#59: of the transformation of public space

I've always been a fan of Geocaching, the GPS game in which you find treasures in your environment hidden by other players. Not only is there a melding of virtual and real world applications, but the game is totally created by other players. Caches are hidden and pinpointed by other people in the area, and in the way they tell the story of the cache the hider can tell a story that in which you may become immersed. Obvious analogies in storytelling are pirates treasure, and hidden powers group caches into themes; I've seen caches based on the solar system, greek gods, dedications to community players and caches designed to clean a certain area (Cache in, Trash out).

In all of these examples there is a sense that this is something hidden for you, the player, and should be a secret seldom told. People who don't play the game but who may see you hiding or finding caches are called Muggles. The implication becomes: you are playing in a world of secrets.

I've wanted to create something in this vein for a while, and I've got several ideas.

From my background in Alternate Reality Gaming I've learned how to take a virtual world and tell a story that directly involves the players through emails and instant messages. In the past I've created a Zombie ARG played by at least 50 Corps members in Iowa, I've been involved heavily in PerplexCity (one of the most successfully marketed ARGs) and I continue to tell stories. But I'm looking for something a little closer to home.

The transformative property doesn't have to depend on fiction or even secrets. Our landscape can be transformed in an instant by a new billboard, a new restaurant, a swath of graffiti... These marks don't hide behind "puppets" as they are called in ARG universes; anyone can interact with them. This transformation in the graffiti realm is seen by some to transform a dull landscape into a picture, and not just one for putting your own name, but a reflection of environment. I summon UK artist Banksy in these times. In his book Wall and Piece Banksy writes, "The people who truly deface our neighbourhoods are the companies that scrawl giant slogans across buildings and buses trying to make us feel inadequate unless we buy their stuff. They expect to be able to shout their message in your face from every available surface but you're never allowed to answer back. Well, they started the fight and the wall is the weapon of choice to hit them back." He expounds later, "Any advertisement in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It belongs to you. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head." Banksy is a little harsh, but he stops too soon.

The message is not only scrawled across the walls of our cities, it is our cities. The walls Banksy livens up stand around a structure built on a land that is concrete in your world. In many of our worlds these structures offend us when there could be something beautiful underneath. If we put all the Mcdonalds of the world on the same lot how many forests or parks could we push into our downtown areas? We have leveled and paved our world, we live in a land of concrete, and in this fact we find our voice.

This flat world is perfect for parking. Our surfaces are laid into blocks like those of a chess board, equally divided standardized areas across the United States, and they belong to us. We shop in the stores that border our playing field and keep them in business - they are ours by right. With the right tools, these areas can transform into something more than a place to keep our cars while we shop. They can be our game board.

Tools: Chalk, Dodgeball, Hackey Sacks, traffic cones

These are not destructive. These do not leave a permanent mark. With these tools and enough people a dark parking lot can turn into something much more. It is our common ground, our market place; I say this with the Ancient Greeks in mind. And the day after we have left our mark till the next rain, crosses on the ground, symbols that mean nothing to those who don't care and everything to those that do. We have transformed our parking lots into a happier place, and will be happier for it.

When I explained this idea in the past it was met with the question, "Sounds fun, but to what end?" With no absolute goal in mind I ask to what end should we have fun and how do we take a place and change it? What is your parking lot game?

a variation of TRUE events:

I have a desire to start new projects every day, but there's only one I need to continue. A cookbook, a good one, doesn't just tell you how to make dessert or exercise interesting language or talk about games, but all that and more that wouldn't fit anywhere else. My resolution is to cook it up more than I did last year. so here we go, a cookbook within the book; this post brought to you by the letter "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!?"

One roughly axed fence post creaks in its support, hard frost wets the joint of splintered wood.
It draws the attention of two horses, Misty and Buttercup, both young, rebellious and cold.
Three common traits, but in combination... what dangers await their unexciting captive youth?
The fence cracks under both pairs of hooves, the report echoes off houses on all sides.
Near the middle of nine houses a boy paints in a canvas of snow with his gloved hand; reveals a zeppelin in empty gullies of snow.
At his age it is strange he knows the aerodynamic design of the zeppelin in such detail.
Seven mothers stand as spiritual centuries on front stoops at all sides of the horse field as though to contend the beasts to stay behind the broken fence.
A new world peaks through the hole in the fence - eight points of the wooden cell fall out of sync.
Misty and Buttercup jump one intact fence rail and pass nine cars before turning toward the strip mall.
The startled vicar releases prayer hymnals, but dilating pictures fly from ten wet leather covers; moist vaginas full of tongues fly under wind and snow.
When the melting begins in the spring, eleven children will find the pictures and will be children no more.
At the intersection drivers do not notice the greens yellows and reds, but two sharp-eyed horses chased by their distraught caretaker.
The strip mall bakery is overtaken by Misty and Buttercup - they use their hooves to smash open cases of breads and sweets, but it is only the escaping aroma they are after.
Fourteen blocks away the fire trucks escape the hall through an opening mouth.
In fifteen minutes there will be chaos.
Misty and Buttercup prance around the parking lot just as their sixteen-year-old caretaker reaches the row of shocked storefronts.
Sedans are stomped, SUVs bumped, the loosed animals create a chorus of seventeen car alarms and dance in equine rhythms.
Eighteen men surround the animals with only their gloved hands to protect themselves.
Nineteen seconds of thrashing brings the horses under control.

As twenty minds recount the day in electric whispers, two horses still feel free and one new fence post moans.

#56: of the Christmas Spirit

The Earth orbits a star and turns slowly in the darkness. Starlight warms its face, and the tiny things crawling on the Earth's surface stretch themselves out in the sand and grassy surfaces to drink from a ball of fire. Great masses in space move in accordance with each other -- We move away from the Sun, the Earth rocks on its sleepy axis, warmth spreads Southward.

We the tiniest of beings compared to a star make light of our own in the darkness - we drape the light across our door frames, in our windows, over our trees and inside our pumpkins. We create our Holidays, every one of us insignificant things makes our own celebration inside the scope of these Holiday seasons. We make tradition that keeps us warm under three layers of fuzzy cloth. We make the moves that others make, we hang bows and ornaments and allow ourselves to fall into the spirit until it happens naturally with age when the season rises inside us without needing to confirm the calendar. We believe.

Halloween is easy for me, because I creep all year long. But in the cool dead wind of Halloween I get to watch from the inside as more creeps pop out of the woodwork. I let a certain spirit take over, consume me, so I can really get the best out of it. I scare children (accidentally at first), I make them cry (never on purpose), I think about mortality and I'm sure it thinks about me too. I notice how much older I am. Halloween passes. My emotional energy reflects the tan of a wet after-Halloween autumn.

Thanksgiving I'm so glad to just eat and relax. I can feel the residual Catholicism start bubbling up in my stomach and behind my heart like I should be doing something more than napping away a turkey hangover. Soon the religious weight will rest fully on my shoulders. Christmas approaches. Bright lights are turned on to dispel the gloom in the weather. The wetness everywhere scatters light cast off by decorations creating a world in starburst neon '50s bulbs and twinkling white icicle lights.

By three weeks before Christmas I am excited to go to church, excited though not exactly ready this week. I want it to be Christmas so I can attend candlelit midnight mass with my family. Like many a la carte Catholics I can absorb so much spiritual energy in the winter months I don't have to go again till Easter. It is some angelic force that wants me to believe in something when my window frosts over, and I am receptive to this force. I want to believe in people with bird wings, and fat children who fly with white sparkly wings strapped to their shoulder blades. I know other people feel the spirit too. But it's a different spirit, a mean one.

They show it on their front lawns in the form of huge Christmas light covered crosses. Signs underneath read: "Keep Christ in Christmas," angled toward the street corner so it defies the laws of mathematics and is readable from three hundred and sixty degrees. This is not the same spirit I feel, in fact the cherubs in my mind scatter at the first sign of this concrete religious fact-on-front-lawn. This is the spirit I reject; this is the spirit that offends me. It's a matter of fact foot in the ground that this is real, and it makes me wonder.

Last night I attended "a Holiday Extravaganza!" which turned into something other than Holiday and a little more forced than I feel Extravaganzas should be. It was in truth a very nice show.

Some songs were sung by children, and while our host chuckled, "there's nothing better than children singing at Christmas," I was not given the forum to answer or disagree. One song in particular about Santa being on a diet was fairly secular and I could agree that yes, Santa is fat and yes, he is lugging hand weights around. Another sung by the Fisk Jubilee singers was religious but not oppressive "Go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is born." It is historical to a story, it is true. Another described a star in the sky, and on one occasion a country musician forgot half of the chorus of Jesus' birth story. I saw it fitting that after telling us that Jesus is the reason for the season, he forgot the reason.

The same man asked us to join him singing Silent Night and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, and cupped his hand to his ear as the audience half-way retreated to silent protest. Some sang along cheerfully. Many looked uncomfortable. A few seated close to me mouthed the words as if to sing, though no sound issued from their false lips. We knew the words, they were printed in our brochures just in case we had forgotten, though we could not be encouraged to sing them together. The tunes were not difficult, though the competing voices of the children's choir, Fisk Jubillee singers, Jazz band, three solo performers, and orchestra might have cloaked the silence drawn from the audience. We could not sing them together because we did not all feel the message, we did not all hear the words ringing in our souls and have that minty burning in our guts to punch the song out of each of us.

Dr Seuss looked down from a cloud filled with naked cherubs in the uncomfortable silence, and I think he smiled.

"Jesus is the reason for the season," said the man in the tan stitched cowboy hat. Many in the audience could sing this with him in a mostly perfect pitched harmony, it is true for a lot of people, though Jesus is not the only reason. Some other reasons are presents, snow, money, cold, family, new clothes and warm filling food. Other reasons are other religions and other symbols and other messages and other seasons entirely.

Another reason is a man who was born in 270 AD and died December 6th, 347. His name was Nicholas of Bari, and he gave anonymous presents to the poor. Children around the world used to receive presents on the day of his death to celebrate a life of giving to those in need, but the celebration was moved to December 25th to cover a pagan holiday and combined with the celebration of the birth of Jesus in the year 336 (which may or may not have been December 25th). 1600 years later it was castrated of religion to increase the spread of capitalism with the addition of our modern Santa Claus, which subsequently succeeded.

During the Holiday Extravaganza we were asked three times if we had purchased all our Christmas presents. The audience cheered and groaned. It was as if by attending we had made this unspoken social contract that all of us were Christian, Capitalist and had loved ones and anyone who wasn't would not speak against the crowd. A couple groaned because they hadn't bought presents yet.

Some of this is just show business and glamour. Some is a falseness of total agreement is for the sake of cameras and sponsors. There were some very touching moments through the night. A friend of the family sang in front of a full orchestra with her husband backing with the jazz band on trombone; A man performed Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory (the original Christmas Sweater) backed by the host of the evening on classical guitar. The guitar played the characters into being, long open sludge chords for the man who sold our narrator grain alcohol for fruitcakes, as the days before Christmas were described without shadows and beautifully performed.

Some of this spirit is for people who need to be reminded or saved. It's religious and economic peacock-ing. It's offensive. For Americans who choose not to believe in the same definitions of Christmas it is something to be avoided, and they are mocked with Christmas-tree-lighted crucifixes. These Americans are Pagan and Hebrew and Atheist. They are tired from overworking and don't like the smell of pine and they can't buy Christmas gifts this year. And they don't want to celebrate Christmas. It is entirely in their right as one of the equal tiny specks on the face of Earth to celebrate its time in shadow thinking about shadows instead of the loudly proclaimed son of god.

There are many ways to say Merry Christmas for those who do not share these family-centric American Christian Christmases, but I prefer it in other languages. Feliz Navidad is good, because you know what I mean, but it's not exactly the Merry Christmas you'll get from some. It is my Christmas I wish you, Feliz Navidad, I ask that you speak to someone who doesn't believe the things you do - to disagree and smile. To love your cousin for his differences, not the things you share. This holiday season keep Christ in Christmas if you choose, but don't ask me to.

#55: of the Corruptible

a Pound of Cake
a Coin was flipped
it fell on other sides

and both of them
the Heads and Tails
were sure that in good time

that both the terms
had come to pass
it landed in no crime

* * * * *

the Queen chose Tails
the King chose Heads
the Coin it rolled and stayed

and there was found
the silver bare
its faces washed away

the Court was lost
to frenzied sound
in panicked disarray

* * * * *

the Tails she said,
"For Goodness Sake
the Heads were facing Down!"

and he the Heads
was adamant,
"the Tails were on the Ground!"

the fight was long
the Cake grew stale
and neither had the Pound

* * * * *

But Heads and Tails
were unaware
of many incidents

of Coins and Cakes
and Kings and Queens
and other arguments

though lookers-on
grew more the wise
in the dilemma's sense

* * * * *

The Coins though they
had rolled away
and all the faces bare

had gave the Court
a grand idea
together they declared

"Why should the Coin
decide the fate
our Noble Ones have erred!"

* * * * *

While Kings and Queens
were arguing
to whom had won the toss

more Cake was made
the Court was glad
though Nobles still were cross

all others ate
a wealth of Cake
and none were at a loss

* * * * *

Five nations watched
and Royals spoke
their peoples full of sweets

said Kings to Kings
and Queens to Queens
"We must reclaim the streets!

Let's toss our luck
in Coins of trick
against our peasant's feasts!"

* * * * *

So all the Cake
was wagered then
against the Royal Crown

While Nobles all
had chosen Heads
Tails by the Court chose now

The Coins were flipped
and Heads came up
though Heads were also down

* * * * *

Surrendered Cake
the plundered feast
were laid at Noble's throne

but Courts, they smiled
no one did cry
or scream or fuss or groan

or fight among
their Countrymen
great virtue they had owned

* * * * *

"We see no loss
in this Coin toss
our stomachs still are packed

We've wheat in store
we need for more,
enjoy your plundered snack!"

with that the Court
resolved to bake
without a Royal Pact

* * * * *

The Kings and Queens
of nations all
succeeded in their take

but count was odd
and so they fought
for the last unclaimed Cake

the Noble's then
let plunder stale
and realized their mistake

* * * * *

"We wagered once
We'll win again
this time in even count"

the Coins prepared
with faces pressed
on either side no doubt

and waited then
till Courts had baked
an adequate amount

* * * * *

the Cakes were lined
with berries topped
though no one had a bite

at public feast
of fresh-baked cake
the kings and queens of spite

had just appeared
with greedy eyes
and Royal appetite

* * * * *

"We've smelled your cake
and seen it too
and grasped it in our hands

but spoils of doubt
and odd of count
had made the Cake turn bland

We wager now
and finally
your Cake against the land"

* * * * *

though they had lost
so recently
they could not find a trick

The Courts had grown
so hungry that
they wanted this done quick

The Royal Coin
presented then
from velvet hand and flipped

* * * * *

"Heads!" called Kings
of Kingdoms Five
they're Queens all drooling beasts

and "Tails!" called Courts
of countrymen
who wanted just to feast

the Coins had stayed
not rolled away
and Heads were found the least

* * * * *

"How can this be?"
Kings on their knees
and Tails were facing up

They looked again
Tails on both sides
the Royalty was stuck

a wooden feast
on begger's plate
sat next to Queenly cup

* * * * *

The Crowns laid down
and Coins returned
the crowd was silent then

When Royal tears
from Common eyes
Five kingdoms lost to them

but Cake was laid
into their hands
the count was now even

* * * * *

The young went first
then elderly
the berries stained their lips

then country folk
and common men
all to the feast they skipped

the Kings and Queens
of Five nations
seconds they were slipped

* * * * *

No land was owned
by any man
but each belonged to stay

And every mouth
had sweets to eat
no Royals went away

No words were spoke
No child sad
No man made to obey

* * * * *

The Cake sustained
all through the day
and well into the night

and Cake would not
support alone
but for the day it might

and all were filled
and happy then
and everything alright

#54: of Wickedness

Spin the wheel of chance tonight if your joints will allow it, young one, then somersault to your respected position in bed, on your side, hand buried deep in your hair to cradle your thoughts, palms massaging clouds under the scalp they hover in comforting circles, fingers weaving through coarse clumps of braids

Rainstorms feeding apple trees from sapling through dark-barked age producing nine thousand apples before the lightning strike fells this one over the well-beaten path, obstacle to some and then opportunity in the making: a warm place a home a chair a door, and always you dream of the woodsman in these circumstances of apples and trees though not always breadcrumbs, you know where those lead, but the constant woodsman who protects this place in broken sunlight and darkness, the one who will ward you from the bad apples and fingers who grasp them attached to clotted boils and shredded features under dark robes, and the wart proudly protruding above a crooked smile - you the seasoned young story listener will know the justice served to any with warts, the oven the chopping block the poison apple returned, in this place where colors in cloth match those of character and the disfigured ugly contain concentrated evil under the grizzled lump on the face of terribleness, the mark of Cain in slumber land

And this you consider at length upon finding a hard spot on your toe which is frozen with air from a can and falls off in minutes, evil caused by a minor transgression perhaps but nonetheless doing damage in the dreamscape, the warted wicked holding a debutante feast in your honor at their crooked banquet of fawn bones discarded with meat still clinging, bodies covered in clustered warts, laughing in pain and stinking spirits while you sit not among them but in their honor on high throne above their smoldering masses of red in black, your sight unhindered, you spy with darkening eyes a woodsman retrieving his axe from wide stump and returning to the light, he weeps the loss of your innocent goodness as would you if your tears had not cracked dry between goblets, had you noticed your fingers creaking out of sync with hand, the blisters and blotches spreading as through tainted water across your childness, warts unimpeded sprout in masses through the autumn of your body across your hands which greedily snatch fruit from feast to devour through screams, the screams turn from delight, the shrouded figures fall by threes, apples rolling from their gnarled fists banging stony ground, ragged sighs

Spin the wheel of chance again and cast your lots for who will fall under spells of words tonight, young one, under covers when the spines of stories fold dark on pages and books are laid to rest, who sees the woodsman's goodness fade under the hunter's moon, even the good kill on empty stomach, and while warts may spread in evil on one spinning wheel, the sheen of beauty in another, on soft skin and strong feature, in muscle and protection and hands for holding axes that lead you from danger to the place called safe, in a bed to rest between red flannel sheets your trusting lids fall heavy, and he is all the more beautiful for his actions tonight, you will stay young here, young and trusting, free of warts in this eye and covered in another, but sleeping in common and always young

#53 A Future Roof

It was a skeletal structure in the beginning before rust and splinters, before paint and laquer and all those choices. Inside corners ninety degrees, square, bubbles between the lines, sturdy. Over deep mahogany the walls seemed to grow on their own.

It was built to hold the things they made together. His joy manifested in the many black and white photographs He'd taken which lined the walls - Strangers at the airport, at the gate, in frozen black frames. Her mystery wove the rug - Cyan, Magenta, Olive, Buttercup, Celtic knots with hidden faces. They were proud of the beauty they'd housed here. They rolled over the rug, admired the photographs, touched the walls and in doing so they touched each other. The room loved them.

It took shape near the water, it was elemental in it's own right. The walls continued to grow taller than He or She could have dreamed, not even their ladders would reach the crown. The walls grew over the seasons until He could not reach high enough to hang his photographs and her rug, which was once so massive, had shrunk in comparison to the immensity of this new place.

Born of two minds it held plum and level for many years and many more years before the first crack appeared on its mahogany face.

He and She always meant to build the roof when the room was little and they could reach, but little more than support beams hung on it's crown, and every moment the roof-to-be grew further away. The room saw the two smaller by the day, and then not at all.

The room sweat and creaked alone in the rafters and so it built itself a window, and in the winter a thick woolen curtain hung over it, but snow still fell from above. One wall sagged away from the rest, obtuse angles formed. The breeze off the water washed over the rug that lay years below and made the black frames dance until the people in the photographs rocked on their toes in embraces.

It grew tall enough that it might fall over and then it leaned against something. The room made another window to see, and through the window it saw the most beautiful red brick building with a window as well, and in just the same place. And inside were lime-green walls and a soft taste of trumpets. This other room looked back and saw something as well. The room shook and rested against the building that had grown there beside it, and this new structure leaned back.

They grew differently from then on - New supports formed over the dusty rafters knitting their crowns together - Decorative bay windows, facing each other - cathedral spires knotting together and gargoyles with secrets - a floor, a lime rug, pictures in dark blue frames, syncopated rhythms, two walls each, never sparing a color or complex beat, long grained mahogany, and a great red door that never closed properly.

#52 knock knock knock

It's much easier to write about fear. Fear is all I know.

My whole maturing life George W Bush ruled my country. You are used to me giving you more than one example.

Fear is easy, fear is definite. When I read Steven King books in the room with too many windows to look at at once and had nightmares of people crawling up the drainpipe and killing me in my sleep which kept me awake for many hours (spent listening to the radio for happy music to fall asleep to ("fall asleep fast before Barbie Girl finishes" (I should have known then))) - that fear couldn't be mistaken for anything else. Fear.

Love. How does that make you feel? I know it's hard to forget the face that pops into your mind, even more so that I've addressed the face, or the one that you try to keep out of your mind, but let these thoughts pass away and concentrate on the feeling. Love in the chest, the tightening of your lungs, it feels a lot like fear doesn't it?

I think the symbol for love is stupid; you don't feel love in your heart, but in your brain, the chemicals ache when they shoot into your cerebellum affecting the rest of your body, and how could they not start in the brain, because your heart doesn't see love nor feel love through touching the skin. Those my good friend are electrodes in the nervous system and ocular tissue connected directly to the brain. I'm sorry I had to tell you there was no Santa Claus.

you know a heart is the symbol for restroom in Switzerland?

Anyway, what I mean to say is that these feelings of love are in direct contrast to the mind which is why we've pushed the symbols of love away from the brain - how do they contrast? Love is irrational. By all reason, especially biological, we should not couple but fuck each other regardless of attraction to permeate life much less restrict our fucking to something we only feel. Trying to deconstruct love through rational means leaves you with heartbreak, an absense of love.

Do we really fall in love, or do we untie our shoelaces and walk a few miles around an abyss of love until: oops!

My father described to me once the way he met my mother. They both attended class together at Saint Johns University, and became friends - I think it was some biology lab. Only after being friends did they realize they had feelings for each other. He told me that this was a good way to fall in love, by trying not to look for it.

This is how my story has played out, a derivative of my fathers life. I was not on a search, rather I was completely against a search of love, and still it has found me, my shoes fly off in two directions loosed from my feet and Santa Claus has ridden a restroom-symbol-shaped sleigh out of a great hole in the earth.

Trying to rationalize this is dumb, as is any doubting or denying.

A great many people when speaking of religion may say, "I do not believe in God but I do believe in a greater force than human beings." I agree, and I've tapped something that will continue to teach me even after I've forgotten these words because of its constance. Thank you.