Every single action has a butterfly effect

Just in case you’re wondering, the title of this post isn’t a fact, but it is a rule that you may want to live by. Regarding people’s actions, it’s amazing to see how many people simply don’t take into account the repercussions of any of their actions. I’m not talking about pulling the trigger of a gun, robbing a bank or something as terrible as throwing a grenade at a gas station. I’m talking about the little things in life that people take for granted and simply choose to ignore rather than address.

If you want simple tangible examples, you don’t have to go very far. Just get in your car and you’ll see what I mean. People texting and driving, talking while going in reverse in their car, drinking hot coffee, picking their nose or screaming at a member of their family. These are just five examples I came up with in less than four seconds so imagine how many things you can think of if you really put your mind into it.

“Ok, so what’s the big deal with any of those examples?” you may ask. Ok, let’s take each one, analyze and see possible outcomes.

1. Texting and driving: it’s stupid, it’s retarded and yet a lot of us do it because we live in the age of multitasking. Call it ego or being too bored with putting your entire attention span to driving, but people text and drive and here are some possibilities that stem from doing this act. First one, you can crash. You send a text while driving, don’t see that the car in front of you stopped and you hit it. Pretty simple and quite common. Thing is if it’s an angry text or a sexy one, odds are that your body reacts in certain non verbal ways that you don’t necessarily take into account while clicking away. Namely that you tense up and possibly press on the accelerator more than you have to. Second off, since your brain is divided, you’re not all there when writing the message so you may send the wrong message while writing since you’re not all in it. Then there’s typos and it can be something simple, or you may call the person by another name (not making that one up and that little mistake almost cost the relationship because the whole infidelity thing came into play). So that’s you, but what if you texting reminds someone that they have to text someone else? Great. Now we have two multitaskers adding blades to their juggling set. Ok so what if someone who’s not texting sees this? They may not care, but they might get infuriated which takes their attention from the car in front and voila, another crash in record time. And this is just thinking for less than two minutes about this example.

2. Talking while going in reverse in your car. Yet again we have a case of an overachieving multitasker. In case you’re wondering, I’m not even referring to people who drive and talk. I’m talking about the people who get into the car and insist on calling someone up while putting the car in reverse. To sum it up simply, your visibility will be shot, you won’t take into account all of your surroundings, you can crash and what’s more, there’s 32% probability you’ll drop your phone and your call. By the way, holding the phone with your shoulder and head prompts unwanted button presses etc. As if that weren’t enough, you are probably setting yourself up for a nice case of torticollis AKA wry neck. Fun times.

3. So what about drinking hot coffee while driving? Two words for you: burnt genitals.

4. And picking your nose? Well unless you think it’s sexy to let people know you keep a collection of nose nuggets in the arm rest of your car, I’d choose the option of waiting for home, unless it’s mandatory that you pick that sucker.

5. As for screaming to your family, well maybe it’s better you do that so people know who lurks behind the façade.

The point is that I just took five casual and everyday occurrences and showed that each one has its own set of repercussions. Now think of every time you hit your keyboard, every time you call someone an asshole, every time you spit gum on the sidewalk or street, that can you tossed on the floor, that call you didn’t make, that vote you didn’t cast and you realize that every single one of our actions has repercussions of varying degrees and some results will probably surprise you since you didn’t think what you did mattered. After all, it’s just one in six billion right? Well that’s exactly the attitude that leads to complacency, mediocrity, and disharmony.

So next time you are about to do something that doesn’t matter, think twice because it does matter and you can make a difference if you only give a damn.

What the hell is artisan water

In a world where we can literally sell ANYTHING and get away with it, water has become the weapon of choice to reach new heights of idiocy. It wasn’t that long ago when I remember that I could drink water from a garden hose and only have to worry about maybe adding a rubbery hint to my flatulence. But nay, those days are long gone and we are left with a world that has to pay for something that pretty much makes ¾ of our body.

Oh and if you haven’t noticed, business is booming. From Dasani to Naya to Aquafina, Deer Spring, Evian and Fiji water, that little cocktail consisting of two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen sells like hotcakes and just like cars, apparel and neighborhoods, each brand caters to a specific person looking for basic hydration.

If you’re like me, you go to Costco, pick the cheapest brand that doesn’t taste like plasma from a Styrofoam monster and chug away, often refilling from your work’s ample and free water supply. But of course, this isn’t enough for some people and for these little wonders, we came up with artisan water.

In case you’re wondering, artisan water is not made by artists. It is also not the water used to clean brushes between color strokes while painting on a canvas. Just in case, it isn’t water used to make moving pieces of art either. In fact, there is actually no such thing as artisan water. What some people sell as artisan water is actually artesian water, which comes from ground wells dug up. Artisan water is just the trendy name given to the water type just to sell easier and pique intrigue in passersby from around the world.

Which brings me to one more point: just how much are we willing to pay for water in the long run? A bottle of Pellegrino can set you back almost $6 (US) in some places. Fiji water goes upwards of $2 (US) in most places. Dasani sells for $1-$2 depending on your venue and guess what, it’s treated tap water (I say treated because purified this ain’t, and in case you were wondering, Dasani is a made up word). The varying hydro markets shift and change with the greatest of ease and in the end, what do we get? Something that we used to be able to get from the faucet for little or no cost.

So next time your sipping on your premium water of choice, just remember that once upon a time, water, unlike you, was free.

Injured in perfection

So no one likes to get sick, or get injured. That's more than natural because we should all be trying to be enjoying ourselves creating memories that will compensate for the endless hours we invest in our respective dayjob torture. Being a surfer has its definite pluses but also has its drawbacks.

On the positive side, surfing is liberating, fun, exercise, good for your health, great for the soul and something I plan on doing as long as I am able to. The negative side is that it depends on weather conditions often times and getting the right tide, the right swell, the right wind direction and the right rhythm for your surfing is not exactly easy. Which makes getting injued when it's epic that much more painful.

Last Sunday I was at the beach, the conditions were blissful to put it lightly and I'm bummed at myself for not having gotten up sooner (who knows if I would have been able to avoid the injury). But I was going to make the most of it. First wave, a bit tentative and got barreled..... on a tentative wave... so you can imagine the smile, the satisfaction and the idea that I was going to get my fix and then some... then something happened... call it silly, odd, stupid, unfair, illogical or just plain bad luck but when I was going back out, look towards my right while paddling and there went my neck... a spasm as I'd never felt before because it wasn't massive but it definitely felt wrong and I thought it would pass..... which it hasn't, and it's been more than 24 hours since the event.

I insisted on staying out and took five more waves which probably aggravated the injury but I didn't care because I was about to cry. Even with a bum neck, I got two more barrels an air and a roll.... that last one really sucked for my neck.

As I sit here, writing against what's probably best for me because I'm too desperate to continue laying in bed, I ask myself if this is just the first of a series of injuries and physical setbacks, because I'm not old, but I'm not getting younger.

I also realize that not being at work really doesn't bother me that much and I totally understand that I'm just there to earn a living even if it's the first job I actually enjoy. But the thing that bugs me is that I didn't get hurt when surf sucked, when I was shopping, when I was working or any other situation where it would have hurt less... no, I got hurt when it was epic and the conditions I've been begging for months upon months. I get to realize that it's not fate, or life, or anything working against me, it's just something that happened but like most humanity, I need to attribute some extra meaning to the event simply because of the circumstances and because you at least want an answer of why something like that has to happen, even if it's a little blip in the grand scheme of life.

And I guess it just helps me put things in perspective. Why should I get hung up on one moment, if my entire life is but a blip that I really should make the most of.

Just something to think about.

Cheers

Existential Rant #1

Morning commutes are truly the purgatory between freedom and salaried slavery. It is the time when your thoughts are truly your own and interruptions are limited to subway stops, lane changes or any particular activity related to your preferred method of transportation. Images and words simmer in your still loading mind and things become clearer while at the same time confusing. Mental chatter phases in and out and you realize so many things that you’ll forget in the coming minutes. Universal epiphanies abound but you have no way of recording it and it’s sobering in the sense that while prepping up to enter the routine, your mind revel s in the river of thought that soon will be honed into a stream. Thought after thought churns and you don’t care about opinions or hearsays or anything. You just are, the world is, the universe will be. Anything is possible and the only thing sacred is this revelatory moment where you grasp the aether, drink of life and acquiesce to the mores of the mundane.

Love becomes even more abstract but strangely tangible, as does happiness, dejectedness, frustration or despair. You realize your happy or not and you can kind of figure things out because you’re still half asleep and your defenses are down. It’s too hard to face yourself when you’ve had your morning coffee and your shot of adrenaline from the first phone call, email or job scheduled for the morning. It is your job to not look past any of these obstacles but to rummage in the unconscious that you’re so eager to leave behind so you can snuggle in the cozy repose of the familiar.

Before you are bombarded by adverts and messages, appreciate the lucid brutality of your unawakened self. Swill the sour taste out of your mind and disorganize your life to the point where you really grasp what matters in your life. Only in chaos can some things really become clear, and though frightening, it is liberating.

It’s ok to hate yourself a little, just don’t forget to also love yourself. The point being that you need to appreciate your virtues while willing yourself to remedy the things that bring you down a level in the evolutionary staircase. So take a step in the right direction, whatever that may be for you, and forget to think to truly come in contact with brilliance.

Your life is one long canvas

If you think about it, that title kind of makes sense. You just need an open mind to grasp it. First off, instead of your traditional canvas, think to cavemen times where people drew on walls. They started telling a story from picture to picture, from wall to wall until an entire saga spread throughout the wall. Now think of a papyrus scroll which was just one long sheet of paper. Now think that your life is one long sprawling papyrus scroll which you draw on.

Ok, so that might be a little weird but think of it in terms of writing from left to right (unless you're from the East, in which you'd go from right to left.

You start as a baby, you draw gibberish, stains, incomprehensible lines and curves that make no sense. You might even tear parts of the paper off or stain it with baby food or cheetos. Slowly you see the drawnings start to take shape, make more sense. Scribbles and doodles, but something more linear, coherent even.

You keep drawing because you don't have a choice. You start to introduce color, things you see influence you but it's still your perspective, your eye and your life that's going on paper. More colors, a specific gammet of color and you start to see real beauty. That's your perception. The more you live, the more complex it is. You see a trail of paint and look back to the beginning and can hardly make it out, and you only remember the really special parts of what you drew. the rest is just emotion, of how it made you feel and the general overall feeling you had way back when. You use crayons, pencils, carbon, stencils, aerosols, oleos and pretty much anything you can use to create or document if you will. The canvas grows, gets smaller, swerves and takes different shapes.

Some days you paint vibrantly, other times minimallistically. Some days you draw landscapes, followed by people, followed by to do lists and numbers. Album covers appear along movie posters, musical notes and song lyrics become headlines and comments. It gets more and more complex and though you are focused on the moment, you know what you've done and you know what you want to do even if it's only partial memory and planning.

Your story can then include a specific topic, a woman, a man, and for a period of time, that's all that is shown there. Add to that a dog or a cat, maybe even a bird. You see circles, bands, flying rice, and cans dragging across rough pavement.

You start seeing flashes of blue or pink, a baby is shown, and smiles and tears, and bottles and rattles, appear..... Then the changes start to get quicker in your artwork. You go from baby, to child, to adolescent, to adult. The woman that was appearing or the man start sprouting spots of grey and it takes more lines to draw them, especially around the eyes. One moment you see a full house, then it gets empty.

Shadows and greys start coming more into focus and the strength in the lines grow softer. Things that used to take three feet to draw are now drawn out for meters. Little details start popping in and repeats of the same images start showing these details missing at times and present others. Colors fade, the lines get softer and it all gets lighter and lighter. Finally the images start getting smaller, and smaller, infinitely smaller. It gets to the point where the naked eye only sees a small line, but that line used to be a full life, full of color and wonder and now to the layman it's just a line, a simple line, a flat line... but that? That will always be a full life.

I wish anyone who reads this a long life, full of color and wonder. Full of changes and styles, full of perspective, of shade, or points of view, of ups and downs, of small details and large ideas.

Cheers

First Dratfs

I'm going to be posting some of my poetry or short rants that are a First Draft. No proofing. No editing. This is as much an experiment to see my thouhgts in raw as it is to push myself to be better off the first time out of the gate. As per usual, I'm a bilingual guy, so poems and rants will be in Engish, Spanish and or both. So let's see what turns out.