Strategy

So I'm involved in two fantasy football leagues which I am enjoying quite a bit.  Most people who know me would think me the least likely person to become involved in this sort of past time, and normally I would agree.  I am a casual football fan at best and see the sport as no different from any other leisure activity.  For me it is much like watching a movie - when its over, its over.  I don't think much about teams and standings and individual players.

Then what's the appeal of fantasy football?  The answer is a little complex, but for the most part its not really about football, its about statistics and strategy.  It's the strategy element that has the most interest for me.

A friend of mine, a new player in the league, said she uses strategy based on both Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" and the board game Risk.  Okay, sounds interesting.  Since I've rekindled my love of the martial arts recently I've also revisited Sun Tzu, Miayomoto Musashi's The Book of Five Rings, Yamamoto Tsunetomo's Hagakure.

They are all books on warfare, strategy, and the proper way of life for the samurai.  They haven't been all that helpful in moving me out of 9th place in my league, but they have been very useful in helping me shape a new path for my life.  I'm not one for following another's path blindly or in its entirety, but you can draw wisdom and understanding from many sources - with some offering unique insight and some reinforcing the ideas of others; all helpful in navigating this strange and wonderful life.  Here are some of my favorite strategies of simply being:

From The Book of Five Rings:

•  
• Do not think dishonestly. 
• The Way is in training. 
• Become acquainted with every art. 
• Know the Ways of professions. 
• Distinguish between gain and loss in worldly matters. 
• Develop intuitive judgement and understanding for everything. 
• Perceive those things which cannot be seen. 
• Pay attention even to trifles. 
• Do nothing which is of no use. 

 

"In strategy your spiritual bearing must not be any different from normal. Both in fighting and in everyday life you should be determined though calm. Meet the situation without tenseness yet not recklessly, your spirit settled yet unbiased. Even when your spirit is calm do not let your body relax, and when your body is relaxed do not let your spirit slacken. Do not let your spirit be influenced by your body, or your body be influenced by your spirit. Be neither insufficiently spirited nor over spirited. An elevated spirit is weak and a low spirit is weak. Do not let the enemy see your spirit."

 

“You can only fight the way you practice” 

 "Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men.”

 “Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world”  

“There is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside of yourself.”  

“The ultimate aim of martial arts is not having to use them” 

Home

I recently took a trip to my hometown, which is a weird experience since it has stopped being my home so long ago.  Yet, it does function as a container of memories and a lens into the past when various earlier versions of myself spent time reading, walking through the woods like some miniature Thoreau, and generally brooding about life and my part in it.

I come from a very picturesque hometown which has fallen on hard times of late.  Here's a picture of the town in its autumnal glory:

The idea of home has always been a complicated mix of ideas and emotions.  Is it a physical structure?  a location? or even an emotion?  Can you find yourself more at home at a place where you only just arrived than in a place where you spent the best part of your life?  Can you live your life in a place and never consider it home?  Can you have more than one home?

There really isn't a single definitive answer to what constitutes "home".  It seems to be defined by the individual and is contextually dependent.  There are stories,  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, comes to mind, where home and all the sentiment that comes with it is located in a slum.  So clearly there's a lot that goes into the term "home" - so let's see what some writers and thinkers have to offer:

“I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.”
― Beryl Markham, West with the Night

“Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.”
― Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye

“The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn't it what all the great wars and battles are fought for -- so that at day's end a family may eat together in a peaceful house?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Voices

“You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing's sake, back home to aestheticism, to one's youthful idea of 'the artist' and the all-sufficiency of 'art' and 'beauty' and 'love,' back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermude, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time--back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”
― Thomas Wolfe

“Happiness doesn't lie in conspicuous consumption and the relentless amassing of useless crap. Happiness lies in the person sitting beside you and your ability to talk to them. Happiness is clear-headed human interaction and empathy. Happiness is home. And home is not a house-home is a mythological conceit. It is a state of mind. A place of communion and unconditional love. It is where, when you cross its threshold, you finally feel at peace.”
― Dennis Lehane

Following up on Lehane's idea of home as a something that is created, formed, rather than established, here's a clip from the cut TV show Firefly.  I offer this as an example of people creating their own sense of home - even on a spaceship in the dark, hostile emptiness of space, for two reasons: One, it is a really good example.  Two: I liked Firefly and don't mind seeing a clip every so often - maybe it simply reminds me of my own home in some way.

The World in a Water Drop

Originally I was going to write something about nanotechnology - some interesting things going on in that area lately.  But I've also come across other fascinating information regarding miniature and microscopic worlds.  What got me started on this train of thought is this:

This is not a real community, but one artificially constructed by the man below.

Yes, that is singer Rod Stewart with the model train set up he built.

What is behind the drive to build these miniature worlds?  Some modelers apparently strive for a detailed recreation of a real place and time, while others seem to enjoy developing unique worlds for their small trains to inhabit.  The idea of building these worlds extend far beyond train sets and is linked to childhood.  Psychologists use a technique called sandplay with younger clients to assess their emotional states.  The technique is simple; children get to play on a large table or tray set up with sand, often water, and miniature houses, buildings, people, and other everyday items.  What kind of world the children create give psychologists clues to how these children view their world.

There's no small element of control involved in building these scenes.  Our friend Rod above has built a finely-detailed world of his own - looks to be New York City circa 1940s - that he alone controls.  To put it another way, the trains run on Rod's timetable, and only his.

Writers have long known the power of building their own realities and playing God with their creations.  George R.R. Martin seems to take devilish glee in reminding fans that no characters in his Game of Thrones novels are safe as long as he controls their fates.  Plenty of authors have also taken joy in working in miniature - from folk tales full of "little people", Mary Norton's The Borrowers, Smurfs, gnomes, and the like, to Johnathan Swift's land of the Lilliputians from Gulliver's Travels:

This idea of control and the power to alter reality to one's own liking is part of what drives some artists to specialize in constructing miniature worlds - not real-life models - to their own liking.  It can work as therapy for adults as well - as this story from PBS NewsHour clearly demonstrates:

For artists constructing these worlds, some are fantastical, others realistic.  Some represent the world as it should be, others are worlds that should never be.  Many are whimsical, thoughtful, political, or insightful, but all are beautiful in their own ways and push the idea of what existence is and what it could be:

From Wired magazine: Adrien Broom, Centered. Image: the artist and Ronchini Gallery

Mat Collishaw, “The Garden of Unearthly Delights” (2009) (Courtesy of Merderme)

From Mymodernmet.com: "Architect and photographer William Kass has created a lovely series called Minimize, where he takes miniature toy figures and places them in the regular world. His sweet compositions include men fishing for sushi to a ballerina dancing in a fanciful fountain of a shower head. True to form, each of his photos are more whimsical than the last."

Again from Mymodernmet.com: "Perhaps there is no greater artist out there who can create such believable worlds than Matthew Albanese. For the last five years, Albanese has been meticulously making these highly detailed models for his series called Strange Worlds. “When I was young I was always very, very obsessed with movie miniatures and movie magic and things of small scale,” he told Flickr. One of the most mesmerizing shots is of a lightning storm over a lake. Albanese used a piece of plexiglas, painted black, and etched bolts of lightning on it so that light could dramatically flash through.

Again from Wired: Thomas Doyle, Coming From Where We're Going. "From a distance his works looks like a miniature depiction of the American Dream, but upon further inspection, the disorder in his worlds is evident" . Image: the artist and Ronchini Gallery

Lastly, from Mymodernmet: "Un Petit Monde is the name of the series Kurt Moses has created where he arranges tiny people in a larger-than-life world. Moses does not use tilt-shit photography or Photoshop, rather, he sets up his everyday scenes in the real world using natural light. The photographer, hailing from St. Paul, Minnesota, loves telling stories through his works, which he wants others to help him actively create. 'My goal is simple,' he says, 'initiate a storyline and capture an evocative photo that allows the viewer to draw their own conclusions about the scenes they are observing.'”

Beautiful Places - Footpaths

Straight Pond on Marldon Road to Dainton Hamlet 

It is easy sometimes these days, in our modern Western world, the importance of foot travel both historically and culturally.  In England, it was considered a given that historic footpaths give the public the right to traverse private property.  Footpaths (and bridlepaths for horseback riding) are mentioned in an 1835 highway bill, but in England these paths are considered to be hundreds of years older than that - some tracking their lineage to the occupation of Roman troops.  These paths have long been guides to human movement - showing the human ingenuity of finding the more direct route past obstacles in the quest to get to the desired goal. 

In literature footpaths have long played a role as the setting for conflict.  Robin Hood meets Little John on a footpath and narrow bridge spanning a river.  Tess's downfall comes just off a footpath/bridlepath at the hands of Alec.  Untold numbers of highway men, pilgrims, lost children and travelers found their literary fates along paths through forest and field.  Poets, like Wordsworth, rambled along these humble byways, finding inspiration for their odes to nature.  

Footpaths exists throughout the world and serve not only as a means for traveling from point A to point B, but as a connection to our shared past and a reminder of the simpler, but more physically challenging, lives of our ancestors.  They also open a window on to a world that only those who slow down and take the time to move by foot will ever experience.  But we can at least view images of those worlds until we ourselves find our own feet on the trodden path leading to...  So for now - enjoy!

Scafell Pike in England's Lake District

Via Francigena - which crosses France, Switzerland, and Italy

Devon again - From Dainton Hamlet to Bickley Bottom across Mator Common

The Darkened Room

Photography is one of my things.  I've been shooting since college days, and while most of my work - photos and negs, not to mention my equipment, was stolen with my car some years ago, I've been getting back into it lately.

Some of the work will probably make its way here eventually - and while the digital camera is very easy, I do miss the science and art of the darkroom. So many hours spent inside with the little red light, mixing chemicals, and then waiting for the film to process and the print making as unworthy print after print went into the trash.

Of course, not all early "photography" involved darkrooms - or at least, what we now think of darkrooms.  One of the oldest, and oddest, yet strangely attractive, of these is the camera obscura.

The term is latin for "darkened room," which makes sense when one considers exactly how the camera obscura works.  Cameras, as mechanisms, really perform a simple operation.  They have some system of allowing a pinhole of light to shine on a surface - usually a light sensitive photographic plate that captures that light - and the image of the world that comes with it.

As the National Geographic reported a few years ago, Aristotle wrote about this method - minus the actual camera and photographic plate.  So did Leonardo DiVinci - being DiVinci, he drew diagrams as well.  But they both, and may others in between as well, described how a small hole letting light into a darkened room could project the image of the outside world onto the walls of that room.

Nice, non-DiVinci woodcut showing how a camera obscura works.

The images are what we think of as upside down - building spires and tree tops of a city skyline point toward the floor - as does the same image we see with our eyes - because of the way light is reflected.  The situation with our eyes is that our brains process the images so that the sky is up and the ground is down.  But since the camera obscura image is unprocessed, it remains reversed:

Central Park by Abelardo Morell (www.abelardomorell.net)

In the days before photographic plates were invented, artists and sometimes party-goers (the camera obscura was a great novelty) would line the walls of the room with tracing paper and record the projected image that way (that is what the gentleman in the above woodcut is doing).  Portable versions were built as well, but they couldn't quite provide the "wow" factor of stepping into an image-filled room.

Umm... No.

Because of that "wow" factor, cameras obscura actually became an early tourist attraction, springing up in scenic locations like mountains and seasides.

Santa Monica, California's camera obscura was a semi-bargain at ten cents a visit.

The outdoors, filling the indoors in an unusual way, gives the image captured inside a meditative, dream-like quality that isn't present in today's typical photograpy.  As Abelardo Morrell states in the National Geographic article, ""I want to refresh how people see the world".

Can't find the credit for this one.

More Morell

Morell again with the outside images projected on paintings by Hopper on the left and not sure, maybe Roy Lichtenstein, on the right.

Nice use of the camera obscura and conventional photography

Another version of mixing photography and the camera obscura to get a dreamlike feel.  Credit for both images here.

And because of its unique nature, it seems somehow natural that the term camera obscura would become the name of an indie band - and a pretty good one, too.  Not really anything to do with photography - but music is another of my things, so let's end today with some music!

Enjoy!

Ceasing Not Till Death

Today's my birthday - one of many happy returns of the day.  There is a lot I could say and write, but rather,  let's keep it simple - some Walt Whitman instead.  Though a bit older than the 37 Whitman mentions - I actually feel a few years younger and am in perfect health - perhaps the best health of my life.  Therefore, I'll let dear old Walt present my mood and thoughts in his perfect way with some selections from Song of Myself.  But please take the time to read the lengthy poem - there is much in there from history to sensual sexuality.  But for our purposes on this day, this will suffice:

I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil,
     this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and
     their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never
     forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy...

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the
     origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are
     millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor
     look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the
     spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things
     from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the
     beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. 

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now. 

Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always
     substance and increase, always sex,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed
     of life. 

To elaborate is no avail, learn'd and unlearn'd feel that it is so...

There is that in me — I do not know what it is — but I know it
     is in me.
Wrench'd and sweaty — calm and cool then my body becomes,
I sleep — I sleep long.
I do not know it — it is without name — it is a word unsaid,
It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.
Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,
To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.
Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers
     and sisters.
Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
It is not chaos or death — it is form, union, plan — it is eternal
     life — it is Happiness.

The past and present wilt — I have fill'd them, emptied them,
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.
Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a
     minute longer.)
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.) ...

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood. 

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you. 

Beautiful Places - The Red Planet in Fact and Fiction

In the late 1800s a former Civil War officer and gold prospector found himself in the difficult position of fleeing from Apaches in Arizona.  After a chase on horseback, the prospector, separated from his partner, had to take refuge in a cave.  What happened next became one of the most influential tales found in literature.

John Carter lost consciousness in that cave, only to awaken on the planet of Mars, a planet, in the experience provided by Edgar Rice Burroughs (yes, he of Tarzan fame), of beautiful princess and multi-armed foes.  Burroughs' Martian stories, like those of Tarzan, were light on anything resembling facts, but full of rousing action and detailed depictions of a once thriving Mars, now a desiccated, dying world.

I'll jump on any chance to use a Frank Frazetta image!

Burroughs and all those after him that used Mars as a setting for tales of science fiction and fantasy based their images of Mars on astronomical observations.  As telescopes became more powerful and the optics more precise, writers describing Mars changed their versions of the Red Planet.  Soon the fabulous cities of glass and jewels disappeared, and the Venice-like canals were drained of water, replaced by lonely desert landscapes and dry canyons.

It wasn't until the late 1960s with the NASA missions of the unmanned survey spacecrafts Mariners 6 & 7 that a true picture of Mars emerged - dry, hostile to human habitation, and devoid of native life.  Then the science fiction stories turned away from the idea of Mars invaders and Carter-like interactions with native beings, and more to either the discovery of long-lost civilizations, as in Mission to Mars:

or stories of stranded humans struggling to survive on the remote planet as in, for example, the pretty decent film Red Planet:

Yet, despite its harshness, Mars has an almost magnetic pull for the imagination.  Its the closest analog to Earth, and relatively speaking, not that far away.  Yet it remains alien, but recognizable, strange-yet-familiar, and our next stop in humanity's reach for the stars.  The real Mars, although lacking in cities of crystal, is very beautiful in a special way: