nixlate

nixlate @ 2007-09-11T14:23:00

2007-09-11T20:30:07Z

Working Draft 1: Home Again

True to the roots while I weed the tree.
Fostering new growth on the land that grew me.
Decifering the entangled mess of twisted paths.
Unraveling the experience from the theory I've had.

Remembering my people my family my pride.
Saturated in remeniscences of previous time.
Glancing upon fractures of memories.
Dancing on dark waters once swam.

These days strides replace steps.
Greater expanse of a Grown Stance.
Rising to a tier Deeper Farther Whole.
Focusing on sensation as I shed any fear.

I Jet across smooth waters.
New steam empowering an old machine.
As I see Mountains of waves on the horizon.
Building strength for challenges ahead.

I'll be arriving soon. Prepared. Ready.
And I will be me.

..............................

I sure as hell aren't a poet, but sometimes I enjoy stringing big words together in sucession. Call it how you will it's how I see it in my mind.

I have been consructing the resources I need to immerse myself in Fargo's scene. I now have 3 ubuntu machines. One smoking desktop system with some virtual boxes, One ubuntu server with a LAMP install, and one ubuntu notebook all VNC ready, almost all networked. Configuring things so that I can remotly access my systems. I still stand firm on my desire to live a traveling lifestyle, however I also understand much clearer now the requirements for such.

Networking in this small town is easy to do but hard to find. Not much to do unless you create the doing. Boredom and Loneliness fueled some creative solutions to daily activity. Excersize, Meditation, and Art Daily.

I sure do appreciate the silence of this city. It's nice to see nobody sometimes. Especially with a sky full of stars gleeming down.

Maxing myself out physically. Crosstraining is key in my regiment these days. Mentally and Physically. I am careful to let my body rebuild.

Artwork on the way.

Thats all I have to say.

Good day.

Creativity in education

2007-04-18T06:00:36Z

This speech was so on par with everything I keep writing about in my journal I had to share. He speaks of creativity in education and it's importance as we progress into this century:

http://www.eyelube.vidiac.com/video/e170122e-6566-42e6-8b2b-98f600357d10.htm

Website update

2007-04-13T22:36:35Z

Check this out after reading.

I decided to focus on fleshing out a concept for our Blab-lab logo. Our current logo resembles Best Buy too much for me and I don't believe it effectively carries our value system. It sort of resembles a price tag. Anyways, I spent last night and today consuming rediculous amounts of coffee and while sketching and drawing. This is my first well developed sketch. More to come as I hope my friends comment and suggest modifications. The drawing is completely open to reworking as I intended mostly just to get the ball rolling a bit. Please, Nik, Dan, Sheryl... I would like to see how you guys can take this farther, or come up with something else entirely. This design still doesn't quite catch all of the things I'd like, so I'll keep working.

Peace and enjoy the weather!

Bow to the monkey on the radio, for he is an amazing dj.

P.S. Check this out if you dig the doomtree. also read the reference page. good live tunes.

Coop'd but hold'n steady

2007-04-07T23:44:01Z

Welcome back cold, we love you very much. The icey Canadian winds challenge the Midleft sun once more and I can't help but be discouraged to venture out. Damn Fargo and it's flatness. No shelter but inside from the soul sucking Arctic bitterness that is delivered free of charge by our friendly jet stream. Seems weather.com agrees.

Thank god my brother has a treadmill. A good sprint every morning tends to keep my spirits up. How I long for the pedals. ooohyeah

I hope everyone else is finding relief somehow. I ache to meet up with my Minne colleagues. I have much to express and can't wait for a glass of dark rich Guatemalan brew and a tasty vegiwrap over a conversation shared with my friends at Hard Times. You know who you are punks, be ready.

Also, as I learn more and more of the BC and our friends to the North I'm tempted to challenge those winds and venture Northbound. Vancouver sounds sweet and I had no idea Calgary was so big. Interesting places. Anyone up for a long bike ride?

I can only relate to this song where I stand. Mineshaft @ http://www.myspace.com/dessadarling

In other news, Bless the many hours we spent brainstorming crazy concepts for Blab-lab. As I prepare proposals for several folks in Fargo, I look back and smile realizing how much of a positive impact they have made.

Anyone up for some e-collaboration?

Being around my brothers, big movie go'ers, every day I have ended up seeing a few flicks against my will (first I've seen in months). Grindhouse, Blades of Glory, and 300. I really liked 300, grindhouse wasn't shabby just long, and blades of glory.... the formula is dead to me.... Now when I watch movies I'm bored most of the way through and I can't help but watch other peoples reactions. People watching movies are more funny than the movies themselves. *chuckle*. You know what top tier movies are fucking stupid. Infested with ads, poluted with 'cop' out visuals, and not very interesting. Talk about the ultimate tainted creative market. Creativity fell off the wagon long ago and was brutally beaten with the big marketing stick. Not that they're all bad, but bloated, yes. *Phew* I'll relax a bit now.

The standard daily lives of Fargo are just too repetitious for me and I can't seem to find others with my crazy mindset to relate to.

I have however made some awesome connections. Art is my savior. Creativity my religion. And there is no shortage of folks practicing around here. Just gotta keep hunting I suppose.

Anywhooosit, just another day in the shoes of an Early.

To all of my friends enjoy the days as cold as they may be and strive to be the change you want to see!

Blueprint for a new tomorrow

2007-04-02T20:31:26Z

I was lucky enough to catch Blue print visiting on tour at a local pub in downtown Fargo. The show they put on was great. Even though the crowd was sub par, I was really impressed with the folks that showed up. There was a good balance. I hadn't heard too much of the Print before this show, of course on and off with the Rhymsayers and particularly in some battles I had heard.

What was most interesting here was the fact that once again I was able to catch a tight show in a low key bar with a manageable energetic crowd. I had the opportunity to talk directly with the artists, a luxury I'm not usually afforded in the Minne.

I think it's funny that so many Fargo people will venture the distance to the Cities just to catch a show however I'm not sure of how many would do the reverse. They are really missing out on the more intimate side of the scene. Fargo suites the job nicely in my opinion.

Coming up.....

Brother Ali
4/11 - Fargo, ND @ House of Rock

There for the willing. Check it out.

Snow day

2007-03-01T06:43:55Z

I got to enjoy a fantastic evening of sledding and snow soccer with my amigos. I'm really glad I got to experience that at least once this winter. Sort of surprises me that more people aren't excited about the snow. It seems to bring more dread than excitement. Personally I look forward to the days it dumps it heavy on us. More fun to drive, more fun to bike, sled you name it. Besides it's a good excuse to escape from the dwelling. Being stuck inside too long hurts the spirits and a good snowball fight is definitly a healthy and exciting alternative to sitting in front of the screen.

I hope there are plenty more days like this one.

Peace, Contentment, and Enlightenment

2007-02-27T00:14:31Z

So I woke up this morning feeling a little bit more awake as Nik (eleventyseven) graciously shared a scrumptious breakfast of pancakes, coffee and yogurt with grapes. Delicious. After grubbing on some huge flapjacks, Nik started drumming away. I sat back and observed. Listening to the vibrations, watching the motions, and reminiscing on recent days. The last two weeks have really opened my eyes wider than ever before. I feel more aware, more real. A bi product of this realism being a strange sort of contentment. The days are the same as they've always been, but now, I move to the beat of my own drum. I feel relaxed, refreshed, and ready to challenge the realms of reality.

I flow with a new stream of coherency which spawned on the day my great friend Dan (fortifiedi ) and is new perfect partner Sheryl (clocktrivia). I spent that day feeling the best I had in months. A peak of certain emotions I hadn't felt for quite a time. I was surrounded by really great people.

So I stood in the back room of their home, staring out into the great wide open. The sun pored through the branches. The weather was perfect; calm air, blue sky, shinning sun. I thought to myself how amazing it was that I ended up here. Everything else seemed trivial. These days are few and far between I thought. These are the days we strive for. To be invited to share this day with someone else I will forever cherish.

So I meditated that day, on the floor, listening to an amazing group of musicians; Jello Slave. That was the first day in my life that I felt I could let go and quoting a great prophet and musician, "I've been flying ever since". I felt free of time, free of worry, free of restraint. I spent the rest of that day living by the the words yet another amigo, Andrew L, shared with me "Live Sensationally".

Now moving away from that day was hard. The next day was definitly a challenge of great proportion. And I knew that evening that I would have to meditate hard and long. Never will I run from the evils. I sat and I focused on my feelings. I walked through the list of emotions I had remembered and I thought about them. I thought about them in as exactly what they were as emotions, chemical reactions, mental processes. Important indeed, but manifested and controllable. Content once again. Empowered by something I had never understood about myself.

So day three in this series I spent reflecting on the yin and yang that I had experienced. That course of events taught me how wide the threshold can be in such a short period of time. And again, I felt content.

Now, I couldn't just proceed with my days as I had before. Trying relentlessly to saturate. Now I had realized something that I will never forget. I realized balance. I realized how to guide before I step. I realized what trusting my intuition was doing. I realized how to let go and how to take control. When to ride and when to guide.

Realizing this pushed me to learn. So days I spent researching. Researching everything I could imagine. Keyword in that sentence is imagine. The spawn of new knowledge. Guided by what I was now beginning to see. Not understand but to see. That there are things we do every day, every millisecond that happen for a reason. What that reason I don't think we'll ever know. But what I do know, is that it ties us all together. It ties us together with each other and with nature. The reality is that we are all one.

I researched secrets, society, culture, color, symbols, language, math, science, religion. Those days I built the largest mindmap I have ever created, so perfect for it to be within the freemind. I would research, and then I would imagine. I would meditate to lift my mind away from boundaries and to realize these things I had researched. To put myself in other shoes, to focus in different light, or no light at all. I found that my mind could do some things that I had so many days ignored. I'm sure it's always been able, I just wasn't ready and willing.

So before I ramble too far. I need to make my point. Through these experiences, I confirmed something to myself that had been brewing amongst my friends for weeks. The idea to travel and the share. The idea to experience as much as possible, and to threw experience to chose to the best of our abilities. The take the concepts that we have forged through hundreds of hours of imagination and testing. To not only take Blab-lab mobile. But to minimize ourselves down to the level of least burden and most imagination. To take the ideas that hundreds of others I'm sure share, and to render them a reality. As one believes they will become. And this day I will tell you that there is hope. And we will be one of many spreading the word of this hope. Not forcing it, not throwing it, but sharing it. Via collaboration and creation. Creating things that have never been seen.

I want all of my friends to know. That this day is a good day, and no matter what happens as we embark upon the world as journeypersons, everything is always the same. We are all one and we are all connected. We are free.

Last, I will be enabling us with some powerful tools to realize these dreams. We will need to share our knowledge through the most powerful tool of our existence, communication. We will tap the languages of the ears eyes and fingers. And we will help others in their own quest.

Today is a great day. And I am ready. Thank you all.

Namaste,

Nick