On watermelon seeds

I know why the seeds are there–so we have more watermelon next summer. What is not entirely either clear or purposeful is why genetic biologists want to create a watermelon with seeds that are not seeds. Certainly, seeds make the watermelon more difficult to eat, but they also make the watermelon more interesting to eat because they are the legal thing that one might spit with impunity and not get yelled at by anyone, especially your mom. I find those black tear-drop shaped seeds to be aesthetically pleasing as they dot the ruby-red flesh of a summer watermelon. Watermelon is a metaphor for summer–sweet, juicy, the perfect desert to accompany the sunny heat of August. As a child, I remember eating watermelon in the park with all my fellow summer recreation dropouts and spitting the seeds everywhere. To deprive twelve-year-olds of the pleasure of spitting by inventing a watermelon without seeds is diabolic and heartbreaking, depressing one might say. I mean, creating a genetically useless fruit is the ultimate insult because it eliminates part of the pleasure of eating watermelon. Why is progress measured simply by making things easier when this does not necessarily mean better?

On watermelon seeds

I know why the seeds are there–so we have more watermelon next summer. What is not entirely either clear or purposeful is why genetic biologists want to create a watermelon with seeds that are not seeds. Certainly, seeds make the watermelon more difficult to eat, but they also make the watermelon more interesting to eat because they are the legal thing that one might spit with impunity and not get yelled at by anyone, especially your mom. I find those black tear-drop shaped seeds to be aesthetically pleasing as they dot the ruby-red flesh of a summer watermelon. Watermelon is a metaphor for summer–sweet, juicy, the perfect desert to accompany the sunny heat of August. As a child, I remember eating watermelon in the park with all my fellow summer recreation dropouts and spitting the seeds everywhere. To deprive twelve-year-olds of the pleasure of spitting by inventing a watermelon without seeds is diabolic and heartbreaking, depressing one might say. I mean, creating a genetically useless fruit is the ultimate insult because it eliminates part of the pleasure of eating watermelon. Why is progress measured simply by making things easier when this does not necessarily mean better?

On going home

I have been gone for 86 days–almost three months on the road. People often ask, “How can you stay away for so long?” but I always ask, “How come you never get away?” Home is where you make it. It isn’t a building or a city, it’s not a house that you built or an apartment you rent. Your home is where your heart is, to coin a cliche, so, in a sense, I am always home, whether I am at the cabin in northern Minnesota, or the farm, or in Europe. I have long since ceased being a tourist, even when I’m touring a castle, passing through customs, or checking a map. I ride the subway as if I were a local, brandishing my transport pass as if I had lived there twenty years. In sense, I am always going home–to the farm, in the city, at the university, on the plains of central Texas. One should not obsess one way or another about what “home” means. I find that the journey home is so much easier to make when I am going somewhere that looks, smells, and feels like home. I can wait in airport–which is not home, definitely not home–when I know that the plane I am waiting for is going “home.” Home is more about the people and less about the stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I love my stuff, but stuff will never love you and can always be replaced–not so true about the human element. So if you are going home and will see folks, greet them for me, tell them I am fine, and that I will be there soon.

On repeating myself

I’ve been writing this blog for more than seven years, and it has more than 1,300 entries on different topics. I’m afraid that I might be in danger of repeating myself. I mean, I would love to write more about sugar (and it’s dangers) or cookies or whatever, but I’d be repeating myself. Yet, since human beings are great at not listening, you have to repeat everything fifty times before they hear you. Seriously, take a group of forty people anywhere, and someone will ask where we’re going, when are we meeting to leave, where do we meet, what’s the significance of this place, and so on, even though you have already explained everything ten times, with written instructions, with color glossy photos with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back explaining what the picture is about. I find myself repeating things endlessly. It probably only gets really bad when I start talking to myself, which probably wouldn’t be that bad unless I start answering myself. Some folks, good folks, kind-hearted folks, are just no good at listening. If you asked them about who was buried in Grant’s Tomb, they’d have to think about it–for at least a minute. So I repeat myself: we’re going to Toledo today, the bus will leave the stadium at 9 a.m., so arrive well before that or you might get left. So what’s so important about Toledo? Twenty centuries of art, architecture, history, multiple civilizations, I don’t know, I wasn’t listening.

On repeating myself

I’ve been writing this blog for more than seven years, and it has more than 1,300 entries on different topics. I’m afraid that I might be in danger of repeating myself. I mean, I would love to write more about sugar (and it’s dangers) or cookies or whatever, but I’d be repeating myself. Yet, since human beings are great at not listening, you have to repeat everything fifty times before they hear you. Seriously, take a group of forty people anywhere, and someone will ask where we’re going, when are we meeting to leave, where do we meet, what’s the significance of this place, and so on, even though you have already explained everything ten times, with written instructions, with color glossy photos with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back explaining what the picture is about. I find myself repeating things endlessly. It probably only gets really bad when I start talking to myself, which probably wouldn’t be that bad unless I start answering myself. Some folks, good folks, kind-hearted folks, are just no good at listening. If you asked them about who was buried in Grant’s Tomb, they’d have to think about it–for at least a minute. So I repeat myself: we’re going to Toledo today, the bus will leave the stadium at 9 a.m., so arrive well before that or you might get left. So what’s so important about Toledo? Twenty centuries of art, architecture, history, multiple civilizations, I don’t know, I wasn’t listening.

On just before midnight

The day was hot, very hot, sweaty hot, but now it’s dark everywhere, the lights are on and the witching hour is almost upon us. The heat of the day lingers in the bricks, eminates off of the concrete of the sidwalks, and still softens the tar of the streets. Midnight is still no refuge from the white hot sun of July. You might hide out in your air-conditioning, behind double-paned glass, closed curtains, but heat is what July has, even at this hour of the night. Many of us cannot console our sleep well enough in order to drop off, so we haunt the late night, watching old movies, reading books, drinking water, and taking cold showers in hopes that we might be cool enough to fall asleep. It’s a struggle. The darkness is a minor consolation–at least we don’t need sunscreen to sleep. The day winds down into the darkness, and the creatures of the night stir, ready to run in the thin night air, unafraid of the lingering heat of the day. There cries, shouts, sometimes pathetic, sometimes savage, which hang in the dark, inexplicable and haunting, disembodied and fragmentary, not words, really, but strange pre-historic wails and barks. The heat hangs on like a stray dog with no where to go. People sit on benches and chat, knowing that going home is much worse than staying out late.

On just before midnight

The day was hot, very hot, sweaty hot, but now it’s dark everywhere, the lights are on and the witching hour is almost upon us. The heat of the day lingers in the bricks, eminates off of the concrete of the sidwalks, and still softens the tar of the streets. Midnight is still no refuge from the white hot sun of July. You might hide out in your air-conditioning, behind double-paned glass, closed curtains, but heat is what July has, even at this hour of the night. Many of us cannot console our sleep well enough in order to drop off, so we haunt the late night, watching old movies, reading books, drinking water, and taking cold showers in hopes that we might be cool enough to fall asleep. It’s a struggle. The darkness is a minor consolation–at least we don’t need sunscreen to sleep. The day winds down into the darkness, and the creatures of the night stir, ready to run in the thin night air, unafraid of the lingering heat of the day. There cries, shouts, sometimes pathetic, sometimes savage, which hang in the dark, inexplicable and haunting, disembodied and fragmentary, not words, really, but strange pre-historic wails and barks. The heat hangs on like a stray dog with no where to go. People sit on benches and chat, knowing that going home is much worse than staying out late.

On not making any sense

I think that at times our success-oriented society demands too much rationality and order from all of us. I mean, look, unless you are obsessive compulsive about being neat and orderly, society really frowns on you. I prefer to have a messy desk, a few stacks of books, a pile or two of papers, and a disorderly briefcase. Why? Why wouldn’t everyone prefer to keep things in perfect order all the time? Because the world of thought and imagination is anything but orderly. Too orderly means predictable, and predictable is boring. The human imagination, out of where all of our best creations have emerged, is any extremely unpredictable and messy place, but you have to feed it. If you keep an orderly imagination, it will wither and die from loneliness, feeling abandoned and unkept. Chaos, disorder, fragmentation, non-linearity, and strangeness all feed a healthy imagination which is constantly running away to join the circus. The imagination makes no sense whatsoever, but without it, creativity and the healthy mind are nowhere, boxed and shoved off into whatever closet they have been thrown. Whenever two objects come in contact that never had any business coming into contact, there lurks the opportunity of something new happening, which may be irreverent, irrational, and unintended, but that’s how new ideas come about. The success-oriented society of over-consumerism, abject capitalism, and blind success cannot survive an active imagination that wishes to shed itself of false parameters for success and spurious myths about materialism and money. The creative process, for as nutty and unreasonable that it has to be, is about liberating the spirit, giving flight to dreams, and allowing the individual to shed the heavy yoke of mainstream capitalism and consumerism in favor of spiritual freedom, whatever that might mean to any given individual. We don’t always have to make sense, stay in line, keep our mouths shut, or blindly accept what the powers that be feed us.

On not making any sense

I think that at times our success-oriented society demands too much rationality and order from all of us. I mean, look, unless you are obsessive compulsive about being neat and orderly, society really frowns on you. I prefer to have a messy desk, a few stacks of books, a pile or two of papers, and a disorderly briefcase. Why? Why wouldn’t everyone prefer to keep things in perfect order all the time? Because the world of thought and imagination is anything but orderly. Too orderly means predictable, and predictable is boring. The human imagination, out of where all of our best creations have emerged, is any extremely unpredictable and messy place, but you have to feed it. If you keep an orderly imagination, it will wither and die from loneliness, feeling abandoned and unkept. Chaos, disorder, fragmentation, non-linearity, and strangeness all feed a healthy imagination which is constantly running away to join the circus. The imagination makes no sense whatsoever, but without it, creativity and the healthy mind are nowhere, boxed and shoved off into whatever closet they have been thrown. Whenever two objects come in contact that never had any business coming into contact, there lurks the opportunity of something new happening, which may be irreverent, irrational, and unintended, but that’s how new ideas come about. The success-oriented society of over-consumerism, abject capitalism, and blind success cannot survive an active imagination that wishes to shed itself of false parameters for success and spurious myths about materialism and money. The creative process, for as nutty and unreasonable that it has to be, is about liberating the spirit, giving flight to dreams, and allowing the individual to shed the heavy yoke of mainstream capitalism and consumerism in favor of spiritual freedom, whatever that might mean to any given individual. We don’t always have to make sense, stay in line, keep our mouths shut, or blindly accept what the powers that be feed us.