clipless is neither clip nor less — discuss

The funny thing about riding clipless, which I have only recently started to do so don't be too impressed, is how much easier it is. It's what riding with toe cages wants to be but can never achieve. At the moment, I'm riding clipless on a single-speed freewheel bike. But I CANNOT WAIT to ride clipless fixed. It's the logical extension of the fixed-gear promise: using every ounce of power I've got, during every part of the pedal stroke.

Meanwhile, my fears of falling helpless to the pavement, mangled under the wheels of a bus, were unfounded. (Having said that, I've adopted the habit of wearing my helmet at all times, not just on long trips, not just at night. I'm riding faster. The stakes are higher.) Though I was very used to the backwards-&-out gesture of bailing out of toe baskets, clipless' sideways gesture soon became intuitive. I was warned by several people that I was going to fall, probably at a traffic light, probably in front of a crowd of people who would point & laugh at me. So far, I haven't fallen. I'd love to think I'm just awesome, but I credit trying really hard & having just enough pride to do whatever it takes to not fall. And ballet.

In ballet, as in life, you must tell your muscles when to remember & when to forget. In order to really learn something — to learn a new step or to better perform a step you already know — you have to lock in the new feeling of the new thing & recognize it, instantly & forever (until you learn an even better way to do it), as "right". It means remembering to THINK about something that had been intuitive til then. Within my first twenty minutes riding on the road (not my first twenty minutes with the pedals on the bike*, mind you), I could reliably clip in within the first or second pedal stroke. My feet had figured out where they needed to go, & they went there without me having to think about it too much. I still have to think about it. But not too much.

* The absolute first twenty minutes with the pedals on the bike were spent not on the street but on my dear friend's driveway, one foot on a curb & the other practicing clipping in & clipping out, clipping in & clipping out. Then, the other side. I'm incredibly grateful for the loan of the pedals themselves, but this time spent locking in that muscle memory was super important toward the goal of me maintaining my dignity on the road later on. I highly recommend it. Thank you, sir. You are the best.

prolificism ... -ing

For the past couple of weeks, we've been in a holding pattern with Primo Passo. We're finally completing construction, at which point (& only at which point) I can jump back in there & continue training with our staff. Which is to say: Since February 3rd or thereabouts, I've spent my time doing pretty much the exact opposite of what I've done for the past three years.

· Worked on my feet/worked at a computer.
· Brewed coffee for other people/brewed just for lil ol' me.
· Communicated in person with colleagues & staff/wrote the shit out of shit.

While on the one hand, it's been an odd hurry-up-&-wait situation, it's also been amazing. The bulk of my time has been spent writing training documents. I wish I could give them out to everyone I know, because honestly it's been really fun writing them. And I'm also writing a book.

I'm inspired by my mother, who is engaged in a writing project of her own & which I can't wait to/am scared to read. And I'm inspired by the fact that every time I talk about the events between 1998 & 2008, it sounds like I'm lying. So I'd better write down as much as I can before I forget it all & I have to make the details up, because then I really WILL be lying. (Or I'll just call it fiction, in a sort of reverse James Frey-type situation. Will people be mad?)

Also, I suspect I won't have as much time to sit & craft words soon. So I better get as much of the lyi-- I mean, as much of the book-writing done now, while I can. This is my logic.

major minor adjustments

About a week ago, as Tren Way was riding with gggwqqquuuijjjjjjjjjjjjjjkor8dnjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj                                       jjjjjjjjo905tju66666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666665 l.

Sorry. Heidi Cat sat on the keyboard.

Where was I.... Last week, as we were scouting Borfo's cOld Pasadena Ride, my pal Stevo mentioned that my saddle might be a little high. The general rule of thumb is, when your foot is on the downstroke, your leg should be very slightly bent. But my legs hyperextend — when it felt like my legs were straight, in fact they were bowed slightly in the opposite direction. When it felt like my legs were a little bit bent, they were merely straight, & my lil legs didn't have the full amount of leverage at their disposal. Stevo suggested I lower my saddle just slightly, maybe half an inch.

I lowered it half an inch. My legs felt comically bent. So I raised it back up about 1/8 inch (for a net drop of 3/8 inch). I could tell immediately that I had greater leverage (my bike felt more maneuverable & also lighter). But I felt like I had less muscular strength to call upon. I found myself sliding back in my saddle to get that former amount of leg-stretch, because that's where my muscle-power was, which is kinda funny if you think about it. But I'm forcing myself to sit right, & my muscles are adjusting. It reminds me of some advice from a mechanic at BikeRoWave: If you don't adjust your bike to fit your body, your body will adjust to fit your bike. The mechanic meant it as a warning, but I feel that my body had already (badly) adjusted & that now it's in the process of adjusting in good ways. It feels like existing muscles are shifting to a different part of my legs. I'm not experiencing the soreness one gets from building new muscle. I'm experiencing old muscles figuring out where to go to access their power. It feels strange, but it's starting to feel really good.

All this got me to thinking. I know a fair amount about bikes — I'm not a mechanic by any stretch of the imagination, but I've been riding nearly every day for almost seven years. With the help of the mechanics at various co-ops, I've taken apart & re-assembled every bike I've ever owned, right down to the ball bearings. And I STILL missed the outward clues to a really obvious, major problem. This, while knowing full well about the hyperextension thing — it's considered beautiful in ballet, though it poses its own, different issues for dancers. A little critical distance can be good, to see what I'm too close to see. And it also got me to thinking about adjustments, in general. My seat post wasn't outrageously high for me, but a very small adjustment made a very big difference. It's one of the things I love best about bikes — every single time I ride is an opportunity to assess how things are going & to see what I can improve (in my bike or in my person). This is true of every sport, & ballet too (which is like a sport). But it's especially true with bikes, as there are so many variables to adjust. It's a linear sport — you're always moving forward. Figuratively, too.

eating doughnuts in the service of science

As both of you know, I've been off the wheat for a while. It's an experiment spurned by the fact that half my family can't eat wheat. Nothing doing. My mother, my aunt Helen, & Helen's daughter Fiona developed celiac disease as adults; Helen's son Steeve has been allergic since birth; & then there's Kevin.

Kevin stopped eating wheat when he noticed it was dragging him down. He just didn't feel good when he ate it. And his symptoms lined up more or less with his celiac-disease-having relatives, so he just stopped. Now, he feels better. This is more or less where I'm at, too. The next step is to go to the doctor to get tested for it.

The thing is, the test for celiac disease is, in fact, a test for the presence of antibodies against an aberrant converted wheat protein. If I have been excellent about not eating wheat, there won't be any antibodies, & I'll get a negative (whether my mutant genes are modifying the antibody-triggering proteins not). In order for the test to be meaningful, I have to eat wheat again to trigger the protein conversion. 

The other thing is, the body is a very adaptable thing. When it notes that you, the User, aren't regularly introducing what it views as a disease to the system, it heaves a huge sigh of relief & happily goes about focusing its attention to other things. Biking, drawing, writing, doing crossword puzzles, thinking about prime numbers, having benevolence toward humanity. It's not girding itself for a great battle every single day. So then let's say your doc tells you to eat wheat in order to intentionally trigger the mutant protein-conversion process, to get the antibodies to show up, for the sake of the test. But while I, the User, know that a great battle is coming, my internal organs & wheat-protein-converting mutant genes ... don't. They are blindsided, having been long out of battle. And the battle is worse than when the antibodies fought for the User back in her doughnut days. Kevin opts out. It was bad enough before, he doesn't need a battle today, thanks. I, myself, went into battle recently when I fucked up one night & drank a beer. I felt sick for two days.

It was a Maredsous 8 Brune. And it was worth it.

Kevin's solution is to not eat that doughnut, to not get tested. I like Kevin's solution. It's not that I don't trust or need medical confirmation, it's that it would be merely that — confirmation of something that I viscerally know to be true. I'm still in the midst of the experiment. I said I'd give it a couple months, & it's only been a few weeks. However, I'm not certain I want to intentionally make myself sick when the couple months are up. You can call it willful ignorance, if you like. I call it refusing to curse the darkness & instead just lighting a candle. We'll see.

Speaking of lighting candles, here's a thing Errol Morris wrote about the benefits of cursing the darkness. He is a funny doughnut-eater.

sometimes

Sometimes, when I arrive home & chuck my bike on my shoulder & run up my stairs, when I catch my breath & my eyes fall on the Motobecane ... sometimes, I decide I should just yank that old whitewall off it that very instant. I should put on the matching blue-striped tire &, while I'm at it, I could probably stand to patch up one of the old 27x1-1/2s I've got lying around so that I have a spare but, wouldn't you know it, I need it now, so wasn't that a lucky thing. Then I look up & see that it's 2:45 in the morning, & I wonder if my roommates think I'm crazy.

And then I look down at my grease-stained fingers. I look at the TWO tire levers I've broken in an effort to get that damned ancient tire off (it was utterly ossified), & I look at the shredded selfsame ossified tire I eventually sliced off with an x-acto blade. Sometimes, I smile a little & I think, "No. They don't think anything about my sanity. They know."

writing about reading

My sister is a great reader. She's really good at it. What makes her a great reader, though, is not her commitment to reading only great works, as determined by those who purport to know such things. She's great at it because she does it a lot. All three of us do. We come by it honestly.

Our childhood home has a wall of reference books. Flanking the 1978 edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica (which was regularly splayed out in layers on the kitchen table as we reference-hopped from one entry to another) are sections about Ireland, dance, medicine, art, physics, & other subjects. I remember wanting to re-shelve the medical illustration books in the art section because the transparent overlays were fascinating & beautiful &, to my young mind, not much different from the books of marble statues. The diagram of the respiratory system had as much aesthetic value as the Pieta. But don't tell the Pope I said that.

We also had subscriptions to a wide array of magazines. Our parents are good at many things, but one thing they're REALLY good at is being curious. They wanted to know more about what was going on in the world, everywhere, in as many realms as possible. National Geographic, The New Yorker, Reader's Digest, The Economist,  Mother Jones, the Atlantic Monthly, Ms. Magazine, Time, Popular Mechanics, WIRED, the National Enquirer.

(Wait, what?)

The National Enquirer. What in the world did they imagine they would learn from a crappy tabloid with cyclical headlines about Bat Boy? So many things, it turns out. In the absence of myths, in the absence of a shared lore, we have Chupacabra, Elvis is Alive!, & the Blue Dot. If I wish very hard while touching this one imperfectly-printed circle of pure cyan, will my wish come true? Maybe! Is the Loch Ness Monster the last living dinosaur? A Catholic priest in Scotland says yes! So while we'd anxiously await our turn at our favorite magazines (I admired Tina Brown's moxie at getting longer stories in The New Yorker, though some of them were a real slog for me), it was always a special treat to follow it up with the serialized fiction of the National Enquirer. And I am not ashamed.

I may be biased toward the tabloids, though. Our family was featured in the Star, when I was about three. The topic: Two doctor sisters with a unique solution to child care. (They job-shared. Whomever didn't go into the hospital that day took care of ... seven children. The dads helped, too, of course, but that wasn't as tidy a story in 1981.) It was August. I look uncomfortably warm in a terry-cloth jumper. I have a perfect bowl cut. And a book in my hands. Like I said, we come by it honestly.

After you put down your copy of the National Enquirer, which will make you a better writer if for no other reason than it will expand your notion of the absurd, I'd like to share ... a list of great works, as determined by people who purport to know such things. Our Favorite Authors' Favorite Books of 2011.

In particular, here's a link to Colm Tóibín's recommendations as a reminder to myself:
a.) Read Tóibín's collection of stories, "The Empty Family"; and
b.) Read Tóibín's recommendations, too: Jeffrey Eugenides' "The Marriage Plot" & Craig Koslofsky's "Evening's Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe". Actually, this whole list makes me want to attack a library. ("Room" by Emma Donoghue sounds excellent.)

holy-day cards

I call them holiday cards here, though they may feature a Christmas tree or a Menorah or a Celtic (Pagan) cross or a snowy, secular Yosemite. I call them holiday cards because they arrive at the end of the year, & as we draw nearer to the marker between one year & the next, it's a convenient time to reflect on the good stuff & the bad stuff & to think about what we hope will come. It's something to do with the Solstice — the turning from a time of darkness to a time of bounty, of light, of hope. There's something holy about that.

[It could be argued that this turning from a time of darkness to a time of light happens every single day. What a holy day, Tuesday! But that is another post for another day.]

Earlier today, my friend Joe Anthony expressed his frustration & also his joy surrounding the holiday card tradition. He said he thinks the tradition is "stupid, shallow, & wasteful", yet still it makes him immensely happy. I agree: The tradition can be stupid, shallow, & wasteful ... if there's no thought put into it. But it can also be incredibly rewarding, both for the person who sends the card & the person who receives it.

I don't make holiday cards. I make cards (tiny books, more like) whenever the mood strikes me, unattached to holy days. Sometimes, it happens in July. Or April. Or September, or January, ... or December. I love giving them, & I love receiving them. The best card I ever got was bought from a store, probably years before it was sent. It was a Thank You card. It arrived on my birthday. I've moved at least six times since the receipt of that card, but I have it still. On the inside of this Thank You card were the following words:

"I didn't have a birthday card in my files for you, so I'm taking this opportunity to thank you for being a wonderful daughter. I'm proud of you. Love, Dad."

Read the first part of the first sentence, & you'll see an admission: Every other year, he has pulled a card with the word "Birthday" somewhere on it from a file, signed it, & mailed it off. There's a cheapness to that, a wastefulness, a shallowness. But keep reading, & (if you're me) you'll break down into a mess of tears, in public, as your father tells you the one thing you ever really wanted to hear from him. "I'm proud of you." Holy crap, Dad.

It doesn't matter to me if you spent days seeking out a card that better words your feelings than you ever could, or if you found the blankest of blank cards & wrote just the two things you needed to say, or if you hand-crafted a tiny novella & stitched the pages together with gold thread. Sincerity, gratitude, & love are never wasteful, never shallow, never cheap. I understand what you mean, Joe, about the potential for this tradition to be sad & sorry & small. And I understand, also, your joy at exploring the other end of this tradition's potential. I'm with ya. Get out the pens.

fail harder

Once upon a time, I participated in a wacky advertising collective called WK12. Wieden+Kennedy 12 is "an experiment, disguised as an agency, disguised as an ad school." We made things on behalf of brands, in order to help those brands speak more truthfully, more honestly, about themselves. It felt more like art school — incredibly intellectually rigorous art school that allowed (demanded) that we come up with six different formal executions before we started working on any of them. We used to have to come up with a list of a hundred ideas. We became idea machines. (Not all of the ideas were good.)

But it wasn't art school. We were in the business of communication. The froofie way of describing what we did is how I stated it above. The more straightforward way: We were selling stuff. Good stuff, for sure, but it cannot be denied that we were coming up with pieces of communication in the service of a product. Or an idea. Or an event. In doing that, it's important to be clear, concise, & direct. You cannot obscure your meaning. You can be poetic, but you must be succint.

This past spring, the current class of WK12 held an art show, inviting all students past & present to submit something. The theme of the show was "Fail Gloriously", a riff on the Fail Harder idea. Failing isn't always bad. Failing teaches you things. Failure is not something to be feared. It happens when you aim high & when you take risks, both of which are admirable things to do. It's what you do after you fail that makes the difference. And shit, if you aim high & then you fail big, you already know how to aim high again, right? It's not so hard the second time around. And that time, you might succeed big. I'm just saying.

Here's what I wrote:

The only books I've typeset, printed, trimmed, & bound by hand this whole year were requests for transfer from the coffee shop at which I currently work to another one.

Now, that's failure. On a bunch of levels. I love to make books — small, folded paper or hand-bound, printed or hand-written, with a cover or without. I love laying out type, I love folding, I love binding. It's a perfect little joy of a thing to hold in your hands. But I'd somehow allowed myself to believe that I was too busy or too tired or too ... something ... to do this thing that I loved. Another failure: I had attended this prestigious school, been under the guidance of some brilliant thinkers, been exposed to some of advertising's most influential & powerful people ... & now I work at a coffee shop. On paper, that looks like failure. (Off paper: The benefits of not working a 60-70 hour workweek cannot be overstated; Intelligentsia is doing incredible work for global sustainability & development, which is something I prize highly in an employer; & I really, really, really like coffee). So I made a piece which, not coincidentally, read like a book — multiple pages of text printed on transparencies mounted on a backing of shellacked, hand-lettered wood. And just yesterday, after the receipt of a piece of ancient technology that will speed up my process considerably, I re-did it. I ripped off the transparencies & painted the two pages of text right onto the wood. One on top of the other. It's aesthetically wayyyyy more pleasing than transparencies. And, it's a better failure.

Because you can't read it.

"A Failure of Communication", 2011. Acrylic & shellac on wood.

The result of submitting the piece to the show this summer was my name in a catalogue, a great compliment from the current director of the school, & a commitment to never again de-prioritizing the things that I love. And I started making books again. If I have a reason to write something down, I make it into a book. I made a shopping-list book once. I left it on a grocery store shelf. I hope someone found it. Because it was made outta love.

wheat trouble

I'm sitting here, drinking a cup of Kenya/Ethiopia coffee (I didn't have enough of the Gichathaini for a full cup, so I supplemented it with some old Yirgacheffe I had lying around), marveling at how good I feel. I woke up rested, calm, & happy. I have energy, & I have the inspiration to get up & do the things that I want to do (like, say, write). I feel very, very good.

This is in contrast to just a few days ago. I was downright giddy. All the time. I smiled at strangers, my days were a frenzy of activity & good will, & I was remarkably uninhibited. It felt like I was a little bit drunk, all of the time. It startled me, frankly. It felt good, but it was unnerving. I kept stating it: "Hi! I feel giddy. How are you?"

Fortunately, I wasn't actually drunk, & I decided to use this hiccup of good feeling wisely. I used this newfound energy not in making things (I have a few art projects in various stages of completion & a book to write), but in setting up the proper conditions to create better, later on. I didn't believe that this uplift in spirits & productivity was going to last, so I figured I'd better prepare. And I was right — it didn't last. But this is a good thing. One can't be drunk all the time.

Well. One can. But it's not recommended.

"So what changed? Why the giddiness?" Well, thanks for asking. Before The Giddiness, I stopped eating wheat. My family is Irish, if that wasn't patently obvious. People of Northern European descent are more apt than others to develop something called celiac disease (they aren't born with it — my mom developed it in her fifties). The short version of celiac disease is, when I eat wheat, an enzyme in my person modifies some proteins in said wheat, & my immune system is all just like "WHAT, NO." My immune system then goes about fighting those proteins as though they were foreign bodies, like it would fight a virus. The crux is in the modification. People without celiac disease don't modify that protein, & they go about their doughnut-eatin' ways. (Poor saps.) People with celiac disease, in contrast, feel like all of their systems are just a little bit depressed. This is because they are. Their immune system is taking up much of the body's energy to fight this "virus". They experience fatigue, stomach upset, & lowered mood — everything from crankiness to mild depression. To keep with the booze analogy, I felt like I had a teensy, tiny hangover. All of the time. But since it got progressively worse over time, I didn't notice. I kept re-setting what "normal" meant. But there came a point when "normal" felt so ... abnormal, that I decided to do an experiment.

The experiment is still in the works. I'm simply & only cutting wheat out of my diet for a while, to see what happens. The Giddiness happened, but it's ebbing, & now I feel merely very good. Also of note: The emergence of The Giddiness doesn't necessarily mean that I have developed celiac disease. It means that I might. It's possible I can stave it off, if I cut wheat out now. Conveniently, the treatment is the same: Don't eat wheat. The difference is in the degree of terrible I will feel if I do eat wheat. If I stave off the disease but then at some point eat wheat unknowingly, I will feel down & gross & cranky for a small time. If I keep eating wheat until I develop celiac disease, then at some point eat wheat unknowingly, I will feel terrible. Maybe for days. So, y'know ... I should just stop eating wheat now.

"A stitch, in time, saves nine." Or so the kids say. But man — I'm gonna miss you, doughnuts.

learning how to breathe

Three nights a week, I finish up work after the last train leaves. And so I drink sixteen ounces of sparkling water, saddle up, & hit the road. It's just shy of eleven miles from Old Pasadena to Angeleno Heights. It's no century, but it's long enough for me to notice a few things along the way. Like breathing.

I used to be a ballet dancer. One thing I learned through dance is the importance of using my breath in exercise — that the pattern of my breathing could work with me or against me. Let's say I'm doing small jumps (petit allegro*). It feels right to inhale as I jump up, then exhale as I land, with every small jump. It's what my body wants to do, to maintain a perfect one-to-one ratio of jumps to breaths. But the jumps are so fast that I can't get enough air in my lungs if I stick to the tempo. It's not efficient. And when you're performing as one of the Cygnets in Swan Lake, the number one aces top thing you can do to not suffer the fate of Moira Shearer is be efficient. (The number two thing you can do is stay perfectly, exactly in time with the music alongside the three other dancers; if you don't, you'll accidentally kick one of them, ruining the performance, & they will drag you backstage & murder you.)

I'm riding along Fair Oaks, not paying attention to much, when I sneeze. Twice. (I always sneeze in pairs.) I've just expelled all the air from my lungs, so I take a monstrous breath**. And then I let it out. It takes me two 360º revolutions of my pedals to exhale. And it feels pretty good. I slip into shallow breathing again (more or less one inhale-exhale couplet per 360º pedal revolution), but I notice that it feels ... not as good. I breathe slowly again. One full revolution to breathe in, one full revolution to breathe out, so half the speed. Then I inhale slower: once per every TWO full revolutions (& exhale at the same rate). And I keep at it for a while. And it feels amazing. Meanwhile, I notice that, with my current gear ratio, my breathing is just a tiny bit faster than my legs, which means my legs are constantly trying to speed up, to make my cadence match my breath. Which, coincidentally, is the same thing as going faster***. And wouldn't you know it, while I'm focusing on my breathing & my legs are focusing on my lungs, it's easier & more efficient to stay in the saddle instead of standing up, which means I'm using more of my legs, which makes them go faster, which makes me able to slow down my breath even more.

Then it gets fun. So two full revolutions per inhale (then two again per exhale) feels good, but what about two & a half? Two revolutions are easily split into four parts (right-left-right-left), so I just add one. Right-left-right-left-right on the inhale, then left-right-left-right-left on the exhale****. Then I let my cadence & my breathing get out of sync for a bit as I force my lungs to slow down & I try for three revolutions. I become a monster. I tear down hills, I annihilate corners, I chew up the road, & out of nowhere emerges the intersection of Figueroa & Cypress. 

I can't believe I didn't know this. I mean, I knew this once. But I didn't translate it. Did you know this? For me, it's a revelation, a minor miracle, a marvel of physiology, & the most obvious thing in the world. I feel silly & proud at the same time. And oxygen-drunk. It's cool stuff, that oxygen. You should try it.

———————————————————

* "Petit allegro" — I know, I know, the first word is French, & the second word is Italian. That's what happens when French dance people name stuff using Italian music-notation descriptions. (There's "grand allegro", too.)

** A beast of a gasp.
*** This is where the analogy with dance breaks down. You can't — shouldn't — dance any faster than the music tells you to dance. But you can adjust your breath all the same.

**** Is there a less clunky way of describing the details of one's cadence? I hope so. 

i quit

There are things that we do that we're proud of, & there are things that we do that we are not proud of. For the past ten years, I have gone back & forth, caring that I did something of which I wasn't proud vs. not caring. Does that make sense? No, right? So I did something about it.

I quit smoking.

Below is a pretty good list of reasons I might have quit:

· I taste things, professionally. And smoking gets in the way of my ability to taste things. And smell things. It prevents me from being as good at my job as I could be.
· Meanwhile, to be seen hampering my ability to taste lessens others' faith in how well I do my job. Employers, colleagues & customers, some of whom ask me on the regular for advice on coffees.
· Continuing to smoke — choosing to smoke — while knowing full well that it brings about an early, painful death is basically saying that I want to die. But the thing is, I don't want to die.
· It lessens my enjoyment of other things that are important in my life. Like food, coffee, biking, breathing, walking, singing, & feeling good.

But those aren't the reasons that I quit. I quit because I wasn't proud of it. And I would like to be proud of every damned thing that I do. I am not proud that I started when I was so young. I'm not proud that I gave money to the tobacco industry, on & off, for fifteen years. I am not proud that I allowed myself to be complacent when I knew it was out of step with what I believed in. And one day, I realized just exactly how un-proud I was, & from that moment forward I didn't want anything to do with it anymore.

So far, quitting has not been difficult. In fact, it's been remarkably easy. Perhaps this has to do with my reason for quitting — I'm not withholding something from myself that I want to have. I just don't want to want it any more. And that feels incredible.

coffee, bikes, art

I often moodle around with the idea of integrating the things I care about into something more cohesive. I don't compartmentalize well — I tend to do the hell out of one thing, often to the exclusion of others. (Recently, I've been doing the hell out of coffee but trying to keep my fingers in the pool of design, writing, & of course bikes.)

I also wonder if integrating the things I care about into one superthing is just a lazy way of changing the definition of a situation into not-a-problem rather than solving the problem.

And then I wonder if that's bad.

My sister, who is amazing, moved to Cambodia (!) when she was 25 (!!!) & started a non-profit micro-loan organization primarily for disabled people, who are severely discriminated against in Cambodia. (I could write a book about that.) The grass-roots non-profit, internationally funded & locally staffed, had a café as its public-facing element. You could help out by eating a cookie, or you could sit with that cookie & learn more, see where your own skills fit in to their current projects, or you could donate a few riel. She integrated cooking (specifically baking), human rights, Cambodia, & her incredible ability to talk to anyone about anything, into something truly groundbreaking. She changed the way people thought about charity, not to mention helped countless people get back on their feet with their own good ideas & their own two hands. Or one hand, depending on their disability.

But she didn't study baking, she worked at a bakery in college. She didn't study international relations, she took a vacation & fell in love with the region. What she did study was philosophy ... which included a lot of reading & writing about ethics & law, which is important for human rights & advocacy work. And she might be the most empathetic person I've ever met. She didn't really have a plan, not when she first visited Cambodia. But she was prepared when an opportunity presented itself, & she was willing to take a risk. Or nine.

Katie O'Shea c. January 2003, Casablanca Bar (Sihanoukville, Cambodia) — the last time I integrated all my interests, which were: Cambodia, talking to people, books, alcohol, art, comics, & being annoyed by a guy named Hunter (who took this photograph).

Now, I don't see myself changing the world by starting a micro-loan organization in a third-world country anytime soon, but I can take some cues from her, from how she used her many talents & skills for something cohesive & ground-breaking. By doing what I love, all of the time, & well, & being prepared, & then entertaining crazy notions at least as long as it takes to see whether they're viable. Then moving forward with them, or throwing them away.

I may be writing fewer e-mails soon. I may write here more, to update people on what I am & am not doing all in one go. Or I may drop off the face of the earth for a short while as I figure all this out. Even that's not sorted. I've got some work to do. But I've got no plans. Not yet.

pace & media

I've noticed that, now that my profession keeps me on my feet, & now that so many elements of what I do are extremely time-sensitive, to the second, I take much greater advantage of mobile communication. Much of this is because I'm not in front of a computer for 8+ hours a day anymore. (Unless I so choose, such as today, when I easily spent four hours on a computer before work and easily again four hours afterward — but there was a seven-hour gap in between!) And much of it's to do with the media itself changing, offering me faster, broader, richer* ways to communicate with people, near & far.

* Sort of.

But mobile communication being shorter & more cumbersome than other kinds I've been using for twenty years, I wind up being a lot more terse. I play with words less because I have less time & space to play, & the physical action of writing itself is not as fluid. I had hoped I would fill up this space here with all that extra play-time, as though I had some kind of writing quota. Six weeks in, & this is turning out not to be the case. But I'm experimenting (see previous post) with some things flickr lets me do, such as e-mail a photo from the road that'll post straight to here. While I figure most likely it will just make me more terse more often, it may also get me comfortable enough writing on the phone to open the floodgates a little bit there** as well as here (I'm on the PowerBook G4). That, or I'll never use it at all, & I'll merely commit to sitting myself in front of the G4 screen for greater periods of time***, preferably with the internet button switched to "off."

** Not while on bar. Don't be silly.

*** A benefit to devoting time & energy to writing vs. writing on the road is a better articulated, more considered piece of writing at the end. There's only so much nuance of meaning you can jam into 140 characters. I could also just chuck blogging altogether & write more short stories, which you're probably in if you're reading this. I'm kidding! I write fiction, jeez.

Good night,
Katie

two rules

The Intelligentsia Venice party was Friday. There were some times leading up to it when we looked around at each other & thought "Wow ... There's no fucking way we're going to pull this off."

Then, we pulled it off.

The lesson: Trust Leonard E. Bernstein.

No, just kidding. The real lesson is something I learned in Wieden+Kennedy 12, in which there were exactly two rules:

1. Keep your work tight. I mean, like, really really tight. Keep your eye on the prize, & care a lot about what you do, & have lofty goals, & take great pains to achieve them. Maybe be an iconoclast. Something to think about.

2. But don't be a jerk about it.

· Everybody's human, fighting great battles, trying their best but with their own understanding of what "best" is, which might not be yours.

· You're human, too, and you might fuck up, so you might consider getting over yourself. Everyone else already has.

· Collaborating is cool. Sometimes. We collaborated while studying & practicing drink construction, while hammering out the details of workflow, while figuring out where the heck to put all our stock. WHERE.

· After you collaborate & think hard, together, then go back in there & work harder & suck it up & don't start trouble. Now is the time to be open to some hierarchy & authority in the service of accomplishing common goals.

Anyway, I write now not really to tell people what to do, even though I kind of just did. (I find that stuff helpful, but it's certainly not the only way to go about things.) Mostly, I write to take an opportunity to swear more than is strictly necessary (hey Mom). And I write to compile some information about the shop, to lay out what we've all been aiming towards during this insanely insane process. And why I'm such a fan of where I work and its people. And to relay my excitement about continuing to work hard and be nice to people in the shop, both co-workers and customers alike. So:

SOME LINKS ABOUT THE SHOP
Intelligentsia's own write-up about the endeavor, from the Intelligentsia website.
The Intelli.LA blog about all things Intelligentsia in Los Angeles.
A write-up of how the shop will function, from the Los Angeles Times.
An interesting story about one of the espresso machines, from the New York Times.

SOME LINKS ABOUT INTELLIGENTSIA, AS A COMPANY, AND ITS LEVEL OF AWESOME, WHICH IS HIGH
A little about Direct Trade. (Clicking on "CRITERIA," "TRAVEL," & "FAQ" just below the image yields more information.)
How we get our coffee. (There's "BUYING," "CUPPING," & "ROASTING & PRODUCTION" sections, too.)
And this is pretty cool:


SOME PHOTOGRAPHS
Here are some images of what our training was like, from wonderfully talented photographer & art nerd Phillippé Kim. WK12 people, if you're out there: Phill is our Young Guy with the Fresh Perspective. Unrelated: He speaks English, Korean, & Portuguese. Fluently.

AND FINALLY
An article on the opening party itself, during which I brewed a lot of tea, from the LA Weekly.

Some people (yo, Dad) have expressed concern about why I would cancel a bike trip to Austin, put the brakes on half-formed plans to move to San Francisco, & withdraw 24 (!) applications to advertising agencies in favor of a whole new industry. I hope this helps explain some of that. Kind of like how I left my boyfriend (sorry Steve), quit architecture, & moved to Portland for WK12: I had been given the opportunity to change the way things are done, for the better. To some things, you just don't say no.

Love,
Katie

making stuff, including but not limited to coffee

A few days ago, I alluded to setting up the conditions properly for me to make stuff. One thing I'll be making is coffee. I mean, more than I already do (a half press a day, no more). I'll be making it at Intelligentsia, at their soon-to-be-opened Venice shop.

My introduction to Intelligentsia was with my friend Beth, from Chicago but visiting from Brooklyn, who insisted we drive 15 miles out of our way for it. I didn't understand. She picked up four pounds of beans alongside her brewed coffee (for friends). When I finished my cup, I picked up two pounds (f0r me, me mememmeme ME). Sean Bonner put it well when he said "[...] Intelligentsia will change your entire perspective on what coffee should taste like." Yep. Here's why:

" ... We adhere to the philosophy that the compassionate treatment of people and the environment inevitably yields higher quality. So whether you are enjoying a cup in our store, in your favorite café or restaurant, or in the peaceful confines of your home, we are certain that you will taste the difference that care makes." — Doug Zell, Emily Mange, and Geoff Watts (from the Intelligentsia website)

That's, like, one-thousandth of the Intelligentsia story. But it's the pith. So when I heard they were hiring, back in November, I applied with a quickness. I was too late for that round, but they had some delays. When things got moving again, they still had my resume. YOW.

Us future baristas will go through a rigorous, weeks-long training period at their roasting facilities in Glassell Park. They will teach us all there is to konw about coffee such that we care the hell out of it (more than we already do) so that we care the hell out of preparing it. I'm excited about how much I'll learn and the great people with whom I'll work. And they're doing some REALLY interesting things with interior & industrial design for the joint. Did they start this venture just for me? I think so.

"What the Yirgacheffe, Kate. What about all those years in design & advertising? Are you throwing that all away?" Of course not. I'm used to working 50-, 60-, 70-hour weeks, first at Cook+Fox, then in WK12, then at 72andSunny. I never worked these hours on anyone's urging but my own. I just ... really ... like working a lot, and I tend to choose jobs that reward that. (I come by it honestly; my parents both work hard because they love what they do.) And, I'm one of those freakpots that sleeps 4 or 5 hours a night. I'm going to have a lot more time than I'm used to, and a lot of creative energy, just kinda lying around. I have about six projects lined up.

It sounds like it's going to be pretty great. I will be working very hard (and I know this — I'm not taking the job lightly) for a company I respect and admire. And I'll be making my own stuff, which will also be hard, especially as some of the ideas I have require learning new skills. But I thrive on that momentum. And I can't wait to start.

two months

And nothing written here. I apologize to all my regular readers — both of you. I've been busy.

I revised the chart. I added usage.

Then I sent it around (with cover letters and resumes) to all the agencies I didn't apply to before.

Which was, like, every agency in town, turns out. (I applied for in-house positions and to individual projects before, with some overtures to agencies but not many.)

The next logical step for me after 72 was more agency work, but I avoided it. I applied to any job that wasn't advertising that used my skills. (It was interesting, the gigs I got, and I have some good stories.) And, I moodled around and made some things.

Probably the best compliment I ever got was when WK12 director Jelly Helm called me an impressive weirdo. I've got some smarts and talents, skills and ideas. If I have it, I spend a lot of time planning, making charts, writing stories, fleshing them out, drawing stuff, editing everything, then putting it all down. Then picking it back up. Some advice I got from this same creative director was follow what you do when no one's looking. Which is write/draw/think/plan/edit/put it down/pick it up.

So I'm doing that.

I have a plan for how to realistically do this. I won't talk about the specifics until things are nailed down, but let it be known that you will think I'm fucking nuts. I know this. And I might be. But I might also be happy. And that's important.

Meanwhile, enjoy the chart.

Love,
Katie

... and picking stuff up

I mean, I'm not jettisoning EVERYTHING.

I've learned some important stuff that maybe I shouldn't jettison. Do you know how important it is to shake the printer toner? I do. What about using DEET? If you're in a third-world country, use DEET. (Or if you work in advertising.)

This, my response to a request for a brief cover letter. My resume followed, though I'm thinking of bulking this page up, making it more informative, and skipping the formal resume altogether.

hard work

I just wrote all day long, and now I'm exhausted and hungry and I could use a drink and a nap and some water (I'm currently drinking a lot of water) and I'M TIRED.

Holy shit.

This doesn't feel bad. It doesn't feel bad at all. It's very strange.

wups

Oh, hello.

ONE DAY after I posted about all the things I've done with my bike, I jumped on an eastbound Wilshire bus, rode to Figueroa, hopped off, checked the address of my friend's birthday, and then noted, calmly, that my bike was missing.

And by "missing" I mean "no longer with me" as in "still on the bus." But it took me a while to realize this; my mind cycled* through assuming someone had stolen it in front of my face, to thinking I had left it unlocked around the corner, to realizing that I had just done something really quite dumb. Then I became significantly less calm.

[* Sorry.]

It takes three days to process items left on the bus. It was late enough that I (and the MTA) consider it lost on Wednesday. Wednesday + 3 + weekend = Monday.

In the meantime, I'm taking the advice of this guy and focusing on the things I can control:

Adding non-advertising work to my design portfolio
Getting better sleep
Changing my health insurance
Replacing these jeans
Flossing

And taking the eponymous Squeaky Nishiki in for a re-fit:

Removing the fenders
Replacing 27" wheels with 700x23 wheels with a fixed hub
Removing the rear cassette
Adding an appropriately-toothed rear cog and lockring
Removing 1 front chainring
Adjusting/replacing brake levers
Removing some chain links
Raising the seat post and replacing the saddle

... But I'm not going crazy with the re-fit. I might leave it on a bus, after all.

mind-blowing conversations

Tim: "Why don't you teach dance?"
Katie: "... Yeah, why DON'T I teach dance?"

I was a dancer, in high school and a little after. A serious dancer. Performing-lead-roles-at-the-age-of-15 serious. Missing-prom serious. I wasn't going to take the SAT because I figured I wouldn't need to. (Then I won a National Merit Scholarship and figured maybe I should.) I quit at 20 to study architecture in New York City, a city with which I had fallen in love during my dance training.

In the spirit of using the whole caribou, so to speak, and forgive me for using the phrase "using the whole caribou," not to mention the phrase "so to speak," wouldn't it be nice to put some of that training to use? I mean crap, I trained for years and at some damned fine schools. And what am I doing with that? Nothing. Wasteful, really. And selfish.

Thanks, Tim, for pointing that out. No really. You're awesome.

(He is.)