It’s a morning when, if you were to go outside and lay down on a wooden deck, stare up at the pale blue sky, hand brushing against tulip leaves, listening to the sound of the Puget Sound, a distant train whistling through the Elliott Bay, a sea breeze tickling your feet, you may very well decide that, this is good, this is really good, this life, this living.

And then the sun gets in your eyes, and you decide to go back inside, find something that’s not readily available at 11 a.m. on a weekday: your bed. You crank up some Sun Kil Moon, scoop some Greek yogurt, (but not too much because you’ve got some undiagnosed, unresolved, surely-deeply-rooted-Freudianesque dairy phobia), squirted out too much raw honey, and tossed in a handful of almonds, (the Fremont Troll’s definition of “handful”).

So there I am, eating breakfast in bed with the best intention of doing some serious writing (serious in the sense of quantity, not quality nor mood) while Mark Kozelek softly serenades in the background. But, as is often the case, I get lost in the multitudes of rabbit hole of the internet, foolishly justifying to myself that I’m “just doing research”, and “finding writing inspiration”.

Sometimes, in the meandering, one comes upon something that changes the course, such as clicking on a tweet that leads me to today’s HTML Giant post: Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted, quoting William S. Burroughs,

Every act of writing is a sorcerous operation, a partisan action in a war where multitudes of factual events are guided by the powers of illusion.

I’m caught by the word sorcerous, and not even the mellow, haunting acoustic of Sun Kil Moon’s cover of Ocean Breathes Salty takes away the agressive image of “a partisan action in a war”.

I’m reminded of Haruki Murakami’s book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, when he’s talking about the endurance, strength, and sheer will required to write. “People think if you can lift a pen you can write,” he said.

I liked the notion of writing as an endurance sport and all the associated pain that comes with it (I relate to it so very much). The creative endeavor has been seen as the war within for eons, from Arjuna’s anguish to The War of Art.

Fair enough. But I am now also seduced by the alchemistical image of writing as sorcery (alchemistical is a word, yes?). I mean, really, who isn’t turned on by the thinnest possibility that we can create magic as mere mortals?

It reminds me of a quote I heard once by Wendell Berry, an environmentalist and author, “The real work of planet-saving will be small, humble, and humbling, and (insofar as it involves love) pleasing and rewarding.”

"True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care—with no one there to see or cheer. This is the world." – David Foster Wallace in The Pale King

The Pale King quote is grounding, and quite humbling. What’s also neat, is the quasi-hidden navigation on the page. You mouse over the colored bars, and oh, look, more quotes with the same category tag! You mouse over the quote and get the posted date and other social media sharing options, which, at worst, are typically vomited on a page to accompany an article or image.

Does it work as well on other devices? Nope. It works ok, but not fantastic; it’s only optimized, and–to use a word my friend Brendan has been using lately to describe games and software–pleasurable on one medium.

But, does it matter? I would contend not. Not for what I use it for, and not for what I find it useful for. Sure, right now there are lots of healthy spirited discussion out there (and probably one nasty one) about responsive design, cross-channel design, build once run anywhere content, etc. etc. It makes good sense, yes. Yet, I find the discoverability and animation on this site so… what is a good word here, I think “delightful” would do it, yes, delightful, that I really don’t care that it doesn’t behave the same elsewhere.

So, sometimes, maybe, just maybe, getting one thing right for user satisfaction, in just one way, is sufficient?

Here, you play with it. http://exp.lore.com/post/21718540108/true-heroism-is-minutes-hours-weeks-year-upon

We listened to a lot of French songs, and Jacques Brel. At some point, my mom went over the song Ne Me Quitte Pas line by line with me. I don’t remember exactly if that was an inevitable part of my French education (my mom’s a French teacher), or if I was so annoying asking for translation (“But mom, what does it meeean”), that she thought, “You want some conditionnel passé before dinner? Here you go.”

I have this vivid memory of wanting to know exactly what des mots insensé means. I wanted examples of words that are considered insensé. But why is that a crazy word? And how do you invent them? And what’s the meaning of rain coming from countries where it doesn’t rain? Grown-ups say the weirdest things.

Years and years passed. I’ve moved on to find my own afternoon music mix, without needing to change the cassette tape over to the other side.

Recently, I discovered Aaron Freman and his new album, Marvelous Clouds, covering the music and poetry of Rod McKuen. “Who is this Rod McKuen chap?” Turns out, it’s none other than the translator of Jacques Brel’s Ne Me Quitte Pas into the English version, If You Go Away, along with being an Oscar- and Pulitzer-nominated composer/singer/songwriter/poet (total Beat poet slacker, basically).

This connection to Jacques Brel brought back floods and floods of memories, not just from my childhood, but also from my time studying in France, when we had to learn La Valse à Mille Temps, a song with a ridiculously impossible tempo with all sorts of puns and tongue twisters. I’m pretty sure it was both punishment and praise from the French teachers to us unsuspecting foreign exchange kids who would endure the sick torture that is French conjugation.

Back to Rob McKuen, I’ve been really digging Aaron Freeman’s version of Love’s Been Good to Me. (Guitar chords and lyrics if you wanna play along.)

I’ve been a rover
I have walked alone
Hiked a hundred highways
Never found a home

Still in all I’m happy
The reason is, you see
Once in a while along the way
Love’s been good to me

“What are some poems and songs about spring?” I asked myself. (And by “myself” I mean Google.) In my hunt, I found this poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay really funny.

Spring

To what purpose, April, do you return again?

Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.

I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.

It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.

Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

P.S. I’m happy to return to Edna St. Vincent Millay again. This was almost my mantra in college as I ran around trying to do too many things on too little sleep.

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -
It gives a lovely light.

I grew up in a time when AIDS, or SIDA as it’s known outside of North America, was just discovered, and since not much was known about it, much was speculated, and feared. A quick Wikipedia read and I learned that “AIDS was first recognized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 1981.” The recognition of this disease is exactly as old as I am.

I don’t remember much from my formal education about AIDS, other than that you can’t get it if you don’t have sex with someone who’s HIV-positive. Okay. Got it. Check. Plus, I am not a homosexual man. So I went on living in ignorance of how this virus affects my fellow human beings.

A few days ago, this segment on NPR caught my attention: Love Isn’t All You Need: 3 Relationship Building Reads (they might as well have called it, Nikki Chau Sucker Alert).

Of the three books recommended, Fenton Johnson’s book, Geography Of The Heart, a Memoir, seemed most like a weekend read. Plus, the author practices at the San Francisco Zen Center, and his lover (Larry) is a Francophile? Count me in.

As luck (or some version thereof) would have it, I’ve been sick all day today, shriveling with a bone-chilling cold and a burning sore throat, so it was good timing to be lying around with this book and finishing it.

Here are a few quotes from the book that spoke to me, emphasis is mine.

When Fenton told Larry that his greatest fear is that he will die and leave him infected and alone:

“One measure of love is the ability to speak aloud the unspeakable, secure in the knowledge of the bedrock on which you rest.

To speak with such frankness of the terrors of the heart–to talk so openly of the demons within, with no fear on either side of rejection–honesty of this completeness is the privilege of true lovers.” – Page 92

A student talking about learning to write at Larry’s funeral:

“He took us out to Telegraph Avenue and made us write about what we saw until we thought it was good enough to convince somebody who’d never been there what it looked like and what we thought of it.

It was the first time in my life I really understood what writing was about–trying to get something real across to another faraway person through this incredibly abstract medium.” – Page 209

When Fenton finally confronted the silence in his family about AIDS at 3AM in their Kentucky home before his morning flight back to San Francisco:

“I’m filled with bitterness and rage that no one will acknowledge that Larry was my lover and that he died of AIDS, and I’m here to give the first annual AIDS prevention speech.” – Page 216

Fenton contemplating on our own insulated myth that we might live forever (if we are HIV-negative):

“It’s just that HIV, with its extended incubation period, its prolonged illnesses, its often horrifying complications, its impact on close-knit neighborhoods and communities, is forcing gay men of my generation to acknowledge what our life– and youth-obssessed society prefers to deny.” Page 232

Fenton’s mom, telling him she understands that love is not gender-dependent:

“And then you told me you were gay, and I guess I’d suspected it all along, and I just prayed that you’d stay healthy and find yourself a place where you could be happy.

I prayed for all that and I was glad to see you get yourself to San Francisco, to a place where you could live in peace and be yourself.

I was happy about that, but it wasn’t until I met you and Larry and spent time with the two of you together that I understood that two men could love each other in the same way as a man and a woman.” – Page 234.

Fenton, on love and death

“I love better now, more wholly and completely, not because I have learned some exotic technique but because I know death.” Page 235.

Today, I gained a new perspective. A friend told me I should join her in the AIDS walk in San Francisco this summer. “You walk *all* night?”, I had asked. The resulting sleep-deprivation didn’t sound appealing to me in the least, but now it feels like it’s not about me and sleeping.

Also, Seattle, here is a list of restaurants who will be donating to Dine out for Life on April 26.

I fear that if I don’t do this, I will sloth around, wasting time, lamenting and whining like Arjuna before Krishna.

I’ve been through a few losses, small losses. Small as they are (in the sense that no one died a biological death), I feel the intensity of the emotion in my physical body.

It’s as if I’ve been thrown in playpen full of baby tigers and elephants, and even though we’re having fun (and they’re so cute), these animals don’t know how big and powerful they are, so things ache a little when we play around.

One night while going over old podcasts I’ve been procrastinating on, I found a couple nice Rilke poems/quotes.

“The great secret of death, and perhaps its deepest connection with us, is this: that, in taking from us a being we have loved and venerated,

death does not wound us without, at the same time, lifting us toward a more perfect understanding of this being and of ourselves.”

– From A Wild Love For The World, a conversation with Joanna Macy on On Being.

A few happy clicks and reads later (woohoo, the Internets!), I found Sonnets to Orpheus, and how I love the image of singing while climbing, a ringing glass that “shatters as it rings”. It reminds me of Leonard Cohen’s Anthem, “Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

And whoa, I’ve never thought that I live “among the disappearing”, but hell, that’s what we are, transients.

Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XIII

Be ahead of all parting, as if it had already happened,
like winter, which even now is passing.

For beneath the winter is a winter so endless
that to survive it at all is a triumph of the heart.

Be forever dead in Eurydice,
and climb back singing.
Climb praising as you return to connection.

Here among the disappearing, in the realm of the transient,
be a ringing glass that shatters as it rings.

Be. And, at the same time, know what it is not to be.
That emptiness inside you allows you to vibrate in resonance with your world. Use it for once.

To all that has run its course,
and to the vast unsayable numbers of beings abounding in Nature,
add yourself gladly, and
cancel the cost.

The poem is titled Otherwise, written by poet Jane Kenyon.

Otherwise

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.

All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.

I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.

But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

“That’s not to say you don’t go for the talent if you can; of course you go for the talent. But the work only begins there. The solution to this too-many-cooks problem is leadership.” – Matt Drance

At HIVE 2011, Hillel Cooperman, Co-Founder of Jackson Fish Market, emphasized this idea in his keynote: most organizations don’t have design leadership. They’re using metrics they learned from B-school to apply to something they don’t get, and designers are rarely in decision-making positions.

At the most recent Seattle Info Camp, while Ario Jafarzadeh talked through 10 Observations from 10+ years in the Corporate UX Trenches, I noticed a theme: it’s not just the software and user experiences we work on that are broken, the corporate environment in which we’re working in is also broken.

Today, Marco Arment penned four steps on how to bring good design to a platform, and step one starts with the top, again.

“Demonstrate from the top that high quality and attention to detail are prioritized and appreciated above everything else, including being the first to market, having the most features, or having the most aggressive prices. If you can get those as well, that’s great, but quality will not be sacrificed to do so.” – Marco Arment

Are you seeing this pattern too? Is it too hokey to chant leadership, leadership, leadership? If there are people trying to improve the experience of the users, who’ll improve the experience of the corporations?

In any case, now I’m 29, it rings bitingly true.

“I think there’s a self defense mechanism that keeps my generation from having any real honest connection or commitment with our true feelings. We’re rooting for ball teams, but we’re not getting in there to play. We’re so concerned with failure and success like these two things are all that’s going to sum you up at the end”

The products we design are going to be ridden in, sat upon, looked at, talked into, activated, operated, or in some way used by people individually or en masse. If the point of contact between the product and the people becomes a point of friction, then the industrial designer has failed.

If, on the other hand, people are made safer, more comfortable, more eager to purchase, more efficient—or just plain happier—the industrial designer has succeeded. – Henry Dreyfuss, American Industrial Designer

Emphasis are mine. Something about the idea of friction is sticking with me. Also, I like this as an effect of a design: “or just plain happier”.

No, we don’t always have to merely be more productive or efficient. Happiness is a legitimate goal on its own.