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.

I spent a week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It was hot. Very hot. I walked around the city and couldn’t help but to notice all of the AC units hung on the outside of the buildings throughout the city. My eyes were drawn to these vital cooling machines as I walked in the nearly unbearable heat of the midday sun in the city. I was longing for an opportunity to sit in an AC building, but also wondering why the city had been constructed in a place that is so hot.

It sparked some thoughts about what is needed to live in this ‘perfected modernity’ we have created for ourselves and this battle against nature we have so enthusiastically participated in.

The image came into being not just from my experience obsessing about the heat of the city, but also the trip I took to the Batu Caves a few minutes outside the city center. The Batu Caves are beautifully (and naturally) constructed caves filled with monkeys and tourists alike. I couldn’t help to think about how much cooler it was in these caves than any place I had experienced in the city. It was a naturally designed air conditioning system, and it was beautifully constructed and enabled nature to continue flourish to a much greater extent than the middle of the city.

Of course there aren’t enough natural caves to go around for every inhabitant of the world; however, there is much to learn from these natural structures that seem to provide a healthy combination of nature and human use.

I put these two images together of what I claimed to be a ‘natural’ city in the Hindu temple cave, and a ‘perfected’ city in the center of Kuala Lumpur. The monkey was sitting in the Hindu cave, and the AC units are from the KL city center. The monkeys’ expression looks concerned, just as we should be about our current growth and consumption patterns. I placed the monkey on top of the AC units to demonstrate how disconnected we’ve become from nature. It just doesn’t look right that a monkey is sitting on an AC system. It is an attempt at mocking this ‘perfected world’ we have created for ourselves. The monkey doesn’t need AC to survive, why do we?

The distortion of the colors of the monkey represent our digital and technological revolutions as being the potential catalyst for changing how we live with nature. Whether it be through movements that start online, or environmentally conscious design, we yield more power than ever to begin to change our focus of what is important in the future design of cities.

Why didn’t the city planners incorporate a design that used the features of nature to regulate temperature and natural well being?

There is much progress to be made in the design of the ‘modern city’, one of the pioneers is the architect William McDonough. Watch his TED speech here. View his website here.

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?