**2010 December performance-lecture at the Slade School of Dine Art**
Yes we are still rather dead. So here is a mini-retrospective of sorts.
This is a performance-lecture held 2010 December 1 at the Slade School of DIne Art, Nondon, UK. In the ‘live’ version, we would be reading the script ‘live’; in this recorded version, you can hear us (flipping the pages of the script).
What is crucial to note that, all this was so (very nearly) impeccable and mindblowing at that point in time, ie 2010 December 1. Yet, restless beings that we are, that you know we are, this is not fixed in stone (is any? Even stones are not fixed [in stone], for they move, do they not??). We have (clearly) moved on, specifically, improved, in leaps and bounds of course. As you know we are simply incapable of producing anything run of the mill, but evolution-believers (and practitioners) that we are, many of the points raised in this performance have shifted, and many of the imageries have also been transformed. For ever-newer-better-higher-faster-good-better-best rundowns/out-lines/maps/cosmologies and other configurations, come back here often though even that can be slower than what we think while we are on the run etc etc. And, we all know that there can never be a ‘final’ version – even as we reach the ‘final’, for, so long as our stamina (speed and endurance) lasts, we will keep on running.
And the more we run, the better we can run, the further we can run. So, each variation is as ‘final’ as they get.
Point is, run, and you will find your own way. Or rather, ways. So, there you go. Here we are.
This performance-lecture was undertaken as part of our MPhil upgrade to PhD status at the Slade School of Dine Art, University College Nondon, UK. The opening and closing musical accompaniment is created by our usual Co-Runner, PHILIP TAN
CRUSHING DEATHS, CRUSHING LIVES: We seek not immortality (as if one lifetime is not more than enough!!) or happy afterlives (we yield not to bullying and blackmails by institutions); we fear not death, but life itself, and how we are living/running it.
16 March 2011. Along Hyde Park, as we ran out of the Royal College of Art, Nondon.
As we run inter-dimensionally across Life 1.0 and Life 2.0, we run in the chaosmos of mortality and immortality. Traversing backwards and forwards between living-subject-to-death and never-dying, the inter-dimensional runner is able to get best of both worlds. In such a setup, life and death become a multidirectional circle. Living or running in such a circle, any existential angst can be extinguished: we live (each) life to the fullest and cease fearing death. Instead of mourning for the dead, we sing, as Zhuang Zi (Chuang-Tzu) did after the death of his wife. ‘If I were to follow after her bawling and sobbing, it would show that I don’t understand anything about fate.’[1] Zhuang Zi looked at his wife’s death as another stage of life, as a continuation from ‘the time before she was born’ (which itself was a stage after ‘the time before she had a body’, which was in turn after ‘the time before she had a spirit’.) For him, ‘just like the progression of the four seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter,’ death is merely ‘another change’. As Sinologist Norman Girardot explains, the initiatory symbolism of returning to the condition of either infancy or death echoes the cosmic return to the chaos condition.[2] In this mixed, third condition, infancy and death are ‘symbolically equivalent’. This is the Dao’s (Tao’s) creatio continua. When a man dies, ‘he goes to his rest, rises again to his zenith’. This ‘return to the beginning’ after our death is ‘the ultimate harmony’, and is the chaosmos of mortality and immortality that the inter-dimensional runner is able to enjoy.
Daoist (Taoist) expert Kristofer Schipper observes that these notions (life and death as circular, and death as transformation and renewal) are clearly embodied in Lao Zi (Lao-Tzu) himself, as well as the mythological circumstances of his birth. Across literature such as the appropriately-named Book of Laozi’s Transformation and Book of Endless Mutations of Laochun (another name for Lao Zi) and so on, the Old Master says: ‘I transform my body, passing through death to live again… I die and am reborn, and each time, I have a [new] body.’[3] True to form, Lao Zi is said to have gone through nine transformations before he was born, and was hence born already an old man. Yet another example of these ‘continuous mutations, this joyful changing according to time’s cycle and the nature of things’, is the story of how the ‘Old Child’ was an orphan free of baggage, knowing ‘neither parents nor children, neither lineage, nor country’, and ‘no tomb nor holy relics’.[4] In yet another version of the story of his birth, the ‘Old Lord’ was said to be ‘his own mother’. The theme of the juxtaposition of life and death is most poetically encapsulated in the version that says that Lao Zi’s mother died ‘[at] the sight of her offspring.’[5] In the ‘brief moment between birth and apotheosis’, it is said that the Mother ‘reveals to her child the secrets of the art of immortality, of that ‘Long Life’ which the Old Child has just experienced in his mother’s womb’. Where there was ‘neither birth nor death’, a complete cycle of the cosmos was accomplished.’ To the Daoist, death and life are but ‘2 phases of a cycle’, with an ‘alternation analogous to that of yin and yang’.[6] All the stories of Lao Zi’s birth point to the same thing: that the ‘organic round of life and death’ is but a ‘rite of passage’ that ‘constantly involves moments of growth and regression, security and danger.’[7]
Yet, even though death is not considered as an ‘ill’ in Daoism, but as ‘only one phase of the total process of human life in time’,[8] prominence is still placed on achieving a good quality of life before death. This is where the notion of yangsheng – the preservation of life and nourishment – returns. In fact, the emphasis is not only on a good journey before life, but a good long distance journey before death, with longevity and, as an extension of that, immortality as the aims of yangsheng. Indeed, Schipper goes so far as to say that it is legitimate to ‘link the classic works (the book of Zhuang Zi and the Dao De Jing [Tao Te Ching]) as do the Daoists themselves, to the search for immortality […].’[9] While there are mystical elements (as we have seen in the case of Lao Zi for instance, who was said to have lived for thousands of years), the Daoist concept of immortality is primarily focused on everyday reality, through real-life practices including medicinal science and physical exercise, as we have already established at the beginning of this Chapter. Hence, when we run inter-dimensionally, in the chaosmos of Lives, not only do we run to-and-fro the circle of life and death, we also ensure that, before dying, we run a good, long distance life.
[1] Zhuang Zi, ‘The Complete Works Of Chuang Tzu’, Terebess Asia Online (TAO), trans. by Burton Watson <http://www.terebess.hu/english/chuangtzu2.html> [accessed 13 January 2011].
[2] Girardot, N. J., Myth and Meaning in Early Daoism: The Theme of Chaos, Three Pines (Three Pines Press, 2009), p. 126.
[3] Schipper, Kristofer, The Taoist Body (University of California Press, 1994), p. 116.
[4] Schipper, p. 166.
[5] Schipper, p. 122.
[6] Schipper, p. 37.
[7] Girardot, p. 5.
[8] British biochemist and Sinologist Joseph Needham 1974, 77?84, quoted in Girardot, p. 5.
[9] Schipper, p. 15.
AN PICTURE OF ENCOURAGEMENT TO ALL OUR FRIENDS IN JAPAN. 日本の皆様、頑張ってください。
As it did when 9/11 ‘happened’, we were confused, unable to grasp the gravity of the news of the tsunami. As Virilio, Baudrillard and others have already analysed, the endless stream of video footage that were downloaded onto the screens that litter our Life 1.0 (TV, computer, smartphones et al) seem to literally and metaphorically bring home images that we have previously seen in the most ostentatious video games and Hollywood blockbusters (so much so that a journalist from a free tabloid has coined the term ‘earthquake porn‘ to describe our consumption of such imagery – but this term is as gratuitous and unnecessary and insensitive as pornography itself). Because, or in spite of the fact that we are inundated with such imagery, that there was/is no way we could fathom the reality of the disaster as it struck, as it unfolded, as it was unfolding, and as its repercussions continue to unravel, amidst the media filters (which includes smokescreens, distortions, lies, embellishments).
The metaphorical and literal collision between the fictitious and the actual is all the more stark as we recall how the notion of ‘The Big One’ was etched into the consciousness of any resident of Japan ever since such an event had been predicted: other than regular emergency drills, every one is taught what to do and where to go, etc, when a major earthquake strikes. Yet, no matter how prepared one is, no matter how often one experiences quakes on a daily basis, no matter how much the notion of the possibility of such a disaster is ingrained in one’s day-to-day consciousness, one is never sufficiently prepared emotionally. That we had, in a previous life, visited and stayed in Fukushima with a mentor, composer/laptop artist Professor Christophe Charles (with whom we have had the honour to collaborate with many many times) to stage a ‘live’ performance, and recorded videos of the very nuclear plants as we walked around the city also makes the news of the tsunami all the more difficult to grasp and comprehend. As the news unfolded, or rather, as we watched the alarming images of the destruction played and replayed before our eyes, we burst into tears, but what do we know? What can we really know? What can we possibly understand, as mere consumers of the media images and texts, and as a worried friend reading detailed and heartwarming email replies from our friends on the ground – albeit from a safe distance?
When news of the tsunami hit us, we were on the road, and this was one of the photographs that we snapped that day – a clear, crisp sunny day it was. Image-makers that we are (that said, everyone is, if not an artist in Beuy’s formulation, an image-maker today) we have nonetheless been extremely affected by the terrifying images of the tsunami we saw. (Hence) Here is one image we have created, as a response- an image of hope. Our dear friends in Japan, our dearest friends of the film and art communities in Yamagata, Tokyo and Beppu, our professors, tutors, colleagues at the Musashino Art University, all our friends, mentors, colleagues who had supported, encouraged, challenged, taught, critiqued, criticised and loved us, people old and young from all walks of life whom we had the fortune to encounter as we travelled all over the islands via rail in Summer 2004, the fellow swimmers and lifeguards of the swimming pools in Fuchu and Kodaira, and everyone else we have met met in the three years that we lived, worked, swam, and islandhopped throughout the archipelago: please stay bright! Our time in Japan was a powerful episode of our lives, deeply challenging as it was beautiful – beautiful largely due to the wide range of amazing people – including the many artists, filmmakers, composers, dancers – we have met and worked with along the way. Itinerant and independent runners that we are of this and other lives, it is the amazing people we run into along these journeys that make our experiences so meaningful and powerful. Our dearest friends in Japan, we do not stop thinking of you and pray for your safety, resilience and strength. Although we are now in a different place literally and metaphorically, and a different life, as a different being, we are a sum of all our previous experiences, because of you. We are running our daily runs, thinking of you. ???????????????????????
** THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO HELP – PLEASE SHOW OUR SUPPORT **
LETTER TO THE DEAD
How are you? […] Look, I am your beloved on earth, so fight for me, intercede for my name! … Drive off illness of my limbs! May you appear for me as a blessed one before me, that I may see you fighting for me in a dream […].
Written on a funerary stela or inscribed tablet,circa 2100 BC. As seen at the enchanting Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead: Journey through the Afterlife, seen recently at the British Museum, in preparation of our (impending?) death.
WE TURN ONE ON 12.12.2010. WE HAVE 637 DAYS TO RUN TO LOOK FOR THE MEANING OF LIFE, before we die on the last day of the Nondon Olympics on 09.09.2012. That is the day we will cease our 1000-day quest.
One year ago, on 12.12.2009, we were born. Today, on 12.12.2010, we turn one. Before we die on 09.09.2012, we have 637 days left to look for a/ the Meaning of Life 3.0. We are Sagittarius according to our star signs – if you buy into / believe that school of thought/belief. To mark this occasion, we ran through the shopping districts of Nondon to the constellation pattern last month. But where oh where, on, or out of, googleearth might a/the Meaning Of Life 3.0 be?
We pondered on the question today, as we have for the last year of our lives. Needless to say we have arrived at no answer/solution/conclusion. Yet / hence, we are running as we have for the past year, and more so than ever before. It does not get easier, but we are keeping at it. We have also (more, or less) kept our hair uncut for the duration of the 1000 days, as a measurement of the passage of time, nodding to the 1-year performances of one of our favourite artists Tehching Hsieh.
To work on our grand(ious) question, and to mark this grand(ious) occasion of our birthday (DO WE HEAR YOU SAY THAT WE LOOK OLDER THAN OUR AGE?????), we decided to do 4 things:
1) To compile a list of things we have done in the past year. By no means exhaustive, this list proves that we have put in much effort (without much returns?), but, like any good road movie/quest, it is always the journey that matters. So we are getting there, or getting there there.
2) The second thing we did today was to listen to Sugarcubes’ Birthday.
3) The third thing we did today to mark our birthday was to visit our local cinema to watch Palme D’Or winner at the 2010 Cannes, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, by one of our favourite filmmakers, Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Even for a hardcore believer/follower/user/advocate of the law of non-linearity like us, we found this work challenging – which is also one of the reasons why we adore Apichatpong (for, what fun is there is things were too easy and obvious??). When, in a previous life when we curated his magical Tropical Malady in the ‘South East Asian Programme’ at the Cinema South Festival near the Gaza Strip in Sderot, Israel, we had a clear epiphany that Apichatpong’s films are best enjoyed when one is in the hazy, stony, liminal state of being semi-asleep-and-semi-awakeness. That is what his work does too – pushing one to (one’s) no-man’s land, in the chaosmos of realities, being at once exposed and vulnerable, as well as most lucid and mindful, in the chaosmos of feeling ill, and feeling ill with happiness, cruelty and beauty, predator and prey, a cat and a fish (and an ecstatic encounter with a catfish). This is what Tarkovsky, Herzog, Chagall, Bach/Glenn Gould and Garin Nugroho do to us. It’s appropriate to have this done to us, on our first year running within and across Lives 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0.
4) Before doing all of that, we begin our day with a(nother) run. WE ARE ABSOLUTELY LIVID THAT ONE SECTION OF THE REGENTS CANAL IS CLOSED OFF DUE TO SOME RENOVATION/DEMOLITION WORK OF SOME SORT OR ANOTHER. So, no more canal-Victoria Fark runs for the next few weeks (or – horrors – months?!?!). We are back to loops at the Regents Fark.
Life goes on, or rather lives go on. As usual, if you have any advice for our quest, please DO write in. Contact us – click on comment here, or write to us at <dislocation@3rdlifekaidie.com>, become our friends on the evil FB, tweet us. There is more than one way to grab us.
Thank you for running with us in the past year. Are we ready to continue with the best run of our lifetime(s), this life, every life?
KAIDIE’S HITS/MISSES: IF WE CAN’T/DON’T WANT TO MEET IN THIS LIFE, PERHAPS WE COULD IN OUR NEXT/OTHER LIVES. ASSUMING THAT YOU’D LIKE TO, THAT IS. Same place, same time?
Reprinted from Facebook posts by Meena Mylvaganam, Marta Sofia Pinho Alves and Urbantick/Fabian Neuhaus. Image by Urbantick/Fabian Neuhaus.
IN THE PINK OF HEALTH: DAY 55: (ONE OF) KAIDIE’S MAPPINGS OF HER LIFE 3.0: NOT A WORLD OF BLACKS AND WHITES, BUT OSCILLATIONS OF IN BETWEENS.
If you can read between the lines and gaze between the greys and grays, why don't you test out this mapping in YOUR life?
FAQ-ING HELL…
- Snow Hill EC1, where there is neither snow nor hill, but mysteries galore. Exciting!
Q) What’s ‘Life 3.0’?
A) Life 3.0 is the sum of 1) reality as it is, and 2) our alternate realities. It takes the best of both, and indeed, all worlds. Sounds too good to be true? You are quite right – it doesn’t exist. Or, an other way to look at this, which is the same side of the same pence, is to say that Life 3.0 is right there. I mean, right HERE. EVERYWHERE. NOWHERE, and NOW, HERE. It is IN BETWEEN, in the gaps and interstices, without which everything collapses. It is that which holds the whole together, the dark matter. So, try. Try harder. Harder. Getting there? YOU ARE NOT TRYING HARD ENOUGH!
Q) Why ‘rough guide’?
A) This is a travel guide, to help us navigate this or any lives. It’s a rough, rather than a ‘refined’ (?) one, since it’s updatable, changeable, open, unfinished and unstable (NO THANKS TO YOU, MY DEAR READER!). Rather than a monolithic opaque mass of absolutes, the rough guide is fragmented, tattered, shredded into pieces, rather like the dislocated Kaidie herself really.
Q) What do you mean by ‘dislocate’?
A) Kaidie lives Life 3.0, but since Life 3.0 does not quite exist, we can’t quite locate her, can we. Also, by extrapolation, Kaidie does not exist. Or, inversely, if we say that Life 3.0 is everywhere, Kaidie is everywhere as well. Rather than a sugar-coated lovey-dovey balance and harmony, Life 3.0 is positioned in-between Life 1.0 and Life 2.0 in a dynamic and violent space-time brimming with tension that accommodates and pushes hot/cold, right/wrong, black/white, happiness/pathos all at the same time. Following this, Kaidie, a 3rd Lifer, is also necessarily equally violently ruptured/torn/split/dismembered/dis-located – and thoroughly knowing it – AND enjoying it.
Q) Why this timeframe?
A) Kaidie is born 12.12.2009 and dies 09.09.2012, which resembles a palindrome, which suits Kaidie perfectly, being a sucker for artificial and/or superficial symmetries. Kaidie, who has absolute control over her birth and death, handpicked these dates. Regardless of Kaidie’s success in fulfilling her quest, she will expire 09.09.2012, and she will refuse aid to sustain her life, and she will donate her organs on e-bay. Any takers? What’s your starting bid?
Q) Where is Nondon?
A) Nondon is a subjective version of London. So, Nondon is in London. Or, London is in Nondon. Nondon is a variation of London. Or, London is a variation of Nondon. Try a few variations of venn diagrammes, shall we? Recall that Godard says that all documentary films are a form of fiction. Or the other way around? Both make sense: so-called non-fiction (sic) as a subset of fiction, and fiction as a subset of non-fiction. Try a few variations of venn diagrammes, shall we?
Q) I live in London, Ontario. Is this of any relevance to me?
A) Yes, for you can have your own ‘Nondon’ as well (if you don’t already)!
Q) I live in Croydon. Is this of any relevance to me?
A) Yes, for you can have your own ‘Mroydon’ (or ‘Droydon’) as well (if you don’t already)!
Q) Why ‘a rough guide’ instead of ‘the’ ? Why ‘a Life 3.0’ ? Maybe you don’t understand how articles are used?
A) Thank you Mr/Ms Grammar Cop. I do. Maybe you need some re-education yourself in manners.
Q) Why ‘a rough guide’ instead of ‘the’? Why ‘a Life 3.0’
A) Kaidie points to a possibility; she is but one out of many possible versions out there – but she’s not even possibly the ‘best’ of the lot! Hence, instead of THE rough guide, what we are proposing here is one out of many possible variation. You can have your own version of rough guide, and Life 3.0 as well, for that matter.
Q) What constitutes a ‘meaningful’ life?
A) That’s for me / us to find out… Well, that which is not meaningless, or is less meaningless.
Q) So, what on googleearth does Kaidie want?
A: Thanks for asking. I would like: 3-year supply of Waterstones book vouchers, Garmin GPS Forerunner (or a GPS system to strap to my forehead), miniscule portable High Definition camera-cum-video camera that I can carry while running (or have one made for me to strap onto my large forehead, which still has space), new trainers, sweat-proof winter running gear, 3-year membership at Olympic-sized pool, champagne, rose wine, warm fresh bread, salmon, cod fish, sashimi, companionship, advice, etc. I am a very open person, so I would entertain anything you may wish to offer. Also, I am still open to receiving gifts for my baby shower, as well as Xmas(es), and New Year(s).
Q) Who are you?
A) I am Kaidie. Next question.
Q) What does Kaidie do for a living?
A) Kaidie is a full-time (re-)searcher of the meaning of Life 3.0.
Q) What does Kaidie do when she is not working?
A) Currently Kaidie is so busy with work that she has no life. I mean, Kaidie’s work is to live Life 3.0. So, what I mean is, Kaidie is so busy with work that she is also busy with life. So, when she is working, she is living Life 3.0. When she is living Life 3.0, she is working. When she is not working, she is not living Life 3.0 and will not be talking to you, since you wouldn’t know her, since she does not exist as far as you are concerned.
Q) Your life looks boring. Why should I care?
A) Well, help me make my life interesting, then! Write in, give me advice about how to make mine a meaningful life!
Q: Why should I be involved? Why should I care!?
A: Life 3.0 is a worldview/position/positionality/stance/philosophy that anyone can adapt. No, Kaidie is NOT so heroic as to be doing this to do all of us a grand favour – selfish prat that she is, she’s doing this for herself, really – but she is keen to test her theory/hypothesis, and she genuinely wishes to make this life work. For real. And EVERYONE, ANYONE can use this template-insofar as this can be called a ‘template’ at all, being highly patchy, inconsistent and self-contradictory – and apply it to their life, any of their lives, in any city. Like Dryden’s Life 3.0 in Droyden, or Fanny’s Life 4.6 in Feijing, or Frederic’s Life 13.0 in Faris, and so on. That the template is changeable, adaptable and highly customisable is its strength and beauty. Get it?
Q: Are you sure you have gotten your Math sorted out? Is it not Life 1.5, since it’s in between Life 1.0 and Life 2.0?
A) YOU should get YOUR Math sorted out. Life 3.0 take the best of BOTH worlds. Like Eisenstien’s synthesis, the sum is greater than the parts. Life 1.5 is the average of the 2 – a half-baked compromise. If it were a compromise we hadn’t needed to invent this. Kaidie is uninterested in compromise, but excited by how she has to negotiate the tension between Life 1.0 and Life 2.0 – Kaidie precisely acknowledges and respects the push-pull, the struggle, the battle – and positions herself right in the thick of action! Now THAT is Life 3.0.
Q) You seem nice. Can we be friends?
A) Why thank you. You seem not too bad yourself, since you make such nice comments. Add ‘Kaidie Nondon’ as your Facebook friend!
Q) You seem bad-tempered and impatient. I thought you are living a nice life and all that?
A) Well, do I have a choice?! I have not much time. Unlike you, who can have the luxury of 30 or 60 or 90 years to look for the meaning of your life, or not, I have only 3 years! In fact, I have so little time that I was born an adult from day one, so that I don’t have to go through all that growing up pangs, and become a professional Lifer straight away.
Q) You have hardly answered any questions properly. Are you having a laugh?
A) Well, if I’d known so much I wouldn’t need to do this experiment, would I?
Q) You have hardly answered any questions properly. Are you having a laugh?
A) Look at the title of this page. I didn’t say I could answer these questions. Also, if one cannot answer something in the positive (what something is, which is, wow, very grand indeed), it is always helpful, or at least interesting, to say it in the negative (what something is not – which sounds like an exercise in semantics but I assure you it is not). And if I / you / anyone could answer everything it would be all too easy, too boring, and we wouldn’t need to do it in the first place. Now I don’t want to sound preachy (or peachy, for that matter), but Life is all about challenges – Life 3.0 is one hell of a challenge it self (isn’t that obvious!) Raising questions is the point – and rather than claiming to ‘answer’ questions, it’s a lot more exhilarating for us to open things up, open things up further, refine the question, come up with more questions, ask why we are asking these questions in the first place, ask why we are asking why we are asking these questions in the second place, and then…
Q) You have hardly answered any questions properly. Are you having a laugh?
A) Why should I? This is a matter of life-&-death. Particularly MY life-&-death! I’m devoting not one day, but ONE THOUSAND days to do this search / research!! Can/ do YOU have that sort of commitment and passion and stamina? Well, I don’t either, so come on the road with me so we give each other some amoral support.
Q) You have hardly answered any questions properly. Are you having a laugh?
A) Yes. Why not. Life is short. And you?
GOODBYE 2009. GOODBYE NOUGHTIES.
Disembodied.
Who said that time heals all wounds? It would be better to say that time heals everything except wounds. With time, the hurt of separation loses its real limits. With time, the desired body will soon disappear, and if the desiring body has already ceased to exist for the other, then what remains is a wound… disembodied. – Sans Soleil 1983 Chris Marker.
In Life 3.0, Kaidie is free from the burden of memory. (If Kaidie had no camera, she would have forgetten). In Life 3.0, Kaidie is free from hurt, the hurt of separation, limitations of time, longing, desire, limitations of her body, limitations of her mind.
DAY 15: KAIDIE HAS A NEW SUPERPOWER FOR 2010: LAUNCHING THE MIND over MATTER PLUGIN aka THE M&M PLUGIN (TM). Apologies, you can’t download it – BUT I will share it at my first real-life appearance on 20:00hrs 26 January in Villa Straeuli, Winterthur, Switzerland. So, COME!
Being that time of the year when we come up with new resolutions in desperate bids to triumph over evil habits, I have been terribly busy with my Winter assignment, that of coming up with a new superpower. Being already quite perfect as I am, what do I need? That was a tough one that had my mind all bogged down. However, today I invented one. Although it remains a state secret, I would like to reward you, my loyal Dear Readers of my Life 3.0 travel blog, by sharing with you the fruits of my labour here: I have willed myself a brand new plugin*, in time for the New Year: that of the Mind Over Matter (M&M) superpower.
* A brief note about superpowers of the 21st century, for the benefit of you, mere mortals: We post-911 superheroes no longer enter phone booths to put on crimson briefs over blue tights. Pink is better, but faster still are plugins (no learning curve!!). Simply switch them on, and I am ready to save the worlds.
Above: low-res photo of Kaidie's high-res brains (from my Blackberry).
My M&M plugin (NO, I am not abbreviating it to ‘MoM’ because I deplore all you righteous simpletons Freudian/Lacanian/Oprah/Jerry Springer/Psychobabble Crunchy Nutheads trying to read into all these and NO, I am not in denial so kindly piss off) is most formidable, as with all of my other superpowers. I installed my M&M plugin this afternoon during my run at Regents Fark.
Allow me to explain, my Dear Readers. My right ankle was in a sort of a strain the first 4km of my 15km run yesterday. I was nearly limping. This afternoon, again, the right ankle was moaning in a dull tone – and this time for more than 6km! So Kaidie was presented with 2 choices: 1) ignore the moans of my sissy ankle, or 2) listen to my sissy ankle, give up the run, walk (slowly) home (in shame).
It was a no-brainer. Although I do not own any Triumph bra or panties for they are too momsy (SHUT UP again you psychobabblecrunchynuts), I am a never-say-die (until 09.09.2012 that is) Triumphant Triumphalist. I am no chicken! For, I am a hamster, remember! NOW get that! In Life 3.0, there is a 3rd choice: my brilliantly fertile mind got working, and there and then, at Regents Fark, I invented the M&M plugin, which I uploaded and installed immediately. I do not mean to boast (with my 3rdlifer modesty and terrific solo-auto upbringing) but with the M&M superpower, the rest of my 15km run today was chicken feed. No ankle strain or anything mundane like that, or rather, if there was,any, it did not matter. The M&M plugin WORKS and is RUNNING WELL (pun intended)!
For those who lack imagination, I have decided to help you (this being the oh-so-jolly season of giving and sharing, afterall!) I have taken a photo of my brains (please see above). The superpower plugins are the bits sticking up on the left (more to come). As clearly illustrated here, my mind is quite fertile, as I am of a fertile age (although, nothankyouverymuch, we are against reproduction philosophically – Kaidie is extremely principled as [self-]righteous, if you didn’t already know) – but of course, if you recall the circumstance of my birth, which was the cesspool of poo, my primary source of nutrients.
Oh goody, I’m really into the festive mood now.
COPENHAGEN: DEAL/NO DEAL/EITHER/OR/NEITHER/NOR
The age of stupid, again (and again, looped, across many life, and death cycles)
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DAY 6: MAPMAKING WORKSHOP AT THE BRITISH LIBRARY; ANOTHER SITE MAP FOR THIS SITE
Sight map of this website. I cannot bend my knees due to my folly of falling off the treadmill 2 days ago, but I can map the globe.
There are many exquisite maps at the British Library. (Like the British Museum, there are many, many, many things in the British Library. One of the reasons as we all know quite well is that they, well, ‘appropriated’ many things from all over the world during the glorious days of imperialism, but Kaidie, a 3rdlifer, while aware and conscious of course of these discourses, is free from the baggage and burden of history/histories. As well as taste, some might say, looking at my map, above).
After the workshop, I walk down the Euston Road, which leads to Marylebone Road. Opposite the Madam Tussaud’s Museum (which is full of my impersonator friends), is a pub named the Globe (see below). As a true-blue cosmopolitan Nondoner, I down 9 pints in quick succession in 6 minutes, of Hoegaarden, Asahi, 3 Moët et Chandon Brut Impérial, 2 Mojitos, washed down with 2 straight vodkas. Burp. (In Life 3.0, there is no legal age-limit. Nothing is illegal, or nothing is legal either.) Refreshed from my small drink, I go home and make my own map (see above).
We are told that there will be a big map show in April 2010 – either the show is a big show, or that the maps that are shown there are big, or it is a big show that shows big maps. Magnificent! I must go! I must put it down in my diary.
Around the globe in 6 days.
I MUST, MUST go as well to look at The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam show which closes 21 Feb 2010! I have just signed up to receive online newsletters. I must register to be a Reader as well.
SO MUCH TO DO, AND SO MUCH TIME TO DO THEM ALL! How I adore Nondon! My Life 3.0 is a bed of roses. And fragrant proses. Sigh.
Do not, my dear Readers, envy me please. Inequality is life. Such is life. Accept it!
A ROUGH GUIDE FOR A LIFE 3.0: DO CONTRIBUTE, AND I WILL TEST THEM OUT!
As Kaidie travels her Grand Tour of Life 3.0 for the next 1000 days, she will draw up, with your help, a list of guidelines. GUIDE KAIDIE! HELP HER NAVIGATE THIS PERFECT LIFE! For now, just to get us / her going, Kaidie has come up with a few. KAIDIE WILL TEST OUT WHAT YOU SUGGEST /WHAT WE COME UP WITH, TO SEE WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN’T. Through trial and error for the next 3 years, we can finetune them. The list of guidelines that we end up with on 09.09.2012 will not be the last, as this list remains dynamic and always updatable, but it will be at a state that can be adapted by anyone, anywhere to live life 3.0. SO, WHICH OF THESE GUIDELINES SHOULD KAIDIE TWEAK? WHAT SHOULD KAIDIE REMOVE? WHAT SHOULD KAIDIE ADD? WHAT OTHER GUIDELINES SHOULD KAIDIE TEST OUT TO ENABLE HER TO LIVE A MEANINGFUL LIFE 3.0?
Original composition by Philip Tan 2009
* 16.12.2009: ADVICE FROM LUCY: “FOCUS KAIDIE, FOCUS!”
