#jbobrow

[ml-aware]

Walking on beautiful clean ice in Slovakian Mountains

Talk about stillness. At the 22 second mark, I felt as though I was experiencing something completely surreal. 

[ml-aware]

Native

Eating a 1620s reenacted Thanksgiving feast with pilgrims at Plymouth Plantation, not a single mention of the natives which were critical to their survival and whose history they re-wrote. Later talking to locals, there are plans to shed light on that side of the story as the 400 anniversary approaches.

[ml-aware]

Resonant

Weeks after the Dalai Lama visit, one element has stuck with me. As Tod Machover lead the auditorium in a single note for minutes. Everyone was asked to participate and the auditorium filled with sound. I noticed that when I participated, the sound felt an order of magnitude more full than when I simply listened. While there is surely a technical explanation for the resonance in my head, there is also an element of how the experience changes when I was part of the experience vs. simply observing. One could draw a parallel to group vs individual meditation.

[ml-aware]

Drumkit

Tonight I watched a band consisting of 3 drummers + drumkits and as I sat behind the stage, I could only hear the dampened beating of their sticks on the drumpads. I then moved to join the rest of the audience in front of the speakers and  heard the products of their digital instruments. I noticed that I value the connection of source and sound, something the drumkits initially seemed to be denying me.

[ml-aware]

Meditation | Center of Mass

Today during a guided session for meditation, I spent the most amount of time I have spent yet in a single sitting. The 50 minutes were well spent as I needed a break and had been failing to keep up with my meditation for the earlier half of the week. Allowing my mind to let go of many of the tasks, projects, ideas for a few moments is not as easy as I would hope, and so I found a few things quite helpful today.

Listening to Gathas is very helpful. Specifically, one from Thich Nhat Hanh's Being Peace was simple and easy to pick up. Keeping the thinking mind busy so the observational mind could go to work. Metta meditation, repeating certain phrases served the same purpose.

Walking meditation. While walking, I decided to start saying to myself "I am my foot," "I am my knee," and so on to help myself observe these parts more closely, As I realized I had trouble walking with great balance during this process, I switched to saying "I am my center of mass." At that moment, I felt as though I embodied my center of mass and felt very balanced as I took step after step. When normally walking or running, our bodies are so in control of these aspects by muscle memory, it was a very different experience looking from this new perspective.   

[ml-aware]

Lumber

It seems so contradictory at first to feel so connected to the earth eating an apple one day and then go shopping for cut wood the next, but this is where my work brought me, and it was quite an experience. Today I visited Boulter Plywood, a source of many types of wood with all of the cuts you can read about online (which I did). What caught me off guard was that when I am in a Home Depot or any other large chain, I never feel like the wood in front of me is actually from a tree. Just like fast food, it seems like it resembles something a tree might have, but that there is no way it is actually a tree.

As I walked into the lumber shop and was shown downstairs to their basements full of all types of lumber, I paused because something was different. The smell was unique, a little too fresh. The wood seemed almost damp to the touch, as though it had just been cut down. Every piece looked as though it was freshly filleted from a tree, like an open fish in a fish market. The lumber brought me back to the apple field, which brought me back to feeling genuine with my connection.

Being aware of this connection to objects and their origins seems important, especially in an age of "connectedness."

[ml-aware]

Apple Picking

This past Sunday I visited an orchard in Harvard, MA with my girlfriend. We spent the day enjoying what fall brings best on the North East, beautiful changes in leaves and fruit that just doesn't taste the same anywhere else. What I couldn't get out of my head for the past day is just how unique of a situation it is to climb into a tree and feed yourself by picking its fruit.

On a day to day basis, I make sure I am nourished, but it is rare that I truly think of the origins of my food, or the cradle to cradle process with which the food goes through. Here I was, face to face with what is usually an apple, but today, it was not an apple, it was part of the tree. I could see how it was growing, and that this was merely an extension of the tree, bulbous, stretched tight, and destined to fall. The texture of my first bite was different than other apples I have had before, I could only think about how I was eating what was just part of this tree. I felt incredibly connected to the earth, simply by ingesting what was so clearly grown in front of me. I can only imagine that this feeling was quite common for Native Americans, or really anyone back in the day.

This sense of connectedness, not to each other specifically, but to the earth itself is something that feels missing from modern day culture. It often feels like we are in a world abstracted from the basic components that we are composed of. I see this same trend with technology as an ecosystem, and how there are movements to be more transparent with technology, just as there are movements for slow food.

Much of my meditation took place behind the wheel of a car, or walking through fields, where I actually felt my mind slip away this weekend. Work seemed to stay in its place, and I cleared my head to enjoy what I would like to enjoy more, the present. 

[ml-aware]

Joy of teaching

While teaching a fellow classmate to play Table Tennis, I realized just how much joy I derive from teaching. The process of being in a realtime feedback loop provides so many learning experiences.