rose marshack : whyamistillawake.com

Title: The Hybrid and The Phone Chakra
Byline: Rose Marshack
WordCount: 739

I thought I left my cellphone at work, and I knew the battery was dying. I scolded myself for being so disorganized; it all started with the Smart Key for the Hybrid Car. The Smart Key doesn’t have to be inserted into the Car in order for it to open or drive. It only has to be in the Vicinity of the Car.

So think about how incredibly convenient this is; and especially if you know that the Hybrid Car only has an On/Off button, no key necessary, no ignition. Anyone can press the On/Off button to start the car. And, it is so incredibly satisfying to power down your car after the trip down the block to the corner store!

The Toddler especially notices the convenience; it is much easier for him to start the car and attempt to drive it to the Ice Cream Place or The Library, his favorite places. He is pretty good with On/Off switches and having keys In A Vicinity.

So since I don’t have to ever touch my key, I forget about where it is. Once I forget where one thing is, I try to trade that area in my mind with forgetting something else so I can get back the original forgot, but it never works.

So I thought about my cellphone and how it was at work all night, probably beeping that sad dying Tamagotchi (electronic pet that you have to “feed” by pressing buttons) noise, and how leaving it probably meant that I wished I was still at work. I have this problem where I assign human emotions to inanimate objects. I had to tell myself that I was silly for thinking my cellphone was crying. I do remember when my Tamagotchi died though; I was in Dallas TX and I was very sick and we were on tour and it was morning and the little electronic octave whined for food but I just needed to sleep just a little bit longer… I was so sick. And when I woke up there was a little 8-bit angel flying on the 32×32 pixel screen. I looked at the pre-Husband and I started bawling my guts out. I was only 33 and I had killed my Tamagotchi.

I wake up the next morning (we’re back to the present now) and I’m driving the car to work. And I hear a muffled little 8th. My cellphone is nowhere on my body but I can hear its last dying beeps, and they are REAL, BEEP-beep. The phone has to be somewhere in back of the Hybrid. BEEP-beep. Now the beeps sound so close and so muffled and so real that I am sure they are emanating from my lower abdomen. My OWN BODY! Now, I have nothing else to think so I think “Uh-oh: Chakra!” This definitely seems like a New Age Thing, the phone beep emanation from the lumbar plexus. I looked up Chakras in my internet, and the dotted human picture says that the my lower abdomen houses the Orange (or Spleen) Chakra. In this day and age, I decide, this probably means that the Orange Chakra maybe should be renamed the Cellphone Chakra. My internet says this part of my body is associated with gonads, reproduction, and especially, ‘parts of the consciousness that is concerned with food and sex. It is about the body’s communication to the Being inside about what the body wants and needs, and what it finds pleasurable.’ This seems accurate to me because I always use my cellphone to dial for pizza and also for The Husband.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this part of my body and how it’s been getting bigger. The day of the Missing Phone, I saw a magazine in the Supermarket which informed me that if my stomach was getting bigger, I could look at the shape of the new augmentation and find out which of my glands was at fault. According to this magazine, since my lower abdomen is getting rounder and flabbier, it is because my Fight or Flight System is overactivated. My body is storing fat there to protect me from being Killed In The Jungle because my mind is in a permanent state of Hectic Rush; pumping adrenaline. The magazine told me to relax and stop eating so much and eat more limes.

I wonder what the other Chakras could be remapped to.

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Today was the opening of the Faculty Art Exhibition, and I was in charge of the band! I booked Water Between Continents, Brian Reedy and Nick Rudd’s band - I thought they would be perfect for this type of event and they were. People stood and stared at them and loved them. They’re just a guitarist and a drummer (”just”) but they are fantastic and very intense and fun to watch. They play repeated riffs over and over again. And I used to play with them. I wish I still did. I wanted to jump in and play bass so badly today.

The only weird thing was that I had forgotten that they don’t like to play so quietly. Nick is a guitarist, and the one rule about guitarists is that they won’t play quietly. But he did and it was a perfect volume for people. From now on when I book bands though I am going to make sure I watch out for the Loud Guitar Factor.

The Director of the Museum seems to want me to play - and finally Rick seems to have slightly hinted that for the MFA show… maybe Salaryman could play.

Just figuring out the logistics of this coming show, however, is a nightmare. Gram has to be babysat that night, and also during all our 6 practices that we will have. Although his favorite band is Salaryman… maybe we could get away with giving him a keyboard and he can practice with us. For 6 hours. Or not.

I spent literally all day updating the kiosk in front of the CANVAS - this is the thing that controls what applications will show on it. And I got one of the faculty members, Christiane Martens work up on CANVAS and she was SO happy! It has taken her literally a YEAR of plugging away at me and others at the Beckman but she got this sculpture that she made that’s in Japan INTO my VR Cave (the CANVAS; http://www.canvas.uiuc.edu.) She actually had blueprints for the sculpture and gave it to a guy named Alex at the Beckman and he recreated it in VRML and I was able to use a VRMLviewer that runs in the CANVAS and it WORKED.

So I think I’m so happy because today I feel like I was actually DOING my job. The scariest parts of my job are the Finding Of New Art. Right now I need to do more research and also more delegating. There are people on campus who know New Art. I can ask them to help.

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I’m currently struggling with

1) Cleaning my house (ongoing for years) - too much clutter. What does it mean? I am too attached to weird stupid things, like these little ribbons I bought in Lhasa 5 years ago. I should stuff them in a drawer. Also, shirts that I have only worn for an hour. Stuff that I need to put in my closet except that I cannot put it there because Gram’s asleep in his room, where my closet is. Maybe we do need a bigger house? No. Less stuff. (Problem: Attachment)

2) Trying to do less. Simplifying. I tend to gravitate towards things that are much easier (and more fun) for me to do at work. Then I tend to spend a lot of time with them. (Problem: Fear)

3) Eating less. I am eating too much and I’m going to get fat if I keep it up. Being fat will make me not as happy, and not as healthy. But before I eat that cookie or ice-cream sundae I tell myself “I deserve this.” What the hell does that mean? I deserve to be unhealthy? (Problem: Attachment, and possibly, stupidity)

4) Breathing. I am not breathing correctly all the time, and am not mindful of the breath. I also notice that I am tense a lot of the time. Solution: be more mindful, of course! Duh.

I think this is a good start. There’s tons of stuff, but these four things are good to work on.
I love the mid-year New Year’s Resolutions.

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This has been a very rich day. Lots of things to think about and good to practice having the right attitude about things. I just wrote a Hub article about how it might be nice to instead of trying to use all your brain, only use something like 3%.

Uh Oh. Another “Pep Talk”
Tonight, instead of doing a ton of work for the museum (I have all these pet projects that I could be spending more time on; not really necessary but just trying to make things BETTER) I took gram to the Dojang with his dobok (uniform) on - yes, he has a uniform now and he looks so cute in it, and he loves it; he knows how to bow and everything. I had a meeting with KJN (head instructor) and Ms. Hoddeson, whom I teach Tae Kwon Do with at the Urbana Park District.

Anyway the meeting was about the Martial Arts Festival, which I had the bright idea of volunteering to run. And then the other bright idea of asking the Director of the Krannert Art Museum, WHERE I WORK, if we can have the Martial Arts Fesetival there! The Champaign-Urbana Martial Arts Festival has normally been at the HMD Academy in Savoy Dojang, open to the public, but people don’t know about it. I thought to open it up and have it at a neutral place would be awesome, plus would have both “Town” and “Gown” interested in the event, which is something that the Director says she wants; she believes that the museum can be a place that has events that interest both the general non-academic public and the scholars. This event will do that.

Anyway, tonight at our meeting, KJN pretty much decided he was going to take control of the event and gave me what I call a “pep talk” which consists of being mean and yelling and not listening to anything I am saying. Ms. Hoddeson was pretty horrified. He even insulted my character, which he apologized for later. My biggest problem was he was telling me to tell the other martial artists some RULES for the festival, and I had told them already (under his directive) that the group will make the rules together. Anyway he totally relented and even apologized for insulting my character, so really I couldn’t be mad.

I drove home and tried to be angry at him, but just ended up feeling sorry for myself and sulking a bit. He is so much like a god to me, which is strange, because he’s very imperfect and has said terrible things in the past. But he has also said so many amazing things and has such a great program, I guess that’s why I worship him so much. And I also worship him because he can say this kind of crap to me, and then make me feel horrible, and then I have to be strong and get over it. Lose my ego, and ignore his.

The Silver Coat

The other Boss thing that happened that made me think a lot was silly; I have this beautiful Silver Coat that cost more than I usually spend on clothes, and it was finally cold enough this morning to wear it to work. Then my boss came in and said, “Don’t feel badly if you see me wearing this same coat sometimes; I own it too! I don’t want you to feel like I went out and bought it after seeing you in it!” I thought that was so cute, but then I started feeling really weird, because my boss dresses so beautifully, she’s like a work of art. It’s an honor to own something that she owns too! But then I don’t want her to think I spend this much money on clothes, or to feel like she’s paying me too much!

So I thought about what to say for a long time. Should I tell her about all the royalties our band gets from the 13 records we made? How do I tell her that, so that it immediately triggers the thought in her mind, “Oh, thank goodness, I’m not paying Rose too much. She bought the Silver Coat from Junior Citizen royalties.”

How about Tae Kwon do? I make money from teaching that too. And from some other freelancing jobs. I think I do way too much stuff. And probably do own too much clothes.

VTS Redux

Last but not least, I got to see VTS (Visual Thinking Strategies) in action again today. I actually have never seen it happen in person, in fact. This is the ‘art education’ system where you as a facilitator can ask only 3 questions; 1) What is going on in this picture? 2) What makes you say that, and 3) What else can we find? The beauty of this system is that it enables anyone to engage with a painting; not just someone who knows the background, context, history of the painting. I LOVE this system, because it empowers people, levels a student population, and forces people to ground their observations in language and proof. “What do we see in this painting?” “I see a mommy who just yelled at her daughter.” “What makes you say that?” You have to think and then articulate why you made up this story.

A lady at the museum gave this talk and then the New Director Of Education, who is an absolute Gem, gave more speech; the VTS instruction was for a group of Rhetoric Teaching Assistants who had the collective personality of one of the new bricks in our sidewalk, and Anne tried to get them to talk about how they could apply this technique to their teaching. No one bit. I wanted to give everyone the answers, but I thought maybe as a museum employee, I shouldn’t be allowed to enter the contest. So I sat and listened.

There was one instance that I really loved. One of the students being VTS-ed said, “I believe that castle back there was Belgian, perhaps mid-17th century.” The facilitator replied, “So you are trying to figure out the architecture of what you see in the painting; to place it in some way.” You’re not supposed to tell anyone any answers, you’re just supposed to get them to talk and then re-phrase what they said. It’s so damn cool. http://www.vue.org has tons of info on this.

And that’s my review of the day. I am sure I missed something. Tomorrow is going to be hell; I need to be at the Union to load in about 300 pounds of computer equipment - and there will be no parking within 10 miles of where the load-in occurs. Just like playing at a college.

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OK, I’m about to start the Blog again. Things sure have changed since I started blogging in 1996 (http://www.posterchildren.com). It’s been hard to start up again, just because I’m doing all this writing outreach (in The Hub, a local free paper) all over the place… but then I have all these private things I want to say that will probably offend the hell out of people, so I certainly can’t say them In Public! I’ll have to save them for this blog, on the World Wide Web! So Stay tuned. I promise I’ll start this week!

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