Author Archives: Mark Ayers

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For a moment this morn­ing, a bald eagle raced along beside me, each of us on our way into the day.

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The power of think­ing is in know­ing what not to think about.

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So quickly came the changes I had, just moments before, said were unlikely or even impossible.

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Might it be not that they rejected your val­ues but rather that you failed to teach them those values?

wait

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good things
come to those
who wait work
every day of
their lives hard and
never quit.

A mod­i­fi­ca­tion on a work by Kyle Winton.
Winton, Kyle. Silkscreen Poster “Good Things Come to Those Who…”. April 2012.
http://​www​.kick​starter​.com/​p​r​o​j​e​c​t​s​/​4​3​0​0​6​2​4​7​0​/​s​i​l​k​s​c​r​e​e​n​-​p​o​s​t​e​r​-​g​o​o​d​-​t​h​i​n​g​s​-​c​o​m​e​-​t​o​-​t​h​o​s​e​-​who (accessed April 11, 2012).

Hello World

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Omnis iste natus error sit volup­tatem accu­san­tium doloremque lau­dan­tium, totam rem ape­riam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inven­tore ver­i­tatis et quasi archi­tecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explic­abo. Nemo enim ipsam volup­tatem quia volup­tas sit asper­natur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia con­se­qu­un­tur magni dolores eos qui ratione volup­tatem sequi nesci­unt. Nesque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, con­secte­tur, adip­isci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tem­pora incidunt ut labore et dolore mag­nam ali­quam quaerat volup­tatem. Ut enim ad min­ima veniam, quis nos­trum exerci­ta­tionem ullam cor­poris sus­cipit labo­riosam, nisi ut aliq­uid ex ea com­modi con­se­quatur? Quis autem vel eum iure rep­re­hen­derit qui in ea volup­tate velit esse quam nihil moles­tiae con­se­quatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo volup­tas nulla pariatur?

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

Consectetur adip­isic­ing elit, sed do eius­mod tem­por inci­didunt ut labore et dolore magna ali­qua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nos­trud exerci­ta­tion ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea com­modo con­se­quat. Duis aute irure dolor in rep­re­hen­derit in volup­tate velit esse cil­lum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occae­cat cup­i­datat non proident, sunt in culpa qui offi­cia deserunt mol­lit anim id est laborum.

At vero eos et accusamus

Et iusto odio dig­nis­si­mos ducimus qui blandi­tiis prae­sen­tium volup­ta­tum delen­iti atque cor­rupti quos dolores et quas moles­tias excep­turi sint occae­cati cupid­i­tate non prov­i­dent, sim­ilique sunt in culpa qui offi­cia deserunt mol­li­tia animi, id est labo­rum et dolo­rum fuga. Et harum qui­dem rerum facilis est et expe­dita dis­tinc­tio. Nam libero tem­pore, cum soluta nobis est eli­gendi optio cumque nihil.

Itaque earum rerum

Impedit quo minus id quod maxime placeat facere pos­simus, omnis volup­tas assumenda est, omnis dolor repel­len­dus. Temporibus autem quibus­dam et aut officiis deb­itis aut rerum neces­si­tat­i­bus saepe eve­niet ut et volup­tates repu­dian­dae sint et moles­tiae non recu­san­dae. Itaque earum rerum hic tene­tur a sapi­ente delec­tus, ut aut reiciendis volup­tat­i­bus maiores alias con­se­quatur aut per­fer­endis doloribus aspe­ri­ores repellat.

Continue read­ing →

Bread clip

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DopefishJustin at en.wikipedia.org Permission CC-BY-SA-2.0

Bread clip — Wikipedia, the free ency­clo­pe­dia.

Another item to work out before you move in with a Human from a com­mer­cially pro­duced bread eat­ing cul­ture. What do you do with the bread tie? I came from a toss the tie and fold fam­ily. She is a reuse the clip per­son. Oh my! Can we keep it together? Only time will tell. So far, so good.

Around Edmonds

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This will be a series of arti­cles about Edmonds Washington. The series will include events, mer­chants, restau­rants, orga­ni­za­tions, parks, the arts, etc.

As an exam­ple of what is to come, I have planned arti­cles about the Edmonds Center for the Arts, The Driftwood Players, and The Cascade Symphony; arti­cles about Epulo Bistro, The Loft Café and Social Lounge, The Winged Pig, FIVE, Portofino Pizza and Pasta, and Claire’s Pantry; arti­cles about the local Starbucks and Tully’s, about Walnut Street Coffee and Waterfront Coffee Co too; arti­cles about the Edmonds Chamber of Commerce, both Edmonds Rotary & Edmonds Daybreakers, Edmonds Toastmasters, along with the Edmonds Community Foundation, and Edmonds Backyard Wildlife Habitat Community Certification Project; arti­cles about our neigh­bor­hoods like The Bowl, Five Corners, and Westgate; arti­cles about our mer­chants and pro­fes­sion­als like Running in Motion, Nama’s Candy Store, the Edmonds Bookshop and more; plus arti­cles about the events in town, An Edmonds Kind of Fourth, the Waterfront Festival, the Classic Car Show, the Edmonds Art Festival.

Certainly there will be more too. I’ll have arti­cles on local pol­i­tics and parks, regional issues with a local fla­vor, and national issues that have a local expres­sion as well.

I expect to deliver at least one “Around Edmonds” arti­cle a week. See you soon.

Travel to…

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The Quote

If we live truly, we shall see truly. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Prompt

Not every­one wants to travel the world, but most peo­ple can iden­tify at least one place in the world they’d like to visit before they die. Where is that place for you, and what will you do to make sure you get there?

The Response

Travel has a way of open­ing me up to the truth. All the fil­ters my mind builds around the noise of life in the places I am famil­iar are gone. Once I am away from the famil­iar I can see more of real­ity again. More real­ity means more truth.

Now hav­ing the fil­ters isn’t a bad thing. I am sure there is a good rea­son we have devel­oped the abil­ity to fil­ter our inner selves the cacoph­ony of infor­ma­tion out­side our­selves. Still, open­ing past them from time to time is use­ful too. Travel does two things. I can see the world more clearly while I’m trav­el­ing and, when I return how, I am open to things I’d have fil­tered had I not trav­eled. I am sure you can think of exam­ples in your own life, what­ever kind of travel you may have experienced.

Recently I have had rea­son to think about the “before you die” ques­tions too. I have dis­cov­ered that when peo­ple are con­fronted with the truth of their own immi­nent mor­tal­ity, it isn’t some­thing else and other they want. It isn’t gen­er­ally a trip to fill-​in-​the-​blank. Instead I find they dis­cover they want more of what they already have. Perhaps I have been exposed to a unique sub­set of human­ity. I doubt it.

That all said, the ques­tion was, where in the world would I like to travel before I die? I have a long list. I’ll pick the des­ti­na­tion most impor­tant to me today. That place is north­ern Italy. I really want to take my wife to a place I know so well. I lived there, in Vicenza, for an impor­tant year as a very young man. I’d like to share a place I know so well with my dear bride. Of course, I’d love to see the place again myself too.

What will I do now to begin to make that hap­pen. I already am devel­op­ing that plan. My wife and I have begun to plan for travel in Europe in 2013. Savings, begun; plan­ning, begun; brain­storm­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties, under­way, even culling the list, started.

I feel well on my way. I hope you have some­place in mind. I hope you are well on your way too.

Paleo Profile

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I recently answered some ques­tions for a pro­file on the Western Washington Paleo Enthusiasts group at meetup​.com. It seems to me that I ought to share them here too.

Are you famil­iar with Paleo Eating?

I have only recently become famil­iar with paleo-​eating. I came to it from a carb restricted diet that helped me drop 35 lbs. I wanted to drop the weight to make run­ning eas­ier. I am still try­ing to decide if paleo-​eating, as a response to the diet of the indus­tri­al­ized late twen­ti­eth food sys­tem, makes sci­en­tific and/​or prac­ti­cal sense for me. Being mostly of Scandinavian descent and well able to tol­er­ate dairy, I believe in the abil­ity of a group or peo­ple to adapt to a vari­ety of food sources. I remain uncer­tain on the sub­ject of agri­cul­ture as the demon that I find in some paleo-​eating sources. I do feel cer­tain that the ideas behind paleo-​eating are a great start­ing point. I’ve had enough of a focus on macronu­tri­ent per­cent­ages. I find it inter­est­ing that track­ing macronu­tri­ents is eas­ier with mod­ern man­u­fac­tured food that it is with real whole foods. Ever seen the fat, pro­tein, carb break­down on an apple or a pork chop? BTW, you can with wolfram|alpha.

What are your hopes while in this group?

I hope to meet other paleo-​enthustiasts, to learn more about paleo-​eating and other char­ac­ter­is­tics of those inter­ested in food and a healthy lifestyle, and, per­haps, to make a friend or two, along the way.

If famil­iar, what’s your favorite paleo meal?

I am pas­sion­ate about local, in sea­son, whole foods, grown with care. I appre­ci­ate if those are as far from the mod­ern indus­tri­al­ized food sys­tem as pos­si­ble. Today, I think less in terms of a paleo-​meal than I do in terms of ingre­di­ents. Spinach, eggs, nearly any ani­mal mus­cle and some organs, fruits, nuts, all pol­luted with my non-​paleo ingre­di­ent dairy. I would argue that dairy is per­haps one of our old­est agri­cul­tural prod­ucts and thus more likely to be some­thing we have adapted to already. But, I have no his­tor­i­cal knowledge.

Us, Our Maker, and Mission

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The Quote

That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. Where is the mas­ter who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the mas­ter who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? … Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you can­not hope too much or dare too much. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Prompt

Identify one of your biggest chal­lenges at the moment (ie I don’t feel pas­sion­ate about my work) and turn it into a ques­tion (ie How can I do work I’m pas­sion­ate about?) Write it on a post-​it and put it up on your bath­room mir­ror or the back of your front door. After 48-​hours, jour­nal what answers came up for you and be sure to eval­u­ate them. Bonus: tweet or blog a photo of your post-​it.

The Response

I am sur­prised to have found another Ralph Waldo Emerson quote that I so thor­oughly dis­agree with. No, not at its heart, no where its real mean­ing lies, but it is with its sur­face that I dis­agree. It is true that you will not make a Shakespeare by study­ing Shakespeare. It is not true that you will cre­ate a great poet and play­wright in the study of Shakespeare and the appli­ca­tion of that study. I guess my heart says that we, along with our Maker, make us our selves in the space that occu­pies the gifts that the Maker has given us. If we can dis­cover how to express those gifts in the study of Shakespeare then all the bet­ter. I have read of too many authors that began in direct copy­ing of a great writer they admired. I mean word for word repro­duc­tion. After that, or as a dif­fer­ent start­ing point, many great authors copied the style of a great author. They did this pur­posely to explore anthers voice in the dis­cov­ery of their own voice, or they did this nat­u­rally and uncon­sciously as they pro­duced the moun­tains of rejected work on the path to their own great work in their own great voice.

The other prob­lem I find on the sur­face of the quote is in the ‘…do that which is assigned to you.…’ Too many of us find it too dif­fi­cult to find our own call­ing, to find what has been assigned to us to do. I find that I do not have faith that any­thing has been assigned to me to do. Perhaps that is sim­ply because I have not dis­cov­ered a mis­sion assigned to me by my Maker. Perhaps it is because I have not been assigned a par­tic­u­lar mis­sion by my Maker. Perhaps it is because I have been offered my Maker’s choice and missed, ignored, or refused it. Perhaps there is no Maker. I am uncer­tain which cause to assign to my response to this idea. It is related per­haps to my own ever present sense of being ‘in between’.

I’ll update this post with my response to the prompt in two days.

Running Profile

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I recently answered some ques­tions for a pro­file on the Seattle Greenlake Running Group at meetup​.com. It seems to me that I ought to share them here too.

How long have you been running?

I have been run­ning since I was a small child when I ran uncon­sciously for the joy of it. I ran cross-​country and dur­ing soc­cer games in junior high school. Many miles passed beneath my feet as I ran with my dog as an escape for the chaos at home dur­ing my high school years. Many more miles were cov­ered with the US Army in my 20s and 30s. There, in boots, with a pack, across the coun­try­side, down dirt roads, down run­ways, over forested hills and across creek, stream, and river fords. Less in my 40s as ‘life’ got in the way. More in the decades to come.

What is the far­thest you have ever run?

My longest is a half marathon (from Europe to Asia). I know, sounds fur­ther when I add (from Europe to Asia) doesn’t it. Still it was but 21.0975 kilo­me­ters or 13.1094 miles. I may have run fur­ther but not on a mea­sured course. Most of my miles were not mea­sured. I do like the mod­ern equip­ment we can use to mea­sure dis­tance, ele­va­tion gain, heart rate, etc.

Are you a morn­ing or evening runner?

I am a morn­ing run­ner by gen­eral neces­sity. It is just eas­ier for me to get a run into that part of the day most of the time. A run feels eas­ier and I feel more alive while run­ning in the evening.

Do you have any run­ning goals?

I’d like to get to ultra dis­tances and to run less on track or roads and more on trails.

Are you train­ing for any races of events?

Nope.

Opinion, Passion and Self

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The Quote

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opin­ion; it is easy in soli­tude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with per­fect sweet­ness the inde­pen­dence of solitude. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-​Reliance

The Prompt

The world is pow­ered by pas­sion­ate peo­ple, pow­er­ful ideas, and fear­less action. What’s one strong belief you pos­sess that isn’t shared by your clos­est friends or fam­ily? What inspires this belief, and what have you done to actively live it?

My response to the quote

I have been feel­ing acutely lately the real­ity of this quote. I have not yet become the great man of the third sen­tence. I can­not even say that I am on a path toward that great man sta­tus. I have a fairly week sense of self today. I have opin­ions that are con­trary to the powerful’s opin­ion. Yet, Occupy Wall Street and all the Occupy Your Towns that have risen up beside it sug­gests my opin­ions are shared by oth­ers in this world.

That is sur­face. There is a deeper sense in which I wear the worlds opin­ions. It eats at me. While, at the same time, I do not know what I should be expos­ing of myself. Not here, not in this essay, but i have not found that per­sonal opin­ion within myself.

I believe I need more silence, more time in nature. More of the soli­tude of the sec­ond sen­tence of the quote. There i may find what I need to be to become great.

My response to the prompt

My strongest belief of the moment that is not really shared by those clos­est to me is a fairly small thing. That small thing comes from big things. Big ideas and the war under­way today between the classes. I’ve said enough for the moment. I will retreat back into soli­tude for a time. There I will con­tinue to steal myself for the bat­tles large and small ahead.

Too Much Information with Benjamen Walker

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Too Much Information with Benjamen Walker

Mondays 6pm — 7pm on WFMU 91.1 fm 90.1 fm wfmu​.org

Too Much Information is the sober hang­over after the dig­i­tal party has run out of memes, apps and schemes. Host Benjamen Walker finds out that, in a world where every­one over­shares the truth 140 char­ac­ters at a time, telling tales might be the most hon­est thing to do.

via Too Much Information with Benjamen Walker, TMI Podcast Feed

I have been lis­ten­ing to Benjamen Walker for a few years now, off and on. I first dis­cov­ered him dur­ing the Theory of Everything days. I love his eclec­tic mix of themes and his off beat take on the world. I never know quite what to make of what I am hear­ing. For that rea­son alone I can highly rec­om­mend his radio show to you. You can get it as a pod­cast too.

Our Character is…

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The Quote

Your gen­uine action will explain itself, and will explain your other gen­uine actions. Your con­for­mity explains noth­ing. The force of char­ac­ter is cumu­la­tive. –- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-​Reliance

The Prompt

If “the voy­age of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hun­dred tacks”, then it is more gen­uine to be present today than to recount yes­ter­days. How would you describe today using only one sen­tence? Tell today’s sen­tence to one other per­son. Repeat each day.

My response to the quote

While I have the book Self-​Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson, I haven’t yet read it. This quote, like yesterday’s, needs con­text I just don’t have. I find I don’t under­stand gen­uine as the adjec­tive mod­i­fy­ing action here. “Genuine action”. How, for Ralph Waldo Emerson, is gen­uine action dif­fer­ent from action.

“Your con­for­mity explains noth­ing”, does stand on its own.

That char­ac­ter is the accu­mu­la­tion of your action makes per­fect sense to me as well. So, I guess it isn’t that I don’t have con­text for the quote. I do. I just don’t have enough con­text to dis­cover nuance here.

The sub­ject of char­ac­ter has been in the sub­text of American cul­ture for two decades now, per­haps longer. Not that I think that the pun­dits using the term today are get­ting it right. I don’t think they’re get­ting it right.

Emerson’s quote very nearly expresses a truth I believe about character.

It is my opin­ion the char­ac­ter is exter­nal. My char­ac­ter is the per­cep­tion that oth­ers have of me based upon my actions in the world that they have wit­nessed or that they have received in sto­ries about me. My sense the man’s char­ac­ter is based upon what I see him doing the world, upon the words he speaks, where he speaks them, the style with which he speaks them. My sense of a man’s char­ac­ter is based upon what I see him do or what I see him not doing.

…That Must Be Written

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The Quote

We are afraid of truth, afraid of for­tune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and per­fect persons. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Prompt

You just dis­cov­ered you have fif­teen min­utes to live.

  1. Set a timer for fif­teen minutes.
  2. Write the story that has to be written.

The Result

My response to the quote

I do not know the con­text of this quote. I fear I am at a dis­ad­van­tage. For today, I have no deep inter­nal reac­tion to the quote on its own.

Fear, so many quotes on fear. “The only thing we have to fear…” Yet, fear is such a part of human life. We carry it, per­haps, as a means of sur­vival. Yet, I think we too often fear, too much.

What a great and per­fect per­son? There are none in our age, there were none in his age, there have never been any, nor will there ever be any. Yet, there are in this age, there were in his, age there always have been and always will be per­sons, per­fect in their human­ity, in their fragility, in their fear.

My response to the prompt

Set a timer for 15 min­utes and tell the story must be told. There are no sto­ries that must be told in that sin­gu­lar way.

All of our sto­ries ought to be told. We need to tell them to each other every­day. It is by our sto­ries that we share our­selves. Because our sto­ries are our words, they are our expres­sions, they are our reac­tions, and the are our actions. Our sto­ries are the shar­ing of our lives.

The shar­ing of our lives is a gift that we give. Yet, it is also the gifts we get. A gift that is not just in the sto­ries oth­ers tell us, but in the telling of our own stories.

Our lives are not a sin­gu­lar story. Our lives are many sto­ries. Each scene is many sto­ries. Each is the source is the story that is upon the stage now. It is the story that we will tell of this time. It is the story that oth­ers will tell of this time. It is the story that we will remem­ber dif­fer­ently another time. It is the story retold by another who only heard the story of this time. It is the story that is not about this time at all. It is the story of great or sim­ple things.

So what is the story that must be told. It is the story that we can­not help but tell. That we are telling. That we will con­tinue to tell. That will be told when were gone. That is told before we arrived.

How to Think Clearly

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Understand that you are not doing it now. Also, under­stand that you will not be, even when you think you are. With that out-​of-​the-​way, you can begin. First, get plenty of sleep. When you have failed at that, eat a bal­anced break­fast every day. When you give up try­ing to do that, drink 8 glasses of water over the course of the day. Coffee and wine will not count. Now, give up and try this. Get twenty min­utes of exer­cise every day. Build mus­cle, improve your metab­o­lism; get your heart rate up too. When you real­ize you are too busy to do that, ask your doc­tor for some­thing to take off the edge. The fuzzy head­ed­ness that fol­lows is a key ingre­di­ent. Now, get tired of the side effects. Stop tak­ing the medication.

The result­ing clar­ity is all you need. 1

Notes:

  1. This is an orig­i­nal story cre­ated in a flash fic­tion class at the Write on the Sound writer’s con­fer­ence in 2009. ↩