underneath all currents

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Fri, 28 Sep 2012 11:32:07 -0700

"We would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open..."

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 11:52:27 -0700

“We would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright.”

- Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (via vineetkaur)

Photo

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 11:52:18 -0700

Photo

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 11:36:21 -0700

Photo

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 11:12:22 -0700

mountain vs. well

Mon, 21 May 2012 21:30:07 -0700

mountain vs. well:

when i look back upon the things i’ve embarked upon to create change in the world, one thing stands out: the journey always took much longer than projected. if that journey was something akin to climbing a big mountain, i spent more time navigating the approach to the base of the mountain than summiting the peak, if you will. i rarely if ever planned for this “flat” part of the trip. the mountain peak is so seductive, so sexy — it’s where you want to end up, so you focus on what it will take to scale the verticals. but as it turns out, it’s the long walk to the base of the mountain that’s the hardest part. it’s about perseverance more than strength.

innovating something, be it a stand alone product or a massively interconnected system, involves many more days of getting to the peak than it does scaling the peak. this is because there are so many pitfalls along the way — so it always feels like you’re climbing something. climbing a mountain face or a well, it feels the same: steep, slippery, and difficult. as it turns out, a lot of that climbing happens because you’ve stumbled into a crevasse or a well, and you have to find your way out before you can get back to your mission of walking to the mountain. it can’t be helped; if you’re innovating, by definition you’re venturing out through the dark unknown, so of course you’ll stumble and fall and have to pick yourself up.

while there were lots of hard points, in any difficult project i’ve done there was also more joy and camaraderie to be had along the way than I ever dared hope for. this is key. whether it’s orville and wilbur figuring out how to make man fly, or it’s you tweaking the messaging on a web site in the middle of the night, you need the help of friends and colleagues. not only can they help pull you out of a crevasse, but they can help you see that you weren’t yet on the mountain. and that you need to keep walking.

understanding the difference between a mountain and a well? priceless.

- metacool on climbing mountains and wells | via ninakix

if you replace innovation and website work with finding a job and embarking on my nursing career as I graduate this week, this fits, too perfectly. Persevere, keep walking.

mountain vs. well

Mon, 21 May 2012 21:29:00 -0700

mountain vs. well:

understanding the difference between a mountain and a well? priceless.

- metacool on climbing mountains and wells | via ninakix

if you replace innovation and website work with finding a job and embarking on my nursing career as I graduate this week, this fits, too perfectly. Persevere, keep walking.

no one else has access to the world you carry around within yourself; you are its custodian and...

Mon, 21 May 2012 21:22:39 -0700

no one else has access to the world you carry around within yourself; you are its custodian and entrance. no one else can see the world the way you see it. no one else can feel your life the way you feel it. thus it is impossible to ever compare two people because each stands on such different ground.

- john o’donohue | via internal-acceptance-movement: graceyu

how to be alone.

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 08:49:47 -0700

how to be alone.

a someday weekend escape

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 08:33:43 -0700

a someday weekend escape

by karen margolis

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 08:32:55 -0700

by karen margolis

"The only reason to live in Los Angeles, where I’ve been since the late ’70s, is if you have..."

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:41:39 -0700

“The only reason to live in Los Angeles, where I’ve been since the late ’70s, is if you have something to do with the entertainment industry. Everything you can experience in Los Angeles, you can have a much better version of in Portland—including, very basically, the air you breathe.”

- Matt Groening

"I’ve always loved intelligent girls, no matter how they look, to be able to hold a conversation with..."

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:28:30 -0700

““I’ve always loved intelligent girls, no matter how they look, to be able to hold a conversation with someone is so important. The moment someone acts dumb, I lose interest. I think about the subtext and layers of a person when I design. I design for someone who has interest in the space around her, who is aware of her relationship with the world, someone a little evolved, a little concerned. I think putting more women in power will help solve a lot of problems in the world. It troubles me that the media celebrate women acting like bimbos on TV — it’s not cute, it’s ridiculous. I call it ‘Paris Hilton Syndrome’; there’s a place for that superficiality — but it must neutralized by an equally powerful, intelligent counterforce in culture. I don’t want to perpetuate the wrong ideal.””

- Prabal Gurung

girl crushin’ on Emma Stone.

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 23:07:58 -0700

girl crushin’ on Emma Stone.

MARCH 24, 2012, 4:28 PM The Brain on Love By DIANE...

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:22:39 -0700

MARCH 24, 2012, 4:28 PM

The Brain on Love

By DIANE ACKERMAN

A RELATIVELY new field, called interpersonal neurobiology, draws its vigor from one of the great discoveries of our era: that the brain is constantly rewiring itself based on daily life. In the end, what we pay the most attention to defines us. How you choose to spend the irreplaceable hours of your life literally transforms you.

All relationships change the brain — but most important are the intimate bonds that foster or fail us, altering the delicate circuits that shape memories, emotions and that ultimate souvenir, the self.

Every great love affair begins with a scream. At birth, the brain starts blazing new neural pathways based on its odyssey in an alien world. An infant is steeped in bright, buzzing, bristling sensations, raw emotions and the curious feelings they unleash, weird objects, a flux of faces, shadowy images and dreams — but most of all a powerfully magnetic primary caregiver whose wizardry astounds.

Olimpia Zagnoli

Brain scans show synchrony between the brains of mother and child; but what they can’t show is the internal bond that belongs to neither alone, a fusion in which the self feels so permeable it doesn’t matter whose body is whose. Wordlessly, relying on the heart’s semaphores, the mother says all an infant needs to hear, communicating through eyes, face and voice. Thanks to advances in neuroimaging, we now have evidence that a baby’s first attachments imprint its brain. The patterns of a lifetime’s behaviors, thoughts, self-regard and choice of sweethearts all begin in this crucible.

We used to think this was the end of the story: first heredity, then the brain’s engraving mental maps in childhood, after which you’re pretty much stuck with the final blueprint.

But as a wealth of imaging studies highlight, the neural alchemy continues throughout life as we mature and forge friendships, dabble in affairs, succumb to romantic love, choose a soul mate. The body remembers how that oneness with Mother felt, and longs for its adult equivalent.

As the most social apes, we inhabit a mirror-world in which every important relationship, whether with spouse, friend or child, shapes the brain, which in turn shapes our relationships. Daniel J. Siegel and Allan N. Schore, colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, recently discussed groundbreaking work in the field at a conference on the school’s campus. It’s not that caregiving changes genes; it influences how the genes express themselves as the child grows. Dr. Siegel, a neuropsychiatrist, refers to the indelible sense of “feeling felt” that we learn as infants and seek in romantic love, a reciprocity that remodels the brain’s architecture and functions.

Does it also promote physical well-being? “Scientific studies of longevity, medical and mental health, happiness and even wisdom,” Dr. Siegel says, “point to supportive relationships as the most robust predictor of these positive attributes in our lives across the life span.”

The supportive part is crucial. Loving relationships alter the brain the most significantly.

Just consider how much learning happens when you choose a mate. Along with thrilling dependency comes glimpsing the world through another’s eyes; forsaking some habits and adopting others (good or bad); tasting new ideas, rituals, foods or landscapes; a slew of added friends and family; a tapestry of physical intimacy and affection; and many other catalysts, including a tornadic blast of attraction and attachment hormones — all of which revamp the brain.

When two people become a couple, the brain extends its idea of self to include the other; instead of the slender pronoun “I,” a plural self emerges who can borrow some of the other’s assets and strengths. The brain knows who we are. The immune system knows who we’re not, and it stores pieces of invaders as memory aids. Through lovemaking, or when we pass along a flu or a cold sore, we trade bits of identity with loved ones, and in time we become a sort of chimera. We don’t just get under a mate’s skin, we absorb him or her.

Love is the best school, but the tuition is high and the homework can be painful. As imaging studies by the U.C.L.A. neuroscientist Naomi Eisenberger show, the same areas of the brain that register physical pain are active when someone feels socially rejected. That’s why being spurned by a lover hurts all over the body, but in no place you can point to. Or rather, you’d need to point to the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex in the brain, the front of a collar wrapped around the corpus callosum, the bundle of nerve fibers zinging messages between the hemispheres that register both rejection and physical assault.

Whether they speak Armenian or Mandarin, people around the world use the same images of physical pain to describe a broken heart, which they perceive as crushing and crippling. It’s not just a metaphor for an emotional punch. Social pain can trigger the same sort of distress as a stomachache or a broken bone.

But a loving touch is enough to change everything. James Coan, a neuroscientist at the University of Virginia, conducted experiments in 2006 in which he gave an electric shock to the ankles of women in happy, committed relationships. Tests registered their anxiety before, and pain level during, the shocks.

Then they were shocked again, this time holding their loving partner’s hand. The same level of electricity produced a significantly lower neural response throughout the brain. In troubled relationships, this protective effect didn’t occur. If you’re in a healthy relationship, holding your partner’s hand is enough to subdue your blood pressure, ease your response to stress, improve your health and soften physical pain. We alter one another’s physiology and neural functions.

However, it’s not all sub rosa. One can decide to be a more attentive and compassionate partner, mindful of the other’s motives, hurts and longings. Breaking old habits isn’t easy, since habits are deeply ingrained neural shortcuts, a way of slurring over details without having to dwell on them. Couples often choose to rewire their brains on purpose, sometimes with a therapist’s help, to ease conflicts and strengthen their at-one-ness.

While they were both in the psychology department of Stony Brook University, Bianca Acevedo and Arthur Aron scanned the brains of long-married couples who described themselves as still “madly in love.” Staring at a picture of a spouse lit up their reward centers as expected; the same happened with those newly in love (and also with cocaine users). But, in contrast to new sweethearts and cocaine addicts, long-married couples displayed calm in sites associated with fear and anxiety. Also, in the opiate-rich sites linked to pleasure and pain relief, and those affiliated with maternal love, the home fires glowed brightly.

A happy marriage relieves stress and makes one feel as safe as an adored baby. Small wonder “Baby” is a favorite adult endearment. Not that romantic love is an exact copy of the infant bond. One needn’t consciously regard a lover as momlike to profit from the parallels. The body remembers, the brain recycles and restages.

So how does this play out beyond the lab? I saw the healing process up close after my 74-year-old husband, who is also a writer, suffered a left-hemisphere stroke that wiped out a lifetime of language. All he could utter was “mem.” Mourning the loss of our duet of decades, I began exploring new ways to communicate, through caring gestures, pantomime, facial expressions, humor, play, empathy and tons of affection — the brain’s epitome of a safe attachment. That, plus the admittedly eccentric home schooling I provided, and his diligent practice, helped rewire his brain to a startling degree, and in time we were able to talk again, he returned to writing books, and even his vision improved. The brain changes with experience throughout our lives; it’s in loving relationships of all sorts — partners, children, close friends — that brain and body really thrive.

During idylls of safety, when your brain knows you’re with someone you can trust, it needn’t waste precious resources coping with stressors or menace. Instead it may spend its lifeblood learning new things or fine-tuning the process of healing. Its doors of perception swing wide open. The flip side is that, given how vulnerable one then is, love lessons — sweet or villainous — can make a deep impression. Wedded hearts change everything, even the brain.

this real-time wind map is hypnotizing. - warbyparker

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 12:49:18 -0700

this real-time wind map is hypnotizing. - warbyparker

creativity can seem like magic.

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 20:08:46 -0700

creativity can seem like magic. :

we look at people like steve jobs and bob dylan, and we conclude that they must possess supernatural powers denied to mere mortals like us, gifts that allow them to imagine what has never existed before. they’re “creative types.” we’re not.but creativity is not magic, and there’s no such thing as a creative type. creativity is not a trait that we inherit in our genes or a blessing bestowed by the angels. It’s a skill. anyone can learn to be creative and to get better at it. new research is shedding light on what allows people to develop world-changing products and to solve the toughest problems. a surprisingly concrete set of lessons has emerged about what creativity is and how to spark it in ourselves and our work.

- jonah lehrer, who has previously explored the architecture of knowledge and innovation, on what new research reveals about how to be creative – a taste of lehrer’s new book, imagine: how creativity works | via explore-blog

Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord...

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 18:57:30 -0800

Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the
Lord your God; for he is gracious and merciful, slow to
anger and of great kindness… - Joel 2:13 (for lent)

Bon Iver

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 20:29:36 -0800

Bon Iver

Intentionality

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 17:17:55 -0800

Intentionality:

at TED, i’ve found there are overall themes of each conference that speakers keep coming to again & again — often not the official theme, but a reflection of where the mood of the community is. and then i’ve found that wherever i am personally, i get coherence in different ways. for me this year, and for many of the folks i’ve talked with, the theme is intentionality: how to figure out and live a life that you want to live, instead of taking the one that comes to you.
as a friend said last night, it feels like there were maybe a half dozen talks about just this thing. from sherry turkle’s worry about how devices are making us alone, together; to jen pahlka’s excellent thoughts on becoming better and more involved citizens; to david kelly’s thoughts on creative confidence and how to nurture it; and to bryan stevenson’s unbelievable talk about how he’s made a difference, and the people in his life who have helped him “keep his eyes on the prize.”

i’m coming to view intentionality, depth of thought and connection, and the power to focus as the central developmental challenges of our society today. we’re going through an incredibly rapid transformation into an always connected, real-time, perma-entertained, ever stimulated world — and it’s becoming clear to me that, somewhat ironically, it’s the people who can take advantage of all of that, while also ultimately staying within themselves, will be the ones who make the most profound and positive changes in our world.

so that applies to all of us, and implies much about how to think about living our lives, interacting with each other, and teaching our children.

i’ve been thinking a lot over the last few months — or really probably the last year or so — about how to be more intentional in my life — i think this week has catalyzed some of my thinking, so i’ll plan to write about a bunch of different aspects of it as i work through my own re-intentioning of my life.

- john lily aka lilly on tumblr