Author: Dia

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Morning Walk July 27, 2017 Salesforce

Today I’m wearing purple, why wait for old age?

A man in blue scrubs, a surgeon perhaps, rides his skateboard across the street, his helmet in his hand.

Above us the beautiful and iconic skyline grows under the crystalline sky.

Two brand new towers, the two tallest in the most expensive neighborhood, in the most expensive city in the nation, glint in the sunlight. Soon, two more will join them and the city will be forever altered.

Collectively they’re called the Salesforce Towers. Conceived, owned and built by a company most people have probably never heard of, Salesforce almost certainly knows a lot about you.

This one company, which didn’t exist 20 years ago, is now one of the most highly valued cloud computing companies in the world.

And their main source of revenue is their widely used Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.

CRM software takes information on individuals from many different sources: email, websites, social media, telephone, live chat, everything, then puts it all together into digestible bits that can be easily used.

These databases are private. You can’t access them, amend them or delete them. You can file a Freedom of Information Act paper to discover them or call someone to find out how it’s being used. It’s all about you, but you don’t have any rights to it.

The sunlight glints off the silvery structure built on details of the personal lives of everyday folks, and I can’t help but notice how much it looks like a bullet.

What did you see?

#mymorningwalk

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Morning Walk July 12, 2017 – Men

Today my path twists through several groups of men.

Men wearing safety yellow vests as they gesticulate and sigh and look about with knowing eyes;

Men wearing matching oxfords with indistinct logos, jeans, and precision cut hair;

Heavily-muscled men in a small, closed circle wearing black t-shirts, black pants, carrying belts with guns and sticks, with pockets that I envy.

None of them seem to see me.

Beyond them all, a pop-up home and refrigerator block the sidewalk. The fridge is empty, ready for the daily bread, but a cheery, disheveled face, still sleepy and slow, pokes out of the door and smiles at me.

What did you see?

#mymorningwalk

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Morning Walk July 13, 2017 – Back to Bad

7/13/17

It could be February for all the grey cool sky and bluish fog that envelops the edges of the city, but the air is still and the streets quiet.

A piebald pigeon enthusiastically tosses a small piece of bread onto the sidewalk repeatedly in an effort to get crumbs to break off it.

A few feet away, two more pigeons poke at the creamy innards of a crushed peanut butter jar and I am reminded of a performance art piece I saw years ago that ended with the artist covered in peanut butter and bird seed.

I don’t have an affinity for that sort of art, but I do like peanut butter very much.

Further on, I pass a man cradling a pipe, huddled in a marble tiled doorway.

Above him, a billboard showcasing several yellow Minions encourages everyone to "Go Back to Bad"

I walk on, and as I cross the street to the station, there’s Gru, in real life, walking next to me.

What did you see?

#mymorningwalk

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Morning Walk July 25, 2017 – Fortune Teller

A man, about 30, wearing red running shorts, a white short sleeve button down shirt and a teal tie, keeps his head down. His brow knitted together, his mouth a frown and his jaw tightly clenched. The laces of his shoes match his tie.

A woman, dressed in layers of colorful but threadbare fabric, her ruffled skirt pulled up to her knees, sits on a low wall rolling a cigarette on top of a tarot card.

Her full face is done in heavy makeup with a thick blue eyeliner and shadow, and her lips are a deep ruby red. Blush pools in the crevices of her cheeks.

Her long hair is piled on top of her head in a messy bun with at least half a dozen Chinese hair sticks poking out at random intervals.

She glances up as I pass and flashes a gap toothed grin. I wonder, if I asked, would she tell me my fortune.

What did you see?

#mymorningwalk

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Morning Walk July 23, 2017 – Olympic Race Walking

A slow start with seriously achy muscles leads to hectic morning made more so when I can’t find my train pass.

As I step onto the sidewalk, I transform into the lead in the Olympic Women’s Racewalking qualifying event, imagining a pack of highly trained athletes behind, pushing me toward ever faster speeds.

Mind over muscles, I tell myself, as my quads and back screech in protest.

My arms swing wildly, and I try to emulate the body form I’ve seen racewalkers take: back straight, move from the hips…I’m glad I wore my most comfortable shoes as the people and buildings blur past me.

I imagine I look quite serious and earnest, but the reality is probably probably much closer to the Monty Python sketch on Silly Walks, especially with my bright anime hair.

Door to door it’s 1.12 miles, I make it in 16 minutes and find a seat in my favorite car with minutes to spare.

That qualifies.

What did you do?

#mymorningwalk

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Morning Walk July 14, 2017 – Age of Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs are on my mind as I start my walk today and step over a stenciled stegosaurus Those magnificent beasts of old that ruled this Earth for millennia and arguably still do.

Two hundred years ago, dinosaurs had less relevance than they do today when the search, recovery, commoditization and use of the fuel derived from their rotted and precious flesh drives nations and nature to war and ruin.

Where would we be without their transformed bodies to fuel our daily lives?

Will they still be relevant in a hundred years? Will we?

The sun is bright, so I keep my gaze down and a tag line on a discarded plastic container catches my eye: “Preserve Yourself”

I tighten my stomach, throw back my shoulders, wipe the water that won’t stop flowing from my eyes and walk on.

What did you see?

#mymorningwalk

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My Morning Walk March 17, 2017 – Cafe is Closed

While walking past a corner cafe, I encountered a flustered and frustrated woman.

“Excuse me,” she blocked my path, so I stopped and gave her my full attention, “do you know where I can get a coffee or something warm to drink?”

I pointedly glanced at the cafe’s neon “Open” sign not three feet from where we stood before returning my focus to her next words.

“I thought I knew…but dammit, there’s just nothing around! I hate this city…Do you have any idea?”

I turned my head once more toward the sign before replying, “I’m afraid I don’t. Good luck” and continued on my way.

I have learned the hard lesson, many times over, that you do not argue with other people’s realities. They have to be willing to give up their illusions before they can see what is right in front of them.

We each impose our own views on the world around us, and that view is filtered through our own experience, emotions and interpretation of events.

These experiences are sometimes so vastly different, that they only barely share common ground.

This is why we have Science and the scientific method.

It’s not perfect, but it’s the best way we’ve found to discover the overlapping Truths in the world we all experience.

To benefit fully though, the scientific method requires that each individual be willing to question deeply held beliefs and assumptions, even those that are sacred and most basic, and give them up, if the evidence points that way.

We have to be willing to be wrong. Sometimes embarrassingly so. And being wrong is hard. It’s even harder to admit it. Pride and Fear get in the way.

And yet, the benefits are great. Freedom, clarity, and access to the most beautiful, wondrous experiences of living life free from the shackles of the very same Fear and Pride that would keep us all small.

Because the more we confront those emotions, collectively and individually, the easier they are to thwart.

It’s simple to do: look for ways you might be wrong. Find the arguments that your opponents champion that have merit without emotion, and perhaps most importantly, notice the presence of fear, anger or pride in your own position.

Where those emotions reside, so do lies, deceits, and obfuscation.

(Almost*) No one ever died of embarrassment, but lies and deceptions have unmatched powers of destruction.

Live in the truth.

#mymorningwalk

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Morning Walk July 26, 2017

Karl the Fog wraps the city in grey

And dampens the streets and the sky.

But the lights get much brighter

The air feels much lighter

Every time that he happens by

A man sits at rest in his chair with his bird,

A cheerfully colored McCaw.

His eyes are a flutter,

His hair is a mess,

There are crumbs on his pants and his shirt.

High above him, a bear, filled with worries and care,

Contemplates jumping into the dirt.

A woman up front totters freely and sways

as she walks upon too high of heels

Under banners that wave

selling products we crave

Believing we win all the deals.

What did you see?

#mymorningwalk

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Morning Walk July 25, 2017

A man, about 30, wearing red running shorts, a white short sleeve button down shirt and a teal tie, keeps his head down. His brow knitted together, his mouth a frown and his jaw tightly clenched. The laces of his shoes match his tie.

A woman, dressed in layers of colorful but threadbare fabric, her ruffled skirt pulled up to her knees, sits on a low wall rolling a cigarette on top of a tarot card.

Her full face is done in heavy makeup with a thick blue eyeliner and shadow, and her lips are a deep ruby red. Blush pools in the crevices of her cheeks.

Her long hair is piled on top of her head in a messy bun with at least half a dozen Chinese hair sticks poking out at random intervals.

She glances up as I pass and flashes a gap toothed grin. I wonder, if I asked, would she tell me my fortune.

What did you see?

#mymorningwalk