The Pull Of The Crowd Imagine that you’re walking down the street on a lazy, Sunday afternoon. Maybe you’re going to the mall, or to meet up with a friend for lunch. You’re in no hurry. You’ve walked down this street many times before; you know all the shops inside out. As you’re strolling down [...]
Make It Easy I used to go on these long bike rides a couple days a week after work, and even some longer ones on the weekend. After work I didn’t have much time, so I’d to either go on a loop, or go on a long up and back trip to some particular destination [...]
Showtime I wasn’t sure how this was going to work out. It sounded like such a good plan when we’d laid it all out. On paper. In the safety of our hotel room three hours earlier. Now it didn’t seem so easy. Not that we had any chance to back out. We had committed. We [...]
A Lesson Learned Once upon a time there was a gang of crows. They were adolescent crows, and had they lived in a “decent” neighborhood, they likely would still have been under the tutelage of their parents, teachers, and older siblings. But these crows were not. These crows had long been given up on by [...]
Self Interference Patterns Once I was walking down the street, and I bumped into this guy with this big, purple hat. It was kind of a fedora, but not quite. It was a very nice looking purple hat on an otherwise unremarkable wardrobe. The interesting thing about it was how it reflected the light. If [...]
Cycles Sun Moon Fire Water Tree Metal Earth These are the seven Chinese characters used to depict the days of week, starting from Sunday. I find it interesting that the character for Sunday in Chinese, and the root word for Sunday in English both mean “The Sun.” Likewise for Monday, (moon day) and “The Moon.” [...]
Stretch Your Mind I met a friend for lunch the other day. Not really a planned thing, we had bumped into each other a couple days earlier and had made tentative plans on the spot. Kind of like “I’m gonna be here, at this time,” kind of thing. So anyway, he was telling me about [...]
Why You Should Stop And Smell The Roses I was reading this essay the other day. One of those things where you start to read this, and the more you read, the more you get interested. But then when you finish reading this you aren’t really sure what you just read. Which is why I’m [...]
What’s In Your Head? I was listening to the radio the other night, on the Internet. I wasn’t sure what station it was, I was kind of flipping through the channels while I was doing other things. A song came on that I hadn’t heard in a while, “Tom Sawyer,” by Rush. The particular album [...]
Why It’s Ok To Lose Your Way Once there was a group of birds. They were the kind of birds that migrated quite a long distance every year. They crossed oceans, rivers, mountains, and large flat areas that took several days to cross. They would instinctively leave their homes once the cold air of the [...]