Uncommercial

I haven't posted in a while because I've been busy with many things and haven't felt a pressing need to lay out my thoughts in this way. That in itself is a good thing. Life is storms and calms. This must be one of the calms.

I've been working on a stand up paddle board of my own design. It's plywood and very short. The idea is to make something that is ultra cheap and portable. It turned out to be a bit more work than I anticipated, but it floats well. One more small modification and it will be finished. As a prototype, I've already got some better ideas for the next one. The plan is for three personal craft that fit in my short bed small pickup. One for each person in my family. It's my first foray into boat building and I'm learning a lot. It's a skill that I feel bridges a big gap for me and ties two great interests...water and woodwork.

My parkour training has continued and I'm seeing slow progression while not injuring myself. My training partner had his first injury this week, but I think he's ok. My mind has been centered on flow more lately. Obviously there is still need for drilling basics, but I am ready to start stringing them together and taking routes. It's an interesting art. Like many urban activities that are real and dangerous, it is forced to be a guerrilla sport. Find a location, climb it, and keep moving before people have a chance to run us off. We're also getting good at spotting potential nay-sayers and avoiding a meeting.

One thing I've learned is the difference in the training demo technique and the actual practice. Like most things, they don't often match exactly. At some point, you just have to go for it and find what works for you as an individual. Not to mention that there are variations among the experts too. Not in large part, but every master teaches what works best for them. This gives rise to various styles. As a very new and very unexploitable art, I feel connected to something primal. It stands amidst our commercial culture, but distinctly outside it. It ignores rules of how people should move through a built environment. It ignores rules about how we should train...no schools. People of course are forever trying to force it into those molds, but it has resisted largely thanks to the philosophies of David Belle and many of the current masters.

I've also been reading My Ishmael, third in Daniel Quinn's series. It dovetails nicely with what I've said above. As always, I don't entirely agree with Quinn's take on history or on what should happen in the future, but he does bring many excellent things to light about education, economics, and what it means to be human. Most notably this time, I have been thinking about commercialism. How we base everything on products and selling. Trade of goods and services. Commodities. It doesn't have to be this way. It isn't this way in many places. I used to think we needed overhaul of many paradigms, but they remained closely rooted in what is...for example, I love steady-state economics. But now I'm seeing this as just a spin on the same product exchange economy. Better yes. But not ideal. Not everything has to be sold. Not everything has to be taken stock of and comparatively evaluated. It is possible to live as humans in a society that does not operate on commercial principles...and it's possible to do that now, as we are. Not in some luddite fantasy. Truthfully, we already do to a large extent. Many societal structures, many of which we view as negative, are natural attempts at this...or rather, natural states, breaking through our systems.