Skiing and Flying

I think that someone once described skiing to me as the closest someone can come to flying. I certainly can understand the sentiment, the speed and the rushing through the air gives it a flying sensation. However I think that I am more aware of the ground when I am skiing than I ever am. Your success or failure as a skier is entirely based upon your ability to read and react to the mountain.

There are two basic types of skiing: times when you are owning the mountain, and times when the mountain is owning you. The trick to skiing well is to make the mountain do the work for you. there is no question when you're skiing well, the bumps pop you knees up and turn your legs for you. When you're skiing poorly you hit the troughs hard and you can't keep your edges on the mountain.

Either way you are acutely aware of your feet and their interaction with the ground. My first run of the season cruising down Redtail at Beaver Creek (map), I remembered just how fast skiing is and consequently how scary it can be. Of course after the first run that's why you ski to go fast and do exciting things!

Walking Through a Cloud

If we suspend our disbelief for just a moment, and forget the physical impossibilities of walking on a cloud, it still does not appear to be a very pleasant experience. I'm fairly certain that I have no interest in walking on a cloud, as I imagine the experience would be rife with windy dangers, not to mention cold and clammy.

I bring this up merely because yesterday was a day that we lived in a cloud. The miraculous four inches of snow that appeared during the super bowl disappeared in a cool haze of drizzle. The air was so thick that you felt the particles enter your nose and begrudgingly make their way down to your lungs, where they settled.

Mia said that it was the sort of day that you see in the movies. Everything was dramatic and mysterious due to the weather. It was, it certainly was not the tormented sky that Duff loves, but it was not without its own allure. The sky was very hidden or very close, depending just how you're interested in defining "sky".

Weather is one of those things that we not only can not control, but we still can only somewhat predict. It is frustratingly more like an art than a science. I think I like it that way; defying our attempts to control it. We have made these attempts as counter-intuitive as it may seem. Ski resorts have machines that expel dust into clouds to promote the formation of snow flakes, but ultimately nature can not be contro0led or contained in this way.

None of nature can be contained for long. I read a very interesting book over the summer: The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. It described step by step and piece by piece what would happen to the earth if humans simply and suddenly disappeared. Nature has this incredible and persistent way of erasing the things that we do to it.

This of course should be in no way taken as a promotion of us doing whatever the heck we want to the earth. The earth will fix itself, but only in the presence of much time and the absence of humans.

Two interesting facts that I will share with you from this book, though there are many and it's an easy read so I recommend it.
One: one of the most harmful things that we are putting in the environment right now are tiny plastic pellets that are the base of plastics. They are what are melted down and formed into things, but first they are tiny pellets. They are too small to be filtered out of water but too big to get out of fishies systems. They are mixed in with the sand on beaches as well as in animals bellies.
Two: There is a giant gyre in the Pacific ocean where all of the currents converge (the North Pacific Gyre to be precise). There you can find miles and miles of ocean that our trash floats to and stays. Miles and miles of trash all on the surface and presumably under the surface of the Pacific ocean. What a sight that must be to see.

Harry Potter

I find myself facing a dilemma:
I like to read the Harry Potter books fairly slowly enjoying them.
However I fear someone telling me what happens.
Now I don't fear someone I know telling me because I can summarily kick their inconsiderate butt, but rather I'm concerned about the chance encounter. The trouble is that everyone and their mother reads this book. (literally)
So I fear walking down the street and overhearing someone talking about it with a friend.
So do I just read it fast negating this possibility? or do I read it at a tempo which brings me joy?
(note: fast would be reading it all in the next two days, slow would be giving myself a week to read it)
Anyhow happy reading everyone...
except Ted, I know you hate the series, for reasons that probably aren't as sound as you think they are. (I don't know why I'm addressing him personally I don't think he reads this)

movies and music

I was recently discussing with a friend of mine, my dislike in general of re-watching movies. I don't hate it, but in general, I've seen it once and I have a really good memory for conversation in real life and this tends to extend to movies. Duff once argued that I therefore watch movies only for plot and not for the other aesthetic values, which may be true. But I definitely prefer a beautiful movie to a bland one. I also like thinking about why and how film has been done a certain may. However what really sells me on a movie is pithy dialog and fantastic acting. So I'm pretty sure that I would watch Philadelphia Story again.

However I was discussing this with my buddy C. and he pointed out that I listen to music more than once, even though I "know what it sounds like" and I even visit the Art Institute and I do "visit" certain favorite paintings (see above).

So I re-visit the aural and the visual, the temporal and the static, what could it be about movies that I really don't like re-watching them? I think that it really has to do with the conversation aspect. I watch human interaction fairly intensely and it seems false if I see it in the exact same way twice. Because even if we feel the same exact emotion twice, we do not express in the exact same way twice.

However in re-watching a film this is patently unavoidable.

It's sort of like how I get a real kick out of the fact that there are certain stories that I've heard people tell over and over. Most people never tell them the same way twice, however once and a while you'll meet someone who tells a story the exact same way every time they tell it. Same words and everything. I really enjoy that. I remember people's words fairly well and it's really interesting when I hear them re-use them.

uncertainty in art

I went to this artist chat thing at the last second with some folks. It was actually a very interesting conversation about this Juan Chavez's art and his conception of found art and public domain. It made me think which is ultimately the goals of these things. What I took away from him was the joy of discovery: whether it be in the finding of materials, finding of art (by the viewer in a public place) or the discovery of some interesting detail in a piece in a gallery. Some people got caught up in some ideas that I thought that he had covered adequately, in fact this one girl asked what I saw as the same question four times, M had to fight the giggles at that one and the artist shared an eye role with us. The project we were looking at was a giant "speaker" in which some band had performed...pretty neat! I wanted to ask him if he had any conception about what nature of music ought to be performed in there as there are certain composers who wrote (write) music in the manner in which he created art. but the opportunity never arose.

his whole thing was uncertainty in the final product. How will a space influence the end result, how does time (and the fact that he did some of these things illegally) influence the end result. There is certainly music like this. Chance operations and uncertainty. I'll write about it when I'm actually thinking....