flux & movement

it's just word vomit for the most part.

[fluxandmovement]

Despite a lack of natural ability, I did have the one element necessary to all early creativity: naïveté, that fabulous quality that keeps you from knowing just how unsuited you are for what you are about to do.

Steve Martin

[wolf-teeth]

[fluxandmovement]

a letter to the Internet

Sahar Saleem

I love you, but I hate you. You might be thinking it’s too soon in our relationship to be so open about such emotions. It’s not. With the rate at which you’ve been growing since the year I was born, I am both obsessed with you and terrified by you. You fascinate me but intimidate me. You make me feel like the tiniest spec of dust, but you also give me a voice in an infinite virtual universe.

My generation is the only one that feels such a strong tension between hate and love for you. We know a life without you, but not as clearly as the generations before us. We know the htmls and javascripts and embrace the technological innovations quite fast, but not nearly as fast as the generations after us.

We are the bridge generation. Reconciling the worlds of cyberspace and reality to try and find a fulfilling balance.

In this process of exploration, we make visible a building lack of focus because of our overwhelming access to information. We make visible our obsession and dependence on inanimate objects that have started to feel more animated than some of our closest friends and relatives.

But we also make visible an undeniable and distinct strength: we are the only generation that can connect the old and the new because we know both. We have lived in the old and are transforming in the new.

While we spent our childhoods playing with blocks and crayons, we understand that today’s children spend their playtime in a virtual world. Their blocks lack the physicality of ours, but they promote an intellectual stimulation that we, as adults, are still adjusting to. 

Internet, I hate you, but I love you. You are the platform for knowledge, for growth, and for transformation. If used correctly, you will be the reason for any change I make in the world.

[fluxandmovement]

the peaceful transfer of immense power

Sahar Saleem

Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander made an incredible point in his short speech at this year's Presidential Inauguration. Despite political divides and competitive elections, the inauguration is a day that Americans come together to accept our new or re-elected leader. In the midst of all the unrest around the world today, America remains the only nation that has consistently transferred power peacefully every four years since its establishment. It truly is inspiring.

Below is my favorite part of Alexander's remarks:

"Today, we praise the American tradition of transferring or reaffirming immense power as we inaugurate the president of the United States.

We do this in a peaceful, orderly way.

There is no mob, no coup, no insurrection.

This is a moment when millions stop and watch.

A moment most of us always will remember.

A moment that is the most conspicuous and enduring symbol of our democracy.

How remarkable that this has survived for so long in such a complex country with so much power at stake—this freedom to vote for our leaders and the restraint to respect the results.

Last year, a tour guide at Mt. Vernon told me that our first president, George Washington, posed this question: 'What is most important of this grand experiment, the United States?'

And then Washington gave this answer: 'Not the election of the first president, but the election of its second president. The peaceful transition of power is what will separate this country from every other country in the world.'

Today we celebrate, because this is the 57th inauguration of the American president."

[ekat3rina-deactivated20130129]

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

Carl Jung (via thominoz)

[positive-inking]

Artwork by Julia Green

[fluxandmovement]

rules i try to live by || 2013 edition

Sahar Saleem

in no specific order

1. Never let anybody make you feel inadequate. Keep in mind the people making you feel this way are bullies and something we’re taught throughout our lives is that the bullies are the people who feel the most inadequate and insecure. Instead of letting them try to break you with condescension, move past it. Tell them you agree with them. Kill them with kindness.

2. Write everything down. If you think of something and you like the sound of it, write it in a notebook and carry it everywhere. If you don't have a notebook, take a note on your phone. If you read something or watch something or eat something or talk to someone that inspires you, make a note of it while it’s still fresh in your mind. Going back to notes, no matter how insignificant and tiny they might seem in the grand scheme of things, is THE BEST. They can sometimes even lead to sensory memories, which leads to inspiration, which leads to an idea, which leads to action and creation, which should always be the ultimate goal.

3. Don't be so afraid to speak your mind. There will always be people who don't agree with you and will argue against things that you say and try to make you feel dumb for thinking the way you do. But stand your ground. For everyone who hates on you, there are probably 10 people who completely agree with you but may be too shy/intimidated to speak their mind.

4. Don't be intimidated by anyone. No matter how high up on a pedestal you put a person, at the end of the day they are just like you. You can glorify their actions, opinions and accomplishments, but everyone has self-doubt, insecurities, and weaknesses. Being intimidated is a purely internal and self-fabricated emotion. It only hinders you from acting to your fullest potential: the perfect example of a negative self-fulfilling prophecy. Remember that you’ve probably encountered a lot of people who are intimidated by you in some way or another as well.

5. ** Don’t interrupt people. This is probably the rule I remind myself of the most. How often do you find yourself waiting for your turn to speak instead of listening to another person's point? When I first noticed how often I had an urge to interrupt people, I realized I much I was losing from interactions. Letting other people speak and not constantly waiting your turn is an extremely relieving feeling. It’s insane how much you can learn and understand from someone when you aren't always focused on what you have to say about what they're saying. If you simply listen and let people speak without interrupting, people will absolutely adore you and you’ll find you’ll learn a lot too.

6. When you listen to a song that you love listen to it over and over with all your senses. Try to recognize each instrument, each new track on top of the other, each echo each vibrato and trill. It'll completely change the way you experience music. It’s like reading a great book; you discover something new to fall in love with each time you listen.

7. Every time you start feeling bad about and/or for yourself think about how self-indulgent you’re being. You will fail and you will get rejected, but nobody around you will ever think it as drastic as you do. The more you let yourself wallow, the more flaws you’ll find and the more you’ll get lost in unproductive and self-destructive thoughts. Self-pity is nothing but a waste of time. Especially because it makes you forget everything incredible that surrounds you.

8. Say yes as much as you can. (Unless it's self-destructive or dangerous, then don’t be a dumb ho). I know, this is super cliché, but if you move passed its repetitiveness and actually do it, it's life changing.

9. Be down to try anything once. It'll leave you with an endless amount of stories and experiences to add to your mental scrapbook. Sometimes the experiences will be miserable and embarrassing, but they make for hilarious stories in the long run.

10. Stop being so goddamn judgmental. At the end of the day everyone has a right to the way they think and act. Instead of judging something you don't understand, question it. Try to see where the other person is coming from, what inspires their actions. The only time it's ever right to judge someone is if they're an authoritative and stubborn asshole like Hitler and other shitty people like him.

11. Fighting with your best friends is healthy (unless it’s all the time). I've found that talking to a friend and confronting them about something and genuinely listening to each other attentively leaves you feeling even closer than before. This is true in all types of relationships, not just friendships. Overcoming an obstacle in a relationship ultimately means you’re learning more about each other in a weird way.

12. Do something nice for someone everyday without taking credit for it. People really appreciate the little things and seeing that appreciation feels like reward enough. It's also really great karma.

13. Stop over thinking everything. If you want to do something or go somewhere or meet someone, stop thinking about it and just do it. The more you think about it the more likely you are to convince yourself out of it or get so lost in your thoughts that you're out of time to actually partake in the initial plan.

14. Go somewhere new at least once or twice a month. Be it a new bar, a new cafe, a new restaurant, a new friends apartment, a new street. Just do it.

15. Read at least one article a day. Preferably more than one but sometimes it's not that easy. It doesn't have to be something extremely intellectual and challenging, just something that gets you thinking.

16. Be honest. Be vulnerable. It's not a weakness. In my opinion, it's actually more a sign of bravery and strength than anything else. Obviously, you shouldn’t be vulnerable with everyone, but show that side to the people you're closest to or want to be closer to. Opening yourself up to someone makes him or her feel they can open themselves up to you back. Empathy is the biggest relationship builder.

17. Don't be so afraid to be rejected by someone or something. Think: what's the worst that could happen? The answer is never as life shattering as it is in your head.There are so many people and opportunities in this world and you need to constantly remind yourself that you will never have everything. You’ll also never be able to get everyone to love you no matter how lovable you are and that's okay. If that's so hard to think about, remind yourself of 5 things you’re fortunate to have (like heating and in-door plumbing… or even that delicious sandwich you ate for lunch last week) and 5 incredible people in your life.

18. Never change yourself for someone else or try to change someone else. It honestly never works and won't be worth the effort. You'll find you lose yourself and move 20 steps backwards. If you want to change it should be because you personally want to better yourself and grow, not because you want to impress someone.

19. Take pride in the things you believe in and the people you love. Nobody can tell you you're wrong because beliefs are entirely subjective. The people who matter most to you will appreciate you no matter what weird and creepy shit you’re into.

20. Even the most absurd ideas become completely believable if you're confident enough in your belief of them. People may be cynical but they can also be similarly accepting, especially if you can back your ideas up with your own passionate research and explanation.

21. Stop eating so much grease. Stop eating so much cheese and red meat and other generally oily and unhealthy foods. At least not all the time. These things might be delicious and taste like handcrafted gifts from God but they're really long-term death traps sent by the devil (I say this but I won't lie, I don't believe anything so delicious could be a product of the devil no matter how much it clogs my arteries).

22. Tell your parents you love them everyday in some way or another (even if it's just a heart or a cheeseburger emoji). They really are the most amazing people in the world and regardless of whether they want to or not, they are biologically forced to love you. 

[positive-inking]

Hand-lettered typography by Eddie Fieg using a Malcolm Gladwell quote from Outliers: The Story of Success

www.eddiefieg.com

[fluxandmovement]

self-perception & the digital age

Sahar Saleem

It's a twisted addiction. It's an addiction to control, which is falsely granted to you by configurations of computations and htmls. It pulls at you from both sides and contorts your self conception. It leads to a struggle to find balance between the outside world's perception of you and your perception of yourself. At times, it's completely consuming.

Social media tries to grant its users a chance at an artificial feeling of self controlled self-perception. There's a battle between the way you perceive yourself, how you want to be perceived by others, and how you're actually perceived. In the gap between how you perceive yourself and how you portray yourself lies an undeniable insecurity. The question that arises is why do you want to portray yourself in a way that's different from your natural self?It's a matter of needing to impress people, or trying to overcompensate for a deep rooted insecurity that feels like it will only go away if you have something to brag and write about on your Facebook status for as many likes as you can possibly attain.

In this day and age, people don't just participate in new experiences for the thrill of the moment but rather for the ability to capture it in a snapshot and show the world that they're adventurous and spontaneous -- whether they really are or not is usually quite transparent. In this era of phrases like "pics or it didn't happen" we, as a virtual society, put a heavy pressure on each other to constantly prove ourselves, impress, and one-up one another. But not everyone necessarily falls into this category. It sometimes feels like the people who share the least are the most secure. The ones who feel less like they need to compete for online fame, fortune, and friendship. The oversharers exude a need to overcompensate for an empty void in their self perception.

There are some people who will accept all the followers and friendship requests they receive -- ignoring the fact that most of them are strangers -- because quantity becomes an indicator of popularity and a rich social circle. It means your private thoughts, photos, and information -- well as private as anything on the Internet can get -- are of interest to other people. Online "friendships" are the modern day way of receiving social validation.

You don't feel like you're really friends with someone until you're friends with them on Facebook. Or until you have access to their constant stream of filtered out mind farts on Twitter. It actually feels weird to think of not being Facebook friends with your real life best friends, it's like missing out on memories that you would otherwise be a part of.

These memories are in reference to wallposts, funny BuzzFeed links, and of course, pictures. But a question that always seems to arise is that of whether photographs can really be considered a valid marker of a publicly shared memory. In her book, The Pain of Others, Susan Sontag talks of photographs in public space as a false representation of memory. She brings about issues of public memory and how there is no public or shared memory because memory is completely subjective. A snapshot may represent excitement, friendship, and confidence, but we will never know what really happened in that moment. That, in part, is because in that moment, there are several memories. There is the memory of each person captured in that photograph along with all of those who were present but uncaptured. Pictures are posed for, and shared with the intention of representing a specific trait or friendship or feeling.

But there's a crack in the system.

Since everyone perceives everything in this world with their past experiences and developed schemas in mind, it is impossible for any two people to look at and remember something in the exact same way. This is precisely the idea that Sontag alludes to. "All memory is individual, irreproducible - it dies with each person." She explains it quite morbidly, but it really illustrates how complex the concept of memory is.

What is even more complex is why we feel this constant need to capture everything on camera, when we know that nobody will look at it the way we do. I guess the complexity of that statement is that not everybody realizes the depth of subjectivity. We pose, we stalk, we feel jealous and competitive to get a better job, to live a better life, to go to cooler parties, to have more friends; but these are flawed urges. It's okay to want to do these things, but it shouldn't be for the sole purpose of making a point or impressing others in the virtual cybersphere. We talk about social media's creation of the celebrity effect. We see the same people on our Facebook newsfeeds, we judge them by their overwhelming amount of likes on pictures and posts, we put them on pedestals because they are achieving this virtual fame that makes them somehow better than us. But we forget that at the end of the day, we are all the same.

We all have ordinary lives -- well, maybe some not so ordinary. But each and every person is conscious of their self-perception no matter how much he or she may deny it. It's simply a part of human nature to think about the way you perceive yourself versus the way other people perceive you. The difference is who you really care about perceiving you the way you want to be perceived. It's important to realize that those who matter most in our lives perceive us in the best light possible. This perception may not be exactly the same as our self-perception -- in fact, it most likely isn't. But what I'm getting at is that it doesn't matter. The essential message is that no matter how the outside world looks at you and judges your life, trying to change for the external realm will only make you miserable. It's a matter of accepting your life and yourself as is. Of course, intentions and efforts to better ourselves are always encouraged and admired. But these intentions and efforts should be a result of what we want for ourselves and our self-development, not what we want for others.

It's important to realize the subjectivity in life, memory, and human perception when it comes to living in the digital world that we inhabit. Without realizing this inherent and ubiquitous concept, we can lose ourselves in a world of artificial control. As we become more connected to each other through wires and networks, it is pertinent to keep in mind that the virtual world should not dictate our actions in the real world. Rather, our Facebook profiles and tweets should be a balanced reflection of the things we genuinely value most in our lives. The things we do should bring ourselves a sense of personal happiness before they are publicized and put on platforms for judgment and attention. And if they never make it to that platform, we should be okay with keeping that sense of accomplishment to ourselves.

[fluxandmovement]

"'The secret of this kind of climbing,' said Japhy, 'is like Zen. Don't think. Just dance along. It's the easiest thing in the world, actually easier than walking on flat ground which is monotonous. The cute little problems present themselves at each step and yet you never hesitate and you find yourself on some other boulder you picked out for no special reason at all, just like Zen.' Which it was... Jumping from boulder to boulder and never falling, with a heavy pack, is easier than it sounds; you just can't fall when you get into the rhythm of the dance."

- The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

Our mind creates obstacles where obstacles are not necessarily present. It's an abstract concept we convince ourselves of -- a concept that ends up preventing us from engaging in actions that we are fully capable of (some may call it a mental block.) We link these "obstacles" with a concept of struggle -- making simple acts feel impossible -- when in reality our minds can work ourselves around any pre-existing perception of a difficult task. 

[fluxandmovement]

an endless search for an absolute meaning of life, when we know there is no absolute meaning

Sahar Saleem

It makes sense for so many different aspects of life.

It makes sense that nothing in life really makes sense. That it's an amalgam. And we interpret and we analyze and we fear so many things that we inherently know we have no control over. 

For us, a means of control is acquired by the act of justification. Giving reason to something automatically makes us feel like it all makes sense. But it doesn't. There are too many external powers and forces in our lives that prevent us from fully understanding the profundity of our existence. You can ask why about anything, but it's impossible to develop a concrete answer.

But why is so much of our lives spent asking why? What is it that makes us care so much? Why is it that understanding and questioning is such a prominent characteristic of human nature?

These questions ultimately have no solid answer.

A means of release, letting go, sun setting, at the brink of exploding. Bright orange, beaming, slowly falling and sucking the light away, setting under the horizon, under the buildings, under the world.

The underworld.

Something thought of as hot, as evil, as fire, but it probably has its own beauty. Everything has its beauty. That's what makes the evil so tempting -- because it is so unnaturally beautiful.

Irresistible.

Addicting.

What, around us, isn't covered in that? What isn't associated with evil? With religious sin? Even the purest of things holds it. Holds inevitable temptation.

To love, to swim, to befriend, to be free, to assimilate, to adapt and mold, to have a dog, to respect the wrong people.

Cobblestones, garbage, wooden benches, the wood on my shoes, the universality of the world. Waves beating, buoys.

Solemn, sober, and real.

[fluxandmovement]

There is something magical that happens to the human spirit, a sense of calm that comes over you, when you cease needing all the attention directed toward yourself and instead allow others to have the glory.

Richard Carlson

[timpoot-blog]

[fluxandmovement]

the real progression of perspective...

[fluxandmovement]

unstoppable progression

               "If you don't let us dream, we won't let you sleep."

[fluxandmovement]

selfish || selfless :: the woes of human nature

Sahar Saleem

It’s hard for me to believe that people aren’t genuine.

To believe that people you feel so close to aren’t exactly as genuine and real and selfless as you always felt they were and were to them. I guess it is a part of human nature to be selfish and that selflessness is not completely attainable, but it’s the effort that goes into being selfless that sometimes gets noticed. But that effort seems almost impossible to find. I don’t know if it’s just something I think of or if it’s on the minds of everyone. I am from nowhere selfless, or even close, really. But I can only try my best to someday get to a point close to those who are. I admire those who genuinely are selfless and make it seem like every intention is one with an inherent sense of selflessness and I wish I could become that.

I wish that I wasn’t the main thing on my own mind.

But then I think that trying to be selfless pulls me back a step. To a certain extent, it’s seen as a drawback, a weakness. Because everybody in this world is selfish and the selflessness of others is used by those who see that as a weakness.

How do you acquire both into a single personality with a natural and respected balance? How does one become a selfless person without letting others walk all over him?

For one, he must believe in the inherent goodness of mankind. But that can oftentimes come off as naïve. Because while I do believe that there is an inherent goodness, it doesn’t play out in a lot of situations. It might play out in certain instances, where politics and the corporate world are a mere game like the Sims. But that world doesn’t really exist today. This is Darwin’s world. Survival of the fittest, every man for himself.

The selfless are the weak. They are no longer the respected, but rather the pushovers, the ones who get walked on, the ones without the backbone. They’re kindness is not looked at as a positive trait. They're too nice. The world wasn’t made to help them thrive and survive.

[fluxandmovement]

Don't observe yourself too closely. Don't be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen. Otherwise it will be too easy for you to look with blame (that is: morally) at your past, which naturally has a share in everything that now meets you.

Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters To A Young Poet

[fluxandmovement]

word play: lift

Sahar Saleem

Lift off, lift up

The lift is an elevator or a verb to go up to pick up to lift off the ground to launch a rocketship, to lift up off the floor to fly away to end up somewhere you never thought you'd initially be. New, unexplored territory, new world, old world, different world. Unbearable, unimaginable. 

Imagination, playing with the mind, with dreams, convoluted dreams, flutter.

Shadows of dreams of the darkness of sleep in the night, but what about naps? Sleep in the daytime, are there shadows there? Yes, the shadows of eyelids, closed, darkness on irises, shadows, are dreams merely colorless shadows being projected on the insides of eyelids as screens.

Watching shadows, interact, dance, mingle, everything but stiff, anything but scary. So real, but completely imaginary. Not real.

Fantasy, magic, fighting reality, mind lifts. Imagination dancing, mingling with the shadows, creating those shadows. Lifting, closing, putting down, dropping, falling asleep, waking up.

Lifting up, lifting off.