Just Another Day - Brian Eno

Just Another Day

Song by Brian Eno ‧ 2005

Oh, it's just another day
It's just another day on earth

Oh, it's just another day
Just another day
It's just another day on earth

Oh, it's just another day on earth
It's just another day on earth

One day, we will put it all behind
We'll say that was just another time
We'll say that was just another day on earth

We'll say that was just another time
One day, we will put it all behind
We'll say that was just another day on earth

Just another day
It's just another day
Oh, it's just another day on earth

​

Intuition vs Projections

Intuition: a subtle bodily awareness, inner knowing that does not need explanation.

Projection: a mental construction, images and narratives I create to fill in what I do not truly know.  

I use my intuition when I am painting, when I am creating. I rely on my intuition first. The images, the colors, the forms show up later. I follow the inner knowledge, blindly, like I am dancing to music.

Mental projections start happening after I have already begun the work. I start imagining what the result is going to be, how it will look, the colors, the shapes etc. 

The interesting part, something extremely important to note: the mental projection never, ever matches the end result.  I have never created exactly what I saw in my head. Never!

Even with the latest painting I finished, in which I used a photograph as a reference — so I had a clear projected image of the final result — even then, the finished painting does not reflect what I originally saw in my mind.

Intuition is knowledge for the present. Projection is an invented future.

When I am painting, I am constantly balancing intuition with mental chatter. I know perfectly well that my role is to be in control. 

Yesterday, I made a lot of assumptions and projections based on a Teams meeting. The intuition that changes are coming is probably correct, given the restructuring the company is going through.

The projection that I am going to be laid off, though, is an invention. It gave me anxiety. 

Need to take in consideration that, my assumptions were based on 1 hour online meeting, that I am somewhat isolated working from home, and that there is a general, growing anxiety everywhere about the implementation of AI. 

Yesterday, I wrote a statement, certain that i knew what was happening. I need to stop doing that. Nothing is certain, nothing. I need to question my own mental assumptions, my own mental movies. 

Also, just because someone disappears, or I haven’t seen or heard from them for a while, doesn’t mean it has anything to do with something I did or said. I have a tendency to default to that.

From now on: QUESTION, question your mind, question assumptions.  Do not write absolute statements, like the statement I wrote yesterday. 

A meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday, so I’ll find out then what’s going on. In the meantime, I won’t think about it. Tomorrow: I'll go to paint with Doug at his studio. I do miss hanging out with him, miss his  energy, laughing and being rebellious together.  I miss being playful and childlish...

 I will paint, read, go to the gym, take walks or a hike. I will enjoy the whole weekend. 

It promises to be sunny and beautiful!

Sueños

​Estoy en una reunión. Una chica está hablando de su último viaje, y hace mención de que el avión en el que viajo, tenía un “Gelato bar” - Inmediatamente la gente que está allí, pide mas detalles. 

Yo reflexiono en cómo cuando una persona da un detalle innecesario en una conversación sobre algún lujo, o privilegio la gente eso no lo considera “over sharing”.  

Otro sueño mucho más abstracto y difícil de describir, en donde me veía a mi misma en fragmentos, cada fragmento tenía una personalidad diferente. 

On a more positive note...

I posted the painting of the Lady on NextDoor, and it did exactly what I was hoping for: neighbors began providing information about her. Thanks to that post, I now know more about her story.

From what I was able to piece together, she has been sitting there since around the pandemic. She is very clean and keeps her belongings well organized. She used to sleep inside the local library, but people complained because she mumbles to herself and was considered distracting. Neighbors have offered help, food, shelter, and have even called homeless organizations, but apparently she refuses any kind of assistance. She just sits there.

Many neighbors are theorizing about her situation. Someone said they learned from another neighbor that she had a family dispute with her siblings after their mother died, and that they kicked her out. Another person theorizes that she stays there to make them feel guilty. Others think there may be something wrong with her mentally, though they emphasize that she is very clean and well kept. Some say they don’t believe she goes inside anywhere to sleep, as they have seen her sleeping under the awning of a restaurant.

There is a lot of new, speculative information. What is interesting for me is noticing that none of it matches what I originally projected onto her. Many times I feel certain that my theories are correct because the evidence seems to be there, yet I can be very far from the truth.

So right now, I could also be wrong about my job situation. Maybe not. But the point is not to become attached to my projections. Nothing concrete is happening at this moment. This applies not only to this situation, but to many of my assumptions.

There is a difference between intuition and projection. I don’t have the answer to that yet. I want to sit with it on my own and write what I think that difference is, and only later look it up.

Another interesting layer: tonight at book club we discussed Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains,” and it sparked a conversation about AI. I just realized something about the different ways AI responded to me regarding my job issue versus my personal issue.

When I consulted AI about the personal situation, I described my perception of a conversation from my own unique point of view. I gave details: what I saw, the words that were said, how they were said, the gestures, the tones. I essentially provided a full cinematic projection of what I believed was happening. The AI responded by offering a kind of psychoanalysis of the other person, based entirely on the details I gave it.

However, when I consulted AI about the job issue, I again provided information from my point of view: the clues I picked up on, my coworker’s resistance to sharing information, the recent acquisition of the company, and so on. But this time, the first thing AI did was question my perception. It suggested I might be wrong, explained that corporations tend to follow specific behavioral patterns, and pointed out that I might be vulnerable and that my nervous system could be reacting in panic. It even asked me to breathe and calm down. It was a very different approach from the personal situation.

Ironically, in the personal situation, what I had written turned out to be a misunderstanding—a complete projection. Nothing I thought had happened actually happened. In that case, I could have benefited from a more questioning approach, one that made me doubt my interpretation, just as AI did with the corporate issue.

And now I’m sending all of this stream-of-consciousness writing to AI for edit… haha!

Sara Teasdale

 Just came across this poet, Sara Teasdale... how come I knew nothing of her? 

(btw, another one that died by suicide...I cannot imagine, the burden of a soul, too large for a body). 

CHANGE 

REMEMBER me as I was then;

Turn from me now, but always see

The laughing shadowy girl who stood

At midnight by the flowering tree,

With eyes that love had made as bright

As the trembling stars of the summer night.

Turn from me now, but always hear

The muted laughter in the dew

Of that one year of youth we had,

The only youth we ever knew—

Turn from me now, or you will see

What other years have done to me.

"I Know The Stars"

I KNOW the stars by their names,

Aldebaran, Altair,

And I know the path they take

Up heaven's broad blue stair.

I know the secrets of men

By the look of their eyes,

Their gray thoughts, their strange thoughts

Have made me sad and wise.

But your eyes are dark to me

Though they seem to call and call—

I cannot tell if you love me

Or do not love me at all.

I know many things,

But the years come and go,

I shall die not knowing

The thing I long to know.

There will come soft rains (1920)

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

A Fantasy

Her voice is like clear water
That drips upon a stone
In forests far and silent
Where Quiet plays alone.

Her thoughts are like the lotus
Abloom by sacred streams
Beneath the temple arches
Where Quiet sits and dreams.

Her kisses are the roses
That glow while dusk is deep
In Persian garden closes
Where Quiet falls asleep.

April

The roofs are shining from the rain.
The sparrows tritter as they fly,
And with a windy April grace
The little clouds go by.

Yet the back-yards are bare and brown
With only one unchanging tree—
I could not be so sure of Spring
Save that it sings in me.

Sueño

​Estoy en cuarto con varios niños, les estoy leyendo un cuento antes de dormir. 

En la ilustración del libro hay una niña con una cajita musical.

La historia que les leo, es de una niña que tiene a una de sus muñecas abandonada. 

La única forma que la muñeca no se siente sola, es porque hay una cajita musical. 

Pero de alguna forma la caja se abre, y de la caja sale volando un pajarito, que era el que cantaba adentro de la caja.

El pajarito, se va volando por la ventana y ya no regresa. 

En el dibujo, se ve a la muñeca con la caja vacía y muy triste. 

Los niños también se ponen tristes- y yo quiero o pienso que debo cambiar la historia. 

Pero yo también estoy triste porque el pajarito se fue. 

Epiphany

​Una clara realización: 

a veces, (muchas veces) ignoro lo que en inglés le llaman “social clues”. Lo hablamos con JC un día, que la gente aquí ha tenido una vida bastante normal, y súper privilegiada, por lo mismo les es difícil entender o lidiar con la complejidad de la vida de otra persona como yo que viene de un país tercermundista, con un pasado tan caótico y complejo como el mío. 

Lo que yo veo muy normal o natural, para otra persona que creció aquí, eso es demasiado. 

Si es cierto que han viajado mucho, y conocen varias culturas, y la historia, pero es un conocimiento más superficial, intelectual en comparación. 

Y es así, hay que aceptar las diferencias. 

Recuerdo la reacción que tuvieron con la novela de Oscar Wao, cómo el grupo de ese entonces odió el libro; lo encontraron súper oscuro y turbio. Sin embargo, para mí (y para JC quien me lo recomendó) era un libro que describía con bastante honestidad lo que es vivir en zonas peligrosas y países conflictivos tercermundistas.Pero para ellos, un libro bastante desagradable. 

Y esa es la misma reacción que pueden tener cuando hago mención de algo de mi pasado. Aunque para mí, lo que he compartido ha sido súper poco, es probable que ya revele demasiado! 

Tengo que pensar más, antes de hablar, antes de escribir. A veces se me va la onda…y me siento muy cómoda. Porque siento que hay una conexión o una afinidad, pero las diferencias sociales y culturales están allí. 

De ahora en adelante, soltarme aquí, soltarme en el estudio, Pero en mis emails en reuniones ser mucho muchísimo más prudente.