◑ eClips: Break a machine
The moon is waning; it’ll be new soon. And for the next few days, Earth is farthest away from the sun in its yearly orbit, a point also called its “aphelion,” which is the only thing I’ll be recognizing in any type of celebratory way this weekend. And just before the new moon, Mercury will show up close to the right of the crescent.
A lot of tall, unfamiliar-to-me flowers are emerging right now; I’m working to learn their names. Lavender’s fragrant, purple flowers are filling out and stretching across sidewalks; you can catch its lovely scent when you walk by, whether you’re trying to or not. Living among so much lavender and rosemary year-round is one of my favorite things about being in this region. Plus, the fruit — it’s coming soon. We’ll have more blackberries than we know what to do with, other than stuff our faces when we come across them.
I don’t know if it’s the recent heat wave or what, but I can’t wake up. I’m feeling languid and low, with limited motivation and all the internal guilt that accompanies it. So, I’m continuing to attempt a period of rest, even one that stretches on longer than I think it “should,” especially during the fleeting days of summer. I’m grateful the worst of the heat has passed, and grateful for the water I consumed and jumped into that staved off the heat’s impacts. I’m sitting in a lush Burien garden where I regularly housesit, among a landscape of flowers in every shape and color, and also feeling grateful for the beauty that surrounds me, even and especially during a week when the burdens of the world feel so present and heavy.
◑ How to Darn a Sock: “It doesn't take much time, and with the right materials, your sock will be better than new.”
◑ A Soft Manifesto: Artist and writer Cortney Cassidy on the anti-capitalist values that helped her launch Mail Blog, and a set of principles you can apply to your own values-driven art making. “When you’re losing a game you don’t even want to play, or forcing a fit into a form you don’t want to be in, the best thing to do is to stop playing and go find your shape.”
◑ Eunoia: Words That Don't Translate: Search 500+ untranslatable words by 70+ languages.
◑ Perspective - Juggling From Above: “Sometimes you just need a change of perspective.”
◑ The Shortcut: A minimalist visual animation which seeks a kind of "suspenseful algorithm."
◑ City Roads: This website renders every single road within a city.
◑ Cancel the 4th: Fireworks, trauma, more fire and more trauma... let's do something else already.
◑ “The Egg Boiler” by Gwendolyn Brooks: “The boiling of an egg is heavy art.”
Spotlight: Joe Scott
Joe Scott is 34. He used to bike in Kansas. Now he bikes in Seattle. [Joe and I have been close friends for nearly 13 years, across many seasons and cities and changes. Words are inadequate to describe the depth and texture of such a longstanding friendship. And interviewing him felt kind of funny, since we live together and talk every day, but I still heard stories I never had before. As we talked underneath the fig tree in our backyard, we stopped every so often to watch puffed-up chickadees flit through the branches, or to pet the stray black cat who came by to play.]
How’d that heat wave feel?
It felt fine. It was miserable, but the hype machine really made me focus on it way too much. Instead of being practically engaged, and just being like, here’s a day where I have to do X, Y, Z, it was like, here’s a day where I have to freak out and panic and think about the world collapsing. I didn’t, really. Am I being interviewed now?
Yeah. And it’s funny, because with everyone else — I mean, I don’t want to assume I know your answers to stuff — but it feels silly to be like, “So, how did you keep yourself cool?” I was right there!
I felt guilty going out on that trip, having not completed house preparation. For some reason it felt like it was my responsibility, and I didn’t get the window screens, I didn’t get the stand-up fan.
But you did that morning.
Blackout curtains.
Yeah. Now we’re ready for anything.
Yeah, anything. Test us!
Bring it on!
Come on, nature!
How do you usually feel about summer? Do you feel differently about summer this year?
I have no idea how I usually feel about summer. As a kid, I remember saying that I liked winter better. It was some dumb logic I had thought of, where in winter, you can always put on more clothes to be warm, but in summer, there’s a limit. You can’t continually shed more clothes to stay cool. Therefore, winter’s better. I don’t think I ever really felt that.
Summer’s great! You can just stroll outdoors and it feels good.
How do you usually spend your time in summer? Are there things you do in summer that you don’t do any other time of year?
Sit outdoors. Pretty basic. Last couple of years, I’d plan a big zine delivery for the summer months, because it’s nicer to be out delivering zines when it’s warm. And I’ve tried to do it more in the winter and not be a bike wimp. I do bike all-weather, but I still do it less in winter.
What does the zine delivery entail?
I bike one zine to every Little Free Library in all of Seattle. There’s about 350 of them that I’m aware of. And I’ll go out for like 4 to 6 hours at a time, and I just go to every single one. And it’s pretty cool. You get to see all of the city. You’re normally just going along arterials to get to your destination, but I’m weaving through every neighborhood. So you see everyone’s gardens, you find all these footpaths throughout Seattle, which are really beautiful. That’s my favorite thing to find, is a footpath where cars can’t go, but I can sneak through it. It’s like a shortcut, they’re everywhere!
I know you did something unique this summer that you haven’t done before, just this week, which is build a bicycle. Tell me more about that. Why’d you build a bicycle, and what was the experience of that like?
Why the hell did I do it?
There was a thrift element to it, where I wanted a different-shaped bicycle than the one that I have, something I could take on a longer haul and be comfortable. And this was a cheaper way to get a bike like that.
I guess I wanted to learn about bikes and how to repair them, mend them. I enjoy being a resource for my friends who bike who need little bits of help or advice. That’s nice, to be a community resource.
Oh yeah, and I hate cars! That’s why I built a bike.
How long have you been biking?
I guess it’s been 14 years. So, me and a couple of the guys went over one night … I’m not even sure how true this is anymore, but there was a rumor, I guess, or just this received wisdom, that Lawrence Police would come to the KU dorms to take left-behind bikes in the summer. People would just leave their bikes at the dorms and go back home, and the police at some point in the summer would come take them and auction them. And the rumor was that the day before that happened, they were fair game for anyone to come and take one. So we went up there, we bought bolt cutters, and we all tried to find a bike our size. Derek got a really nice one. And I got this purple Giant-brand bike that I rode around. It was a good bike, served me well.
At one point, my car died, and I was like, I’m not going to fix it, I’m going to bus and bike everywhere. That was in Lawrence. And I don’t remember my motivations. There might’ve been some tiny bit of environmentalism, but I was also tired of relying on this machine that I didn’t know how to fix and I didn’t have the money to fix. So I gave up on it. I was going to bike. And I kept doing that.
It was harder when I moved back to Wichita. So I got a car again, and I was delivering sandwiches, but I didn’t like it, and I ended up getting a scooter, which got 100 miles to the gallon, and I delivered sandwiches on my scooter, when I was a Jimmy John’s guerrilla marketer. I would take little 3-inch sandwiches to places on my scooter, and I convinced my boss that it was cool, it would be good marketing, to go to garage sales. So I scooted around to every garage sale in the neighborhood for a week, just going up to people, like, “Hey, have a sandwich!” And then I’d shop a bit. It was pretty weird. My friends at the time thought it was really effeminate; it was a powder-blue scooter, and they called it Scooty Puff Jr., which is a Futurama reference. And then my scooter got stolen, and I decided to bike again.
And I biked to substitute teaching jobs all across Wichita. And that was a little weird, locking up your bike next to little kids, and they’re like, “That guy’s too old to be doing that!” It felt really scary and dangerous to bike in Wichita. Someone threw a razor blade at me one time, out of their car window. That’s a story I tell often; it really stuck with me. It was in fact two razor blades taped together, like a throwing star.
So did you start biking as soon as you got to Seattle? You’re like, “I’m ready for this,” and you started exploring the city that way?
In fits and starts. I couldn’t bike on hills. I walked up the gentlest hills when I got here. Because there’s more bikers out there, it feels more normal, it feels good. I don’t see a lot of bikers who are like me, in regular clothes, just going somewhere. There’s cyclists in their spandex who are like, getting their workout. But that’s fine. There’s all kinds of reasons to be on a bike, and I think they’re all good enough, because it got you on a bike.
There was a change I had when I started doing all-weather biking — again, it’s so long ago, I don’t know if I felt this back in Kansas — but I had this revelation the first time I was biking in the rain in Seattle, where I suddenly felt a connection to the weather and to the natural world. It was fall, and it smelled really good, and there were leaves on the ground for the first time that year, and I was biking over them, and it felt so good. And I realized, what people were doing in their cars was totally walling themselves off from weather. Cars will carry you somewhere despite the weather. People will forge through hellish storms when they should just stay home or stay put wherever they are. The hard reality is, you’re not always home when a storm hits, and you should have to figure it out. You shouldn't have this machine that perfectly seals you off from the weather. That’s how I felt in that moment, and it was kind of a revelation.
And biking around Seattle is gorgeous, constantly. Every now and then, I’ll crest a hill, and I’ll get a clear view of the mountains, and I’m still struck to this day with awe whenever I get a clear view of The Brothers, or — I can’t name a single mountain in the Cascades except for the big earth-pimple volcano things, and even then, I’m like, “Is that one Mt. Baker? Mt. Hood’s this way? That one’s Rainier, got it.”
Yeah. Rainier’s our friend.
But, it still strikes me. And not just the mountain views, but sometimes a good tree. A plum tree that had ripe plums when I was really hot delivering zines one time, that was the most magical thing. I’ve told you that story a million times. It’s one of my faves.
Yeah. It’s so different walking and biking through a place, and actually seeing it change over time. And coming to associate different things with different seasons.
Yeah. Biking doesn’t break you from understanding geography. Cars are almost like a web browser, and, in fact, they are when you have GPS and that’s how you find where you’re going. You get in the car, you tell it where you want to go, and it tells you. It pinpoints you, centers you on the map, and tells you turn left, turn right, turn left, turn right, and then you arrive at your destination. So it’s all just loading time until you get there. You’re just, like, loading a web page to go somewhere.
But when you’re biking, and to an even greater extent, when you’re walking somewhere, you really understand the distance you’re traveling, and you really understand what’s in between everything. And it’s cool to find stuff and all, but that’s like the urbanist market incentive for biking and walking. Markets in-between the markets you’re going to, that’s what urbanists are all about.
It’s just understanding the physical reality of space.
Yeah. And that you’re not the center of it.
Yeah, absolutely. I never feel like I’m the center of anything when I’m on a bicycle. People in cars think that you’re really selfish when you break certain traffic rules, they just think that you’re not paying attention, but I’m paying really close attention, and I’m doing things that they don’t understand, for my own safety against them. One time, this woman almost hit me, and I gave her the finger, and then she pulled up next to me, and she was like, “It was an honest mistake, dude, no need to give the finger!” And I was like, “You almost killed me.” I’m glad it got to her. I’m glad she felt my rage, and she reacted so much to it, actually. They need to feel.
Yeah, like, would someone say that if they understood what the real stakes were?
I don’t think so. Well, I don’t know. There’s so much anger out on the road. Especially from drivers. I don’t know what they think anymore.
When you’re biking and walking around lately, what animals or plants have you been noticing?
Well, it’s summer, everything’s green, there’s very few flowers left. I don’t know this for sure, but I think summer flowers are smaller.
I saw a chipmunk. Not in Seattle, because I don’t think chipmunks are in the city, but on a recent trip with Natalie, my partner, to Port Angeles, where we bussed out there and then biked around, we saw some chipmunks. That was cool.
I’m being unfair, but I want you to tell me about the otters.
Oh yeah! Yeah, we saw a lot, actually, biking along the Olympic Discovery Trail, which goes along the water on the Olympic Peninsula. It’s really gorgeous, in particular between Port Angeles and Sequim, and several things happened on that trail. When we first got on it, a bee stung me on the neck, and I was like, “This could be bad, but let’s keep going until it is bad.” And then right after that, we saw a mother and her two babies, sea otters, hanging out on a concrete culvert that stuck out into the water. And then they swam away. Cutest damn things. I couldn’t believe that they were sea otters, because I thought you don’t see those in the wild. I thought for sure they were seals. But I was like, “No, that’s one, two, three, four limbs.” There were feet with claws and pads. They were so adorable. And we saw quail with 12 little chicks, and they all moved in unison together. That was really cute. And then, anything else good on that trail? Deer, saw some baby deer.
So many babies.
Natalie and I stopped to watch a couple deer go by next to this roundabout that takes people on and off the highway, and a guy in a truck was going by, and he stopped, and he said, “They look cute, but they’re gonna get hit one day!” Something like that — I don’t remember exactly. Yeah, they probably will. They’re hanging out around a highway. Highways kill things. People, too.
Is there any plant in particular you’ve been happy to see, or looking at especially closely right now?
There’s a flower Natalie really likes that’s just starting to bloom called Crocosmia. For some reason, they make me think of a dragon. They have a spine, and these flowers that fan off of the spine. They look kind of like a ribcage. And they’re kind of a red-orange. They’re gorgeous. But that’s Natalie’s favorite…
I like the seeds on grass, the little tufts. Grass that has a good tuft on it. I’m not just saying that because there’s a lot right over here, and I was like, looking around, desperate for something. I think I’ve always just liked that about grass when it’s let to grow wild instead of cut constantly, that it has these little wispy tufts on it, and they’re all different.
I don’t know a lot about plants. I wonder when these figs will be ripe. I wonder when more fruit’s going to be ripe. I really look forward to biking around and picking apples off of trees and shit.
Oh yeah, the fruit! We’re so close to fruit season.
Yeah. I’ve eaten some shitty apples out there. And some really good ones.
Did you try any of the salmonberries in Ravenna Park the other day?
We found really big ones around Port Angeles; ripe, juicy ones. Yeah, we were eating salmonberries for sure. But down in Ravenna, it’s hard to find a good, ripe one.
Horsetails have been up for awhile in Ravenna, they’re like a cloud of green, and I love that. And throughout the summer, I think they just get cloudier and cloudier. And then in winter, they’re gone, and the ground looks bare.
Are those the ones that look kind of fringy?
Yeah, they grow so weird. They’re like this green straw, and then it has little tiny pokey things that come off it, but they’re soft, and then taken altogether, when there’s a big bunch of them, it’s like a cloud. My dad took a really good photo of them when he visited and really captured the greenness of it all, the different textures of green that are in Ravenna in the summer.
Do you spend any time looking at the moon or stars or thinking about solar-lunar cycles?
No. I don’t think so. I look at the moon when somebody goes, “Hey, the moon looks really pretty right now.” And I go and I look at it and I think, “Yeah, it does!” And then I go back to what I was doing.
I’ve thought about it ideologically through the lens of Guy Debord and The Society of the Spectacle, when he talks about cyclical time and historical time, and how feudalism invented historical time, and the keepers of historical time have been, you know, the bourgeoisie as capitalism developed and replaced feudal lords as the keepers of time and history. And that’s time moving forward from a single point. And cyclical time, to him, was like peasant time, it was like farm time. And he never uses the word “peasant” pejoratively, and neither do I. I think peasantry is good and peasants are good. And then he talks about how we all live in pseudo-cyclical time, which is the work week, or something like that. Or, the fiscal year is pseudo-cyclical time. And since reading that, I’ve tried to reconnect — I’ve wanted to reconnect, more than I’ve tried — to some kind of genuine cyclical time. So, ideologically, I’ve thought about it. Really, in my personal life, do I live by cycles? Not many.
Well, by virtue of us living together, you do celebrate solar holidays, yearly.
Yeah! Well, they’re better than your typical American holidays. You dig into those histories and you’re like, “Oh, god, what am I celebrating?”
I cook breakfast for me and Natalie every morning. I do have certain cycles. I cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner five days a week. I do that.
I’ve heard people don’t get as much sleep, they go to sleep later, when there’s a full moon, or just before a full moon. I fully believe that these cycles are impacting me, but I haven’t ever stopped to try to make myself aware of how, to perceive them. But I do not doubt.
Is there anything else on your mind, or that you’ve been reading, that you want to share? It can be literally anything. You can tell us to stop driving.
Yeah, I think flying in airplanes is hubris, and so is driving in cars. And that’ll make whatever I say after this totally disregarded by mostly everyone. They’re like, “This guy’s off his fucking rocker. I shouldn’t listen to a word he says.” Maybe people are already there! So I can’t recommend anything after that.
Luddites are good. I’ve been reading about Luddites a lot. The original anti-capitalists! Right at the birth of capitalism, here were these guys who were like, let’s fucking break the machinery that creates capitalism. They were good people. I don’t know.
Well, maybe a recommendation is that each one of us should take it upon ourselves to go break a machine.
Yeah, break a machine!
Chain ourselves to a machine.
Yeah, it’s funny how chaining yourself to a machine is, like, breaking it for someone else.
Find one thing in your life that you drive for, and find another way to do that thing, besides driving a car. And that might mean not even going to the place where the car was taking you. That might mean still going there, but another way. It might mean realizing you didn’t need that thing, and you could’ve gotten the satisfaction that thing was going to give you, some other way.
Highways, streets, anything built for cars and industrial mobility is for capital flows. It is transforming your body, your life, your mind, into capital flow; you become part of it. And bikes aren’t perfect, because they still use the roads. People think it’s so radical to stop driving, but bikes are a stepping stone, they’re still an industrial machine, they’re still grease and steel slapped together moving on the same rivers of capital that cars move on, but just way slower, and way more connected to nature. That’s like a half-step!
What do you think is a full step?
A full step is walking everywhere! I don’t know. I don’t know what a full step is. I just know the direction the world needs to go, and I try to live in that direction. And through the process of living in that direction, I am a political agent for moving others and so-called “systems” in that direction.