Coincidence vs. Destiny. Our unconscious mind and our intuition. A Prosthetic Leg and a Drag Queen.

Some things seem to happen for a seemingly inexplicable reason. We go through life wondering how we met that person, traveled to that place, and ran into someone we know in an unusual setting. There are many tools today that try and help us make sense of our social world (facebook, twitter, etc etc), but there are still many things that seem to be brilliantly inexplicable.

I am personally fascinated by the concepts of coincidence and causality. I often wonder where our experience of ‘reality’ begins.

Could a conversation lead the unconscious brain to an event or place without our conscious understanding of why we ended up at that event or place?

Last week, I (along with my brother Scott and my Mom) experienced something that was very exciting to me.

We went running along the beach (our normal route) and took a break where we have taken breaks before. It was a busy summer beach day. Sun shining, people everywhere.

My mom takes a seat on one of the benches. My brother and I stand as we catch our breath from the run. My mom starts speaking to a friendly elderly man and as that occurs another elderly man in a wheelchair begins to speak to my brother and I.

The man in the wheelchair goes on to share why he’s wearing a ‘Shamu’ (killer whale) stuffed animal on his left leg that had been amputated (he is a veteran). He shares a story of a time he went to SeaWorld and staff told him to remove the ‘Shamu’ from his leg (it covered his ‘stump’ as he described it by placing the ‘Shamu’ mouth over it).

He shared stories about interesting entertainment venues in San Diego. He talked about how one time he went to a wild bar where they were throwing a jello wrestling party and a women’s roller derby team was participating in the event. One of the teammates was a 6’6″ roller derby girl who threw him in the jello (“stump and all” as he put it) and wrestled around.

He then shared his stories of unusual circuses he had been to here in San Diego. He asked us if we’d been to Lips. We told him we hadn’t. He said it’s a great place for great entertainment. He told us there are great Drag Queens that are excellent performers. He said he liked going there because they were accepting of everyone, no matter how you looked.

He talked about how once he had a prosthetic leg, but now uses his wheelchair exclusively. He also told us that he might get a new prosthetic leg.

We enjoyed our conversation and continued our run back to our destination. Upon reaching our destination (30mins later and 2 miles from original conversation), we decided to grab something to eat. We choose Subway.

As we’re making our way walking to Subway my mom stops and points at a drawing on an electrical box on the side of the road. “Hey, look at this.” She calls us over and we take a look.

To my complete shock, the drawing is of a man with a prosthetic leg speaking to what looks like a Drag Queen (original drawing below).

The colored version of the original drawing is a remake that I created. I redrew the original drawing, added color, and changed the message. I then placed the remixed version I created and placed it where the original had been. Hopefully the original artist will continue a dialog.

I think the important message to share is how important it is to accept everyone regardless of how they look and you will end up with great stories and an interesting life.

‘This square is a circle.’

A representation of transition and thought. We box ourselves in to ultimately reach and achieve action and thought ‘flow‘. Sometimes it is a requirement to limit yourself, to ‘box’ yourself in. I like to call it ‘putting your blinders on’. Just as horses need to be able to focus on what is in front of them, we need to do the same at points in our lives, but must ultimately cater to our unique perception and vision as represented by the circle.

This graphic represents the necessity to create boxes, or ‘frameworks’ in which our vision is limited. The successful result of limiting distraction allows for the creation of something new…in this case represented by the circle. The circle demonstrates one’s ability to achieve a goal, to ‘hit the target’. With the right amount of focus, we are able to not only create the target, but achieve success as we define it.

The many linkages behind the circle demonstrate our ability to utilize our past and present successes to other potential successes that we realize. One success leads to another, and so on.

The more successes we create and achieve, the more infinite the opportunity to create, learn, and develop as an individual and visionary. A healthy ‘spider web of vision and success’ requires a certain degree of blindness, and a balance of focus. I imagine the iris of the eye expanding and shrinking on the beautiful canvas of the color of our eyes (our unique perspective).

The squares are the building blocks of our objectives, a paradox when considering if our eyes were square our vision would be limited. If Our Eyes Were Square

Maybe This Will Stick is a look into how moments and memory interact to create who we are and what we do.

Doing things just for money will leave you begging for a meaning; for a purpose in life.

When Moments Die

Humans are passionate. Humans are dynamic. When humans reach a point of monotony and self degradation that cannot be handled, we become hopeless. We lose energy. We loose focus. We loose passion. We loose what it is to be human.

There is no telling why this man has ended up begging on the streets of Kuala Lumpur. Regardless, one can assume that he does not feel passionate about his work. He does not feel proud of what he does.

His dynamic character is being diminished to black and white; money and survival. His vision of the future is diminished to each shake of his Big Gulp cup. He is focused on not focusing at all. The moments pass. The cup shakes. The coins drop. He is living paycheck to paycheck. Doing something that he doesn’t love. He is living in the vicious cycle of monotony, survival as the main goal.

There is no telling how he came to this point. Possibly out of tragedy. Possibly from drug abuse. Possibly from a difficult economy. Possibly from lack of motivation. Whatever the reason, the moments of his current life are moments he most likely does not want to remember.

Fill Your Cup With Love.

We all have dreams. We all have futures. Unfortunately, some people’s vision and dreams of their future are nearly impossible to achieve because of circumstances they cannot control (where they were born, etc). Hopefully with access to international education and collaboration via the internet, more and more dreams will be treated equally. More people in places that once we’re removed from the world as a whole will be able to contribute in ways that we can’t even dream of today.

This boy was walking down the beach here in Sri Lanka. He really wanted his picture taken. He had a certain radiance to him. He was highly excited and intensely focused. I just got the feeling that this kid was dreaming big about his future. I hope his dreams have the potential to become a reality just like any other kid in the world.

The images suggests that this boy yields the power of the sun in himself. He can manipulate the power of the sun to create his own impact, his own rays, his on reality. He can put his dreams into practice. He can achieve anything.

Perspective is everything. It is how we understand and create the world around us. For those of us that can see, our eyes provide the visual stimulus to create our holistic understanding of everything we do in life. As we utilize technology more and more in our daily lives, our perspective of the world will change. Our view of what the world looks like and our role in the world will change. It is already changing. You’re viewing this text through the internet…through pixels. Essentially, you’re viewing the (internet) world in squares. Although pixels can be represented through dots and lines, many of the images we view in the digital world are square pixels.

So the question is, what would our vision look like if we used the same method of viewing the world as a computer does? What would we see? What would we look like if we looked into the mirror?

I’ve created an image that is created from a photo of myself, cropped right over both of my eyes. It represents a distortion of our natural visual environment. Our digital vision. As we see the world more and more through pixels, we need to evaluate what impact it may have on our innate, biological visual experience.

Our Vision In Pixels

The image also represents a certain loss of identity…or a re-forming of identity. You’ll notice that the image has several pairs of eyes – this demonstrates the dissonance between our biological ability to see, merging with the digital world we have created. As we interact with digital technology at an exponential rate, we may experience confusion between the physical (‘real’) world, and the digital world we have created.

The several sets of eyes you can see represent our identity crisis/development of our digital perspective. Biology and evolution has taken millions of years to construct the features we use to see the world. The digital technology we use daily has been developed in a much shorter amount of time.

I think it is important to reflect and recognize the changes we are experiencing through these digital mediums. It is about self understanding, perspective, and our view of the world as a whole. We often take the technology we use daily for granted…step back and contemplate how your view of the world has changed with this new vision/perspective of so many things.

Allowing your mind to flow where ever it may go is a vital and rewarding thing. I enjoy creating art and trying to view the world from different perspectives. This was inspired by a photo taken in Sumbawa, Indonesia of a butterfly landing on a flower. Inspiration is also drawn from the overconfidence many people have in their calendars…sometimes things just need to flow.

A butterfly's view of the world.

When we see a butterfly in the sky, there is no pattern, there is no rhythm, there is no path. But what if butterflies do have a path? A plan? A calendar? What would it look like. From this flower to that flower.

This is a look into how a butterfly may see the world from their eyes. They follow the scent of the flowers through the wind, and complete tasks left behind them. They see the sky differently than us, a series of prisms and dots make up the sky. This butterfly has a one track mind. It’s keen sense of smell and innate ability to find the ‘smell jetstream’ of flowers is both impressive and incomprehensible.

This is how the butterfly sees the world; a beautiful, impossible vision of time, space, and focus.

What does your calendar look like?