared to know about have been so fascinating. Turns out it has to do with differences of pressure. Im too novice in this to explain it, but youtubing any of the above things will do so much better than me explaining it.

Im here mostly to share my inspiration and joy ive had from learning about these things. Ive began to learn more and more about the complexity of the world. How car engines work is a marvel of its own. Computers, cell phones, satellites, its a really highly advanced civilization we live in – technologically at least. Its apart of life im really getting alot of joy and education from – recognizing achievements of modern day. Even simply how plumbing works, that when it rains vast tubes underground will transport it all. And that each house had pipes feeding it water in the first place – every single house and apartment.

The amount of electricity flowing in one city at one time too is phenomenal. And its an illusion to think electricity is moving from the plant to your home. Technically, it arrives from the plant, but it actually moves back and forth, 60 times a second – how does it get anywhere? It literally vibrates more than travels.

So yes, im sharing just the wonder ive been getting from learning lately. Even the fact that cell phones have little billions of little components all on tiny pieces of hardware. And these cell phones can perform millions of operations a second. Its all so…incomprehensible!

And yet, it is under our radar. Many of us use the car without thinking twice about the motor, flush the toilet, call the friend, switch the light, use the fridge, use wifi, bluetooth headphones, read about tesla cars, and know so little about the infrastructure of these – some we ever really rely on. Its a shame we are so disconnected from our elders, compared to other more ancient cultures. I think similarly, we are so disconnected from our surroundings, even our human ones. Yes, we are disconnected from nature, in our concrete, tech jungles we live in. I just find really understanding the small pieces infront of us gives alot of perspective to how and why things are the way they are.

Its such a rabbit hole, and I can go on and on. Even just youtubing (which has become my goto info dealer) how modern printing of magazines work is a trip. Ironically enough, even how the simplest things work is phenominal. You look at a little rc car, that has a sensor that tells it to drive straight over a line. The amount of code for things so simple is unbelievable sometimes, even basic websites too. The simplest technologies for the longest time to me were so misunderstood. I had very little respect for the complexity and work that is involved in it. Even the mechanical watch, have you ever youtubed that? How those things manage to work, without any batteries? Just F%$#ing brilliant. I find im not the best at describing things technically. I speak more emotionally than technically. Although, it could be great way to write meanwhile fueling my learnings. I just wanted to share abit about how ive been using my past year, and maybe inspire others to youtube something, and just see how it works, it gives alot of context onto all the work and effort that goes into the everyday tools we use.

The loop.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.” -Albert Einstein

I’m tired as I write this; I’ve been tired like this before.

I’m excited on a new idea, been here before.

This will be the one, I said that before.

I’ve blogged before, not blogged, chased new interests. Said I liked them, said I didn’t.

It’s all a loop.

And for a while that’s been my detriment. I go faster in the loop. Longer in the loop. But it’s all the same. The details change, timelines, people involved in my life during these cycles. Each new idea starts a craving for the next. Each day leading to the next. More goal setting. More empty promises. I’ve been here before.

And I’m trying to reconcile that. I’ve done many jobs, lived many places, and done many things. And I reflect back. Each of those was a new high. A new frontier for my curiosity. But where does this LEAD me to? Is life a perpetual journey of chasing ‘new shiny objects’? I’m trying to come to terms with myself. What’s present for me today, is nothing but a movie clip, with slightly different narratives, characters, plots, etc., from the experiences I had years ago.

This is slightly confronting. I feel like I’m living out a shorter version of Buddha’s incarnations, but on weekly, yearly levels. This cycle just keeps…cycling.

So I’m trying to question the program. What is looping? Why do we feel like our lives feel like cycles? Why do we repeat the same patterns with new places and people?

I feel like I identify myself by what the experience I’m having in the moment. “Currently I work here, live here, and do this with my free time”. But that seems to be changing for me often. Maybe others feel more settled and grounded in their lives, but I do reflect – what’s happening?

I feel cautious to set new goals, to set new sights. Nothing feels realistic anymore, its feeling abit jaded. I’m abit hurt from past failures, high hopes that never prevailed. Apart of me wants to rebel against this thinking, and just say my goal is no goals. Another part of me wants to write ON this specific subject, just like I do in my blog. It feels more real part of me. It’s incredibly humbling, to have these moments, they feel like omissions of confusions, frustration, dizzy trying to make sense of the world. Chase goals, chase dreams, but I just spend my time writing about how it feels so artificial. What do you do when you stop dreaming? When the dreams feel vaguer, or they don’t live up to the idea we put on them? Am I backing out too early? Calling it impossible and settling for less?

I’m here to just write. It’s uncomfortable to just free write like this, but honestly, this feels as true as it gets. I don’t filter it, I barely edit it. I just come and show up here. And speak. And it’s nauseous. And I’m hoping something can come from this. Clearly I don’t write stories. I am more psychology, philosophy. What is the dream for someone who is feeling harder and harder to pinpoint them? Are goals really the next step I need? Why is THIS the right one, when many times before THAT was the right one? Are we just seduced to systems that don’t work?

When I type this I do feel abit pessimistic, like maybe I just didn’t have the right support systems, and it wasn’t the goals that was the problem, but the structure to maintain the goals that crumbles. Acknowledge there are forces and feelings inside to manage. That there are always higher ideals and imaginations we could have for ourselves and life. To simply just navigate and sit and write. If this really impacts people ill accept that and welcome it. But in some ways, I’m here for myself. To just type and purge and release and let go.

Here comes the loop again, asking if this is valuable to others. Do others have time. Well. I say there are so many books, movies, things to do, is this fair to be there as well? I don’t know…Maybe none of the other stuff even matters. That’s a thought! Perhaps I’m chasing more stories and knowledge. This is me talking about what I have no background or qualifications to talk about. I’m not certified, I’m just imagining. Imagine if all those things that stop me from reading this peacefully didn’t exist, and there was really just this. Am I caught in a new loop? Where I’ll say “Wow that’s right?” and a day later be stressed I’m not ‘doing’ enough. Maybe it’s impossible to break free from that paradigm, and we will only ever get momentary breaks from it. We will forever be imprisoned by our desire for more information, by living in a world abundant with knowledge.

Well, where to go from here? This feels fun, feels adventurous. I feel experimental, controversial even. I feel like I’m just trying to argue for my own survival here, my own spotlight even. Maybe that too is all a waste of time. I don’t know what is and isn’t anymore. What fits into this box of modern knowledge? This feels more shamanistic, I can just call myself an ‘intuitive writer’, even though I really value education and knowledge. But I keep coming to THIS climax. This point. This moment of questioning, of decision making, of not knowing what to do from here, where to go next, how to reconcile all I’ve done, and how to trust where I’m going next. These blog posts of just chaos unfolding word by word, so neatly and gently. Is this what the world needs, another loop question. Insecurity, another loop. It feels impossible to resist. But my goal is just to name it. To expose it, but it out in the open. Yes I’m adding data and words to an already saturated and filled up internet. There are too many words already, and here I am, filling up the tank again. It’s a contradictory, inner conflict sort of experience.

Ok, this post will end, ill close the laptop, feel relieved, accomplished I wrote something about writing something. Done it before, but this will be a different done it before – a new one. Tomorrow, maybe even tonight, it’ll fade. I’ll watch YouTube, and begin the cycle all over again. Think about dreams and ideas, maybe write some more – capitalize on this new idea I have, just write about whatever comes up. Maybe these inner quarrels and meaningless posts are secretly my meaning. Perhaps I’ve been downplaying the instinct that does come natural. Perhaps I’m supposed to write what others aren’t writing. I just got to be blunt. My subject matter feels like no subject matter. I may read a Tim Ferriss quote and write nothing like him. I can feel myself trying to blend, dilute myself, adapt, and become more like them. It takes a lot of integrity and naiveness to just write what comes up. I can be my own worst fan sometimes. I just write and let it out, hope it manifests into something the world needs. I’m like the invisible painter, the closet designer, my thoughts, probably like many many other writers will just go unnoticed, unimportant, unneeded. The world has survived up until now without them and is still operating. Yet, I’m trying to just be what I am. To just show up and hope that message strikes a chord with someone. Somewhere. That hope is really a thing I chase, maybe that’s the loop. Hoping constantly to find a new way to impact someone, to connect. I’m not planting flags on that idea, for all I know I may deny it and not believe in it ever again, it’s my nature it seems. And that’s hard to accept, but I’m allowing room for it.

So paragraphs shouldn’t be so long, so I’ll hit return button and conclude here. Hope this meant something to someone. Yes maybe Adam should be more focused, educated, clear, deliberate, niche, out of the box, in the box, something. I can’t just keep critiquing myself, at least not write now. Time to just go with the flow and just let it be. Heres to the flow. The loop. Trying to straighten it out into a path.

 

On Daydreaming

I seen an inteview by Andy Weir – he wrote a cool book called The Martian.

He talks about that we cant simply daydream. Daydreaming isnt enough to get us where we want to go. I thought it was really inspiring. As a writer, thinking about it, imagining it, but not putting time onto paper and doing it. Alot of it is the vague sense or direction I have to it. I just sort of express, abit haphazardly, through many mediums. I think these days writers are very organized, practical, and sober in a way people. I say sober as just very literal and clear about who and what they are. I write a book about X, my background is Y, I want to be Z. It can be strange for me to feel so ‘flowy’ in this arena, to write abit more impulsively, and to try to be honest with what truly arises in me, even if it feels unstructured or hard to predict.

Its like a scale, between passion and results. The more I try to focus on passion, the less I write, the more inconsistent, the less clear I feel. I just ‘word vomit’ onto a page. It doesnt feel like it moves me forward, but in some ways im trying to trust in it for now, and just focus on trying to be inspired and motivated more often. [Sounds SO dreamy and unmeasurable]. And I know that. I can make it a smart goal and say read 5 motivational this or that and write x hours a day, but im trying to hold onto some romantic notion of fun, that it can happen naturally and fluidly.

Discipline is possible for me. Ive done it for many years now, accept in many areas besides this one – which is ironic. How hard and dependable we are to things that we dont have as high of a priority to, and how slow and sensitive we are to things we really care about. What a double edged sword. The desire to keep it very natural and pure, meanwhile the inability to raise it to grow consistently in a healthy way.

Well, this is about less day dreaming. Daydreaming doesnt make writers. Or atleast daydreaming alone doesnt. One can never be a writer if they dont write. So here I am, groundhog day, every blog post in some ways. These guilt omissions that maybe im not doing enough. Well, live and you learn. Im here. Take the win and keep going.

Libraries

A library is like a physical manifestation of the internet, a simplified version ofcourse, but I think the analogy fits. Even the kids book section sometimes feels like blog posts. Quick. Creative. Small introductions to new topics.

When you google something, we tend to go to the first one or two websites, yet there are millions of search results each time. Are ALL those other websites just lost in the masses of data? Am I just website 5,234,234 when you type ‘Adam’ in google. At libraries you can stumble on things, its great for that. I find the internet we stumble onto articles written through famous media outlets, or through our circle of friends. Especially with algorithms, its like living in a library that is constantly changing, getting rid of books your unlikely to read, and buying ones you are interested in. For better or worse. I love libraries because I see so much I just wouldent see on the internet. Its so natural and easy to stumble onto things. It feels more random…

That being said, libraries are at times feeling like an antique shop or a museum. There are books collecting dust. Its abit of a romanticism to think we need all those books in modern day. I believe the rule that 20% of the books get 80% of the readership sticks even there. Which is a shame, and makes you ask – what are the future of libraries, and what do we do with books that just arnt being used.

During covid as well, with library book sales not happening, they dont have storage space, so alot of books are just being recycled which normally may be sold. I seen we got a new set of encyclopedias, a maybe 15 volume set. Unfortunately, the outdated set gets recycled. Shame information is so disposable. It may have only a few updates per volume, yet it is now trendy and makes the old one obsolete. You see it in technology. Things built so durable, yet are throw away too soon. Its such a paradox.

Its cool to also see whats trendy. We can immediately see what films are popular in other languages, what is current for kids these days, which authors have the most books. I see the Chinese section has a portion devoted only to kungfu books, a substantial amount! Things I just wouldnt know by existing in my bubble on the internet.

The day at the beach at Renfrew[old poem]

The ups and downs of the mountain are the heart beat, the log in the inlet, tug boat going west, ship preparing, bridge is bustling, sun is shining, and its cold. Its nice

The small wakes of the water, maybe its just getting up too. A whole day before me. Another tug boat.
Ozone I can feel you. So gentle and soft. Are you emotional today? Lazy? Water. So silent. Spreading all around the planet. Embody me. Ill embody you. Dreaming…

I am waiting for a storm that never comes. I plan, I spread the news, warn others. Make predictions I have to continually doubt and re examine. It’s a vulnerable task, this mission. Self elected. Widely wrong. What keeps me here you ask? Like sun shine in winter. A chance to surprise them. To help. To heal. Ive done so many other jobs. This felt…mine. Felt simpler. Our times are coming. I try to bridge that gap. Give you the tools you need between now and then. What do I see in the world? Industry, nature, people. Operating, growing, expanding. But to what? What for? Are we robots building robots. Where is our higher goal. Our bliss? Im like the shaman. Venturing to the outskirts of productivity. Where few have the time to see. I bring back rocks, and feathers. Proof there is something else other than the machine.