A ROUGH GUIDE TO REGENT’S FARK: KAIDIE’S MOOMOODYMOODMOOD MAP OF HER TYPICAL RUN AT HER FAVOURITE FARK.
You can take a look at the same route tracked sehr scientifically using GPS on my page in GPSies – albeit ending up at my local Pesco’s to buy 35 tubs of some of my favourite jellied eel. Starting from last week, however, Kaidie has upped her training to 1 more loop, in preparation for her first ever Life 1.0 marathon in September, making it a total of about 18km under 2 hours each time. More updates about the race soon! Watch this space. Don’t you dare blink.
IT’S DAY 152, AND KAIDIE CERTAINLY HAS MUCH CATCHING UP TO DO. In the midst of trying to make sense of Nondon now/here.
Hello world. Again. I’ve run back to run my own lives. For now.
For the benefit of those of you who have just joined me on my quest, here’s a summary of the events in March and April: On 2 March, while running along Fuston Road, I fell head-over-heals. I dislocated a part of my body. Thereafter, I could not be located. I had been kidnapped by The Good Pirate into the world-within-world-within-world of Phuket 2.0 in Second Life. In my absence, a reader, Kailives, hacked into my account and ran my lives on my behalf, by maintaining this blog, my Facebook Twitter and Youtube pages, as well as standing in for a few of my gigs. I did make brief appearances in some of these events, and that was how my whereabouts was uncovered. Finally, on my 5th-month birthday, I decided to break free from my kidnapper, and left the metaverse.For better or for worse, but for a restless runner, it is certainly not for good.
Kailives did try her best to do my job in my absence. However, in this collaborative quest of the meaning of Life 3.0 of Kaidie’s, there were several issues that her co-runners raised that made Kaidie slightly dumbfounded. Some of them are reproduced in the above image. In the coming weeks and months, I will have to try to think about them and respond to them. So, my dear readers and fellow-runners, thank you very much indeed for all your advice and support so far. Please do be patient and give me some time to carefully look at your advice. Kailives has left, but if need be, I may get her back, if I need her voice.
At this point, however, I can respond loud and clear, in absolutely no uncertain terms, that I will have to say no to the suggestion that Kaidie should make a baby in her quest for the meaning of Life 3.0. Kaidie’s response is NO, no, no thank you, never. No. Kaidie will make no baby. Especially not now, given the way things seem to be heading in Nondon.
WHERE IS THAT ‘SPACE’ IN CYBERSPACE? (HOW) DOES PHYSICS FUNCTION IN CYBERSPACE? Where did we come from? Where are we now? Where (the hell) are we off to?
Should Kaidie use this map to plot her escape from her kidnapper in Second Life? After all it's been nearly 2 months since she's been there!
The following is one of several imaginary discussions between ‘Pro-First-Lifers’ (realists who value meatspace more than our virtual) and ‘Pro-Second-Lifers’ (cyber-enthusiasts and those who celebrate the power of imagination), in a fictitious online academic forum. Entitled (How) Does Physics Function In Cyberspace? Metaphysical Enquiries For The 21st Century: An Online Peer-To-Peer Peer-Reviewed Forum, subscribers include very serious philosophers, psychologists, media theorists, writers, cyber-geographers, cyber-artists, cyber-anthropologists and cyber-anybody-else. As in real life forums, participants are civilised – most of the time. Subscribers who identify themselves as a Pro-First-Lifer see Life 1.0 as the more important life, warn us of the dangers that lurk in Cyberspace, and view the Pro-Second Lifers as delusional dreamers who run away from problems they have in RL. Some of them also pelt names like ‘Stelarc Nutters’ and ‘Technogeeks’ at them. On the other hand, the pro-Second-Lifers retaliate by calling them names such as ‘Luddite’, ‘Academics who-are-pretend-Liberalists-but-are-actually-Fascists-in-real-life-Who-Diss-Everything-Because-It-Is-Uncool-Not-To’, ‘Conservatives’ and ‘Amish’. While many subscribers chose to hide behind generic avatars, some bravely use their real names (such as Sherry Turkle, Lev Manovich and Martin Heiddeger). That said, it is sometimes unclear which side they speak for. It is also suspected that some of the subscribers may have more than one account and speak from different sides. Such is the nature of any debates, especially online ones…
Let us begin our Cyberspace Odyssey.
Neal Stephenson: Like any place in Reality, the Street is subject to development. Developers can build their own small streets feeding off of the main one. They can build buildings, parks, signs, as well as things that do not exist in Reality, such as vast hovering overhead light shows and special neighbourhoods where the rules of three-dimensional spacetime are ignored.[1]
Pro-Second-Lifer A: This is an extraordinary time to be alive. Not only can I travel to different cities in real life (RL), there are even more travels I can have outside of RL. Thanks to the Internet, my world has expanded vastly. Cyberspace is a not only a great place to visit – within there, there are so many more places to enter. In Stephenson’s imagination, a metaverse is a ‘place’, with ‘streets’. In Gibson’s, it is a big neon ‘city’, within which there are many centres to visit. But the land size of Second Life alone, at 1,700 virtual square km, is larger than metropolitan London.[2] So it would not be a stretch, even, to describe Cyberspace as a world, within which there are yet many worlds to explore.
William Gibson: People jacked in so they could hustle. Put the trodes on and they were out there, all the data in the world stacked up like one big neon city, so you could cruise around and have a kind of grip of it, visually anyway, because if you didn’t, it was too complicated, trying to find your way to a particular piece of data you needed.[3]
Neal Stephenson: Hiro is approaching the Street. It is the Broadway, the Champs Elysees of the Metaverse. It is the brilliantly lit boulevard that can be seen, miniaturized and backward, reflected in the lenses of his goggles. It does not really exist. But right now, millions of people are walking up and down it.[4]
Pro-Second-Lifer B: Even when simply cruising around as Gibson does, surfing in cyberspace can be akin to psychogeographical tactic that the Situationists advocated in the streets. In these trips, surprises happen, bringing me to unexpected places. When I open my customised homepage on my Firefox browser, I may see a CNN news headlines that I click into to read; there, I may see comments written in by a viewer. Intrigued by her words, I check out her linked Blogspot blog. There, a Google ad pops up to tell me to check out a related topic, which I do, and at the same time, watch a Youtube posting by the same writer, at the same time! I write in a comment to her video, and seconds before I know it, someone else has already responded to my comment. So, another thing that makes my around-the-(Cyber)world-trip better than a RL one, is its simultaneity and real-time quality. It is as if I am visiting London, New York, Shanghai and Johannesburg at the same time! Better still, this world seems to be infinite, with no limits, capable of unending expansion. Like Columbus discovering virgin territories in the 15th century, Web 2.0 is our golden age of exploration, of Cyberspace. As not only a user but a content-creator myself with the easy-to-use tools, not only can I participate in the various virtual worlds, I can construct my own new territories.
Pro First-Lifer A: I might not have the guts to say this to you face–to-face, but I think you are being naïve, crass and Romantic. You are speaking of Cyberspace as if you are Alice entering Wonderland the first time, still in the state of enchantment. In the past two decades, the academic world has been up to speed with this – if not entire new departments like Informatics, there are new divisions in every discipline, such as digital anthropology or ethnography in the ‘old’ discipline of Anthropology, ‘new’ media art in Fine Art (which is by now rather old, so old that artists have dropped the ‘new’ out of embarrassment). This may disappoint you, but there is even the new discipline of Cybergeography – where geographers attempt to fully map the space that you describe as ‘infinite’. The same way psychoanalysts in Life 1.0 rationalise your dreams in your Life 2.0, Cybergeographers conduct their field work online, in-world, and share their data with us in Life 1.0. I am very sorry, but it is time to wake up from your (wet) dreams and have a reality check.
Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin: The hype around much of Internet, especially in the mid 1990s, was that it was ‘everywhere and nowhere’ and it would make geography less significant in human organisation through the ‘death of distance’. This is patently not been the case. While the Internet has undoubtedly had an affect on the geography of business operation and individual consumption, distance is not dead. What is being witnessed is a complicated restructuring, through processes of concentration and decentralisation, across scales.[5]
Pro-Second-Lifer B: I do not disagree with Dr Dodge and Dr Kitchin. As we invent and use it, we also struggle to make sense of the complex medium. Just as we can approach life itself from different perspectives such as biology, religion and the arts, so, too, could Cyberspace be analysed from various ways. In fact, the penetration of the Internet on our lives is so far and deep, that it is as complex as life itself. And as Pro-First-Lifer 1 pointed out, pre-internet phenomena, disciplines and objects create neologisms, insert hyphens to join the new wave (e-commerce, iphone, Government 2.0); all offices, schools, libraries and institutions in First Life have an equal or even bigger Second Lives online (BBC’s iPlayer, tiny country Maldives as the first country to open its official embassy in Second Life in 2007[6]). Many brick-and-mortar businesses have also found it more efficient to have only virtual offices. So this is a complex stage of re-structuring and paradigm shifts indeed, as First Life attempts to be up to speed with the Second in Cyberspace, in order to fully make use of the powerful medium of the Internet.
Pro-First Lifer A: Check out my government’s website- on the page entitled ‘Social Media and Web 2.0 in Government’, the White House even has a tagline of ‘Better websites, better government’[7]! Recall too how part of Obama’s success during the election was because of his team’s ability to exploit the medium, being pervasive on Youtube and Twitter. So this is a case in point of an clever integration of our First and Second Lives.
Pro-Second –Lifer A: I’m confused though – should it not be the other way around? Better government, therefore better websites? … Anyways, let’s not digress from the discussion of the geography of Cyberspace that Dr Dodge and Dr Kitchin are trying to explain. In any case, no offence to Pro-First Lifer 1, but we certainly don’t need more of this country’s presence in our Second Lives, or of this country’s ‘exploitation’ of anything, for that matter, which we have in our First Lives. Way more than enough. Do not get me started.
Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin: The idea of the Internet as being somehow ‘anti-geographical’ is based on three key notions: fantasy, denial, and ignorance: 1. Internet geography was assumed not to exist. This is anti-corporeal, cyber-utopianist fantasy that somehow the virtual communities of cyberspace can be produced in a realm divorced from material existence. 2. Internet geography was assumed not to be important, so could be denied. The failure of many e-commerce ventures in the dotcom boom, we would argue, was based in part on ignoring the grounded, geographic, realities of computer-mediated communication, logistic networks and labour markets. 3. Internet geography was assumed not be measurable. Because it was hard to do, it was ignored, especially in the heady days of bubble growth. The medium of communication might be virtual, but the Internet is dependent on physical infrastructure and human labour, most of which is invisible to users. The computers are small in scale and are usually hidden from view in anonymous servers rooms and secure, windowless buildings, while the cables are under floors, in ceilings and in conduits buried under roads. The banal technicalities of Internet infrastructures are easily overlooked (just like for other essential utilities of water, electricity) but they are not naturally given. The geographical structure and operation of networks that service modern living have politics.[8]
Pro-Second Lifer B: Dr Dodge, could you give an example please about the political nature of geography?
Martin Dodge: Domain names are important locational tools at a technical level, but also have a wider political geography in terms of how they are allocated and how this naming relates back to real-world territorial and jurisdictional boundaries. (For example, the recent ruling from a French court that the Yahoo Internet service must block users in France from buying Nazi memorabilia through the web.[9]
Pro-First-Lifer A: Just as there is geopolitics in the real world, there is cybergeopolitics as well. Let us discuss this in a later thread. Pro-Second Lifer 1, your Cyberbubble may burst if you come to my country and see Second Life’s 700 Debian Linux servers in a San Francisco data warehouse[10] – large, physical metals with lots of cables, all working furiously to generate your fantasy world. Just because you do not see them, you are blind also to their presence. And, by the way, if you do not already know, but this is a democratic society, so I have the right to free speech. Or, do you come from a repressed country with dismal human rights records? Have they blocked your Google search engine from the words ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ like the Chinese, or even ‘Life’ itself? Or, are you an oppressed Chinese yourself? I am a little busy saving the (real) world, but shall I liberate you as well?
John Perry Barlow: Whether by one telephonic tendril or millions, they are all connected to one another. Collectively, they form what their inhabitants call the Net. It extends across that immense region of electron states, microwaves, magnetic fields, light pulses and thought which sci-fi writer William Gibson named Cyberspace.[11]
Pro-Second Lifer A: The knowledge of the existence of hardworking machines running my Second Life in no way disrupts my enjoyment in-world. Incidentally, artist group Tsunami precisely attempted to question the meaning of distance in their presentation at Documenta 11, by walking from Kassel to Kiev, where Documenta’s servers are located.[12] Understanding that the workings of the dream machine of Hollywood studios, and for that matter, the behind-the-scenes of a blockbuster movie, can enhance my pleasure of the fictional world that is created. And even more so, arguably, in virtual worlds such as Second Life, since I am responsible for creating it! Like Pygmalion, can’t I help but marvel at my own creation! To return us to the topic of geography, I think it is a good idea to have a map around Cyberspace. GPS navigators, maps, Googlemaps and Google Earth certainly help and do not diminish the adventurer’s pleasure in her explorations. Magellan, with his crappy, low-tech compass (high tech at that time, to be sure), was the first to travel around the world, and went all the way to the Philippines (and got killed there, however, god bless his soul). In Cyberspace, search engines are already performing the function of helping one get oriented. Pro-First-Lifer A, answering you question, yes I am Chinese, but not that kind. What kind I am is none of your business. I think the Moderator of this forum should ‘liberate’ you and let you go. Like your country, you are uncivil. I must say that I find you repulsive.
John Perry Barlow: Cyberspace, in its present condition, has a lot in common with the 19th Century West. It is vast, unmapped, culturally and legally ambiguous, verbally terse (unless you happen to be a court stenographer), hard to get around in, and up for grabs. Large institutions already claim to own the place, but most of the actual natives are solitary and independent, sometimes to the point of sociopathy. It is, of course, a perfect breeding ground for both outlaws and new ideas about liberty.[13]
Bruce Sterling: Cyberspace is the ‘place’ where a telephone conversation appears to occur. Not inside your actual phone, the plastic device on your desk. Not inside the other person’s phone, in some other city. The place between the phones. […] [I]n the past twenty years, this electrical ‘space,’ which was once thin and dark and one-dimensional—little more than a narrow speaking-tube, stretching from phone to phone—has flung itself open like a gigantic jack-in the- box. Light has flooded upon it, the eerie light of the glowing computer screen. This dark electric netherworld has become a vast flowering electronic landscape. Since the 1960s, the world of the telephone has cross-bred itself with computers and television, and though there is still no substance to cyberspace, nothing you can handle, it has a strange kind of physicality now. It makes good sense today to talk of cyberspace as a place all its own[14].
Martin Dodge: [Cyberspace] suggests that we can exist in a digital ether. But these dreams are nowhere near reality, for cyberspace is hardly immaterial in that it is very much an embodied space. […] [I]t should be treated as an extension of the geographic realm, not as some disembodied, parallel universe. Nevertheless, cyberspace is changing geography, it is warping space, shrinking distance, and modifying our sense of place. Understanding these complex warpings and distortions is very much at the heart of cybergeography.[15]
Pro-Second Lifer B: Cyberspace, conceptualised in science-fiction of Life 2.0, is now brought back to the material world of Life 1.0 by Cybergeographers. While the realists or academics measure Life 2.0 with the rules of Life 1.0, Residents of Life 2.0 continue to attempt to push their limits of imagination and go deeper, further. While Dr Dodge maps Cyberspace as an ‘extension of the geographic realm’, Pro-Second Lifers like myself and Turkle’s MMOG player Doug would have mapped physical geography as an extension of Cyberspace, the same way he sees RL as another window in his desktop. In a similar vein, we can see our online existence as an extension of our physical existence, since many of us have email ‘addresses’ and ‘home’ pages, apart from an address and home in a physical location.
John Perry Barlow: Cyberspace is the homeland of the Information Age – the place where the citizens of the future are destined to dwell.[16]
Neal Stephenson: HIRO PROTAGONIST: Last of the freelance hackers/ Greatest sword fighter in the world/ Stringer, Central Intelligence Corporation / Specializing in software-related intel (music, movies & microcode). On the back is gibberish explaining how he may be reached: a telephone number. A universal voice phone locator code. A P.O. box. His address on half a dozen electronic communications nets. And an address in the Metaverse.[17]
Pro-Second-Lifer B: Like Stephenson’s Hiro Protagonist, our namecards can provide an address in the Metaverse rather than the physical – which in any case is becoming increasingly insignificant, given the death of the culture of letter-writing in preference of email (or briefer still, 140 characters). If we look at the larger picture, Cyberspace – not Earth – is our destined homeland, as Barlow tells us. Also, given that content is user-generated and emergent – by that I mean that which arises and exists only as a phenomenon of independent parts working together, and that which is not predictable on the basis of their properties[18] – there really seems to be more places that we can build, faster than the Cybergeographers are able to map them. The tension between Life 1.0 and Life 2.0 imaginations of the geography of Cyberspace is extremely interesting, just as the tension between Life 1.0 and Life 2.0 imaginations of of any aspect of life (identity, politics, behaviour, reality) and indeed, Life itself, extremely rich.
Pro-First-Lifer B: Pro-Second-Lifer B, you speak of the changes in Cyberspace as if human and natural geographies are static! In response to the changes in physical geography, new maps – and more importantly, new methods of thinking about mapping- are constantly generated. And, in this age, no one is so naïve as to assume that maps are transparent, neutral or objective, but are dynamic mappings.[19] Ditto Cyberspace! I also strongly advise you to have a look at Dr Dodge and Dr Kitchin’s wonderful book, Atlas of Cyberspace, which contains many mappings of many facets of Cyberspace, including maps of the structure of cyberspace, maps of the Web, maps of emails and virtual worlds, as well as an entire section of imaginations from the arts, including science fiction[20]. The existence of this book itself is proof enough of the Cybergeographers recognition of the diversity and wealth of Cyberspace.
Rob Kitchin and Martin Dodge: Maps are never fully formed and their work is never complete. Maps are transitory and fleeting, being contingent, relational and context-dependent; they are always mappings; spatial practices enacted to solve relational problems (eg, how best to create a spatial representation, how to understand a spatial distribution, how to get between A and B, and so on). [21]
Pro-Second-Lifer B: Thank you for the lead, I will definitely read that. I think we recognise that our quarrel about the gap between what we imagine (Life 2.0) and what we translate into reality (Life 1.0), belongs, in part, to the old debate of Cartesian anxiety. As a Pro-Second-Lifer, I certainly am in the ‘mind’ camp. Speaking of which, children certainly have very interesting imaginations of geography on- and off-line. Sherry Turkle talks about how children think of their creations in MMOGs coming to live, and travelling outside of their metaverse into cyberspace![22]
Sherry Turkle: Robbie, a 10-year-old who has been given a modem for her birthday, puts the emphasis not on communication but on mobility in considering whether the creatures she has evolved on SimLife are alive. […] if your modem were on, [the creatures] could get out of your computer and go to America Online. […] Sean, 13, who has never used a modem, comes up with a variant on Robbie’s ideas about travel. “The creatures could be more alive if they could get into DOS. If they were in DOS, they would be like a computer virus and they could get onto all of your disks, and if you loaned your disks to friends, it would be like they were travelling.”[23]
Pro-Second-Lifer A: And don’t we forget that it was, again, Google Earth – the powerful tool of military precision that raises concerns of privacy for the Pro-First-Lifers – is founded in science fiction as much as Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon. We don’t need to fly up the skies or outside of earth itself, to now have a bird’s or god’s eye view. Don’t we see the importance of Life 2.0, with its rich imaginations, supplying Life 1.0 with Life itself!
Neal Stephenson: There is something new: A globe about the size of a grapefruit, a perfectly detailed rendition of Planet Earth, hanging in space at arm’s length in front of his eyes. Hiro has heard about this but never seen it. It is a piece of CIC software called, simply, Earth. It is the user interface that CIC uses to keep track of every bit of spatial information that it owns — all the maps, weather data, architectural plans, and satellite surveillance stuff. [24]
Pro-Second-Lifer A: The MMOG Second Life begins as a vast landscape of untamed wilderness, that the Resident has to sculpt, shape, and settle. Just as RL, SL has different landscapes and sceneries for every taste and ambition – if one has enough Linden dollars, that is.
Wagner James Au: From open oceans spring sailboats, submarines, and cruise ships; from the plains come racing tracks, clothing–optional nightclubs, and Resident–made games of all size and style. From the mountains appears sprawling, Frank Lloyd Wright–style homes, tree villages, and heavily–armed World War II fortresses. In all this, there’s a distinct sense of an expanding wilderness being settled. [25]
Pro-First-Lifer A: You have a great sense of irony – the irony however is that you do not know it. You claim that ‘Life 2.0 supplying Life 1.0 with Life itself’ – do you not see that in your own formulation, Life 1.0 is the larger entity, with Life 2.0 a little grapefruit within it? And, my dear Pro-Second Lifer A, the ‘A’ in my avatar refers to my Almighty country, but I suppose yours refers to A***hole.
Moderator: Discussion thread closed due to Antagonistic behaviours of some users.
(This was sketched January 2010. Obviously, some things, including Kaidie’s grasp of things and her own position, have moved on. We are just uncertain if the ‘moving on’ is a progression, regression, or an other loopy trip).
[1] Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (Spectra, 2000), pp. 24-25. (Chapter 4)
[2] Freund, Katie, ‘DIGC101 Online Worlds’, 2009 [accessed 2 January 2010].
[3] William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive, (Spectra, 1989), p. 22.
[4] Stephenson, p. 24 (Chapter 1), Snow crash.
[5] Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin, ‘Net: Geography Fieldwork: Frequently Asked Questions’, CASA: Working Paper Series, 83 (2004).
[6] ‘Tiny island nation opens the first real embassy in virtual world – Times Online’, Times Online, 2007 [accessed 22 December 2009].
[7] USA government, ‘Better websites. Better government: Social Media and Web 2.0 in Government’, WebContent.gov:, 2009 [accessed 4 January 2010].
[8] Dodge and Kitchin.
[9] Martin Dodge, ‘Cybergeography’, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 28(1) 1-2, 2001 [accessed 4 January 2010].
[10] Tim Guest, Second Lives (Arrow Books Ltd, 2008), p. 7.
[11] John Perry Barlow, Crime and Puzzlement, 1990. Quoted in Dodge, The Geography of Cyberspace Directory – What is Cyberspace ? [accessed 26 December 2009].
[12] Tilman Baumgartel, ‘[Reader-list] A different take on Documenta 11’ [accessed 4 January 2010].
[13] John Perry Barlow, Crime and Puzzlement, 1990. Quoted in Dodge, The Geography of Cyberspace Directory – What is Cyberspace? [accessed 26 December 2009].
[14] Bruce Sterling, Introduction to The Hacker Crackdown.
[15] Dodge 2001, ‘Cybergeography’, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 28(1) 1 – 2 .
[16] 1991, quoted in Dodge.
[17] Stephenson, Snow Crash.
[18] Apple Macintosh Dictionary function, version 2.0.3 (51.5).
[19] Rob Kitchin and Martin Dodge, ‘Rethinking maps’, Progress in Human Geography, 31 (2007), 331-344 [accessed 5 January 2010].
[20] Dodge and Kitchin.
[21] Rob Kitchin and Martin Dodge, ‘Rethinking maps’, Progress in Human Geography, 31 (2007), 331-344 [accessed 5 January 2010].
[22] Turkle, 4.01: Who Am We?
[23] Turkle, 4.01: Who Am We?
[24] Stephenson, Snow Crash. Chapter 13.
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.
UPDATABLE GLOSSARY (ongoing): IMITATIONS OF LIFE
SEEKING DEFINITIONS AND MULTIPLE+ALTERNATIVE DEFINITIONS! CONTRIBUTE NOW!
VARIATIONS OF LIFE:
* Life:
* This Life:
* Any Life:
* Any difference:
* What life?:
* What, life?:
* Best life:
* ‘Best’ life:
* Best ‘life’:
* Least worst life:
* Meaningful life:
* Less meaningless life:
* Life 1.0 / First Life:
* Life 2.0 / Second Life:
* Life 3.0 / Third Life:
* Turd Life:
* After life:
* After lives:
* Life before this life:
* Non-Life:
* Life after death:
* Life before death:
* Life during death:
* Lives after death:
* Death during life:
* Deaths during life:
* Living death
* Living hell
* Living:
* What living:
* Living thing:
* Living person:
* Running:
* Running for (y)our life:
* Run of (y)our life time:
* Run of (y)our life times:
* Travel:
* Travelling:
* Journey of life:
* Journeys of life:
* Journey of lives:
* Semblance of life:
* Imitation of life:
* Variations of life:
* Pseudo-life:
* Semi-life:
* Quasi-life:
* Life style:
* Way of life:
* Ways of life:
* Existence:
* Non-existence:
* Being:
* Non-being:
* Ontology:
* Life-and-death:
* Lives-and-deaths:
* Hanging on to dear life:
* Dignified death:
* Dignified deaths:
* Life-span:
* Life-spans:
* Fate:
* Fates:
* Destiny:
* Destination:
* Anti-destiny:
* Anti-fate:
* There is no such bloody things as fate/destiny:
* Getting there:
* There there:
* Getting there there:
* Don’t be silly, for there is no there there (Gertrude Stein):
I run, because of you, of course not because of you, in spite of you, with you, with out you, regard less, I run, on and on, like the vapid Energizer bunny who goes on and on, but with blisters and aches, like the other vapid Energizer-bunny of Sisyphus with his endless rocks-and-rolls, in drips and drops, in laps and loops, sometimes limping, more often than not swearing, not in leaps and bounds, often falling, often bruising, often idiotic-looking, often idiotic, period, in turns, by turns, again and again, once more, repeat play, next level, same level, drop level, don't stop, can't stop, won't stop, don't ask me to stop, can't go on, must go on, won't go on, don't go on, go on, go on then, come on, don't talk to me when I'm running, running, even if slowly, even as if walking, even as if crawling, as if dead, even when/especially when panting, panting hard, sometimes holding my breath, some times not breathing, for fun, some times choking, invariably grunting, like an gnat, if gnats grunt, or screeching, like an eel about to be slaughtered, so that I can swallow it with jelly, cold, or heated, because jellied eel is one of my favourite foods in Nondon (along with beetroot and parsnips), and eels as unagi some place else in an other time and space (whether it knows of its parallel existence or not), if eels screech, at all, as if eels screeched, at all, wiping off my sweat, unsure if I felt hot or cold, or hot and cold at the same time, sun shining while temperatures are near zero, violent juxtapositions, the way I like it, run, running, why does one run? Just because. Because running takes me where I can not other wise go, for better or worse, like it or not, take it or leave it. Because it makes me happy. Because it makes me less unhappy. Because why not. Running, because why not. Because why the hell not. For, what else is there to do. What else can I do. For how long should I do it. Assuming that one has to do some thing, that is. Is that? Bad answer. Bad question, that's why. Refine your question. Change your question. What was your question? Was it a question? Did you have a question? Restart (if you so wish to). All over. Again.
IN THE METAVERSE, NO ICARUS WILL CRASH. Even if/when I crash, I will be reborn and life goes on. And on. Infinitely. Ad nauseum.
A generation cushioned from the cold by central heating, from the heat by airconditioning, carted in aseptic transports from one identical house or hotel to the another, should feel the need for journeys of mind and body, for pep pills or tranquillisers, or for the cathartic journeys of sex, music and dance. We spend far too much time in shuttered rooms.
– Bruce Chatwin, Anatomy of Restlessness: Selected Writings 1969 – 1989 [1]
Travelling is the act of getting from one place to another[2]. There has been a long history of human movement. Motivations vary – people travel out of pleasure, or reasons political , economical and poetic, or out of necessity, for short or long term, due to push or pull factors, and in various modes of transportation as technologies improve and ambitions engorge. Think climate changes, agricultural practices, trade, migration, famines. Think nomads, gypsies, sailors, stateless people and their diasporas. Think political conquests, search for new, virgin territories, untapped resources, ‘discoveries’ of ‘new’ continents like your Americas and Temasek-s[3]. Think of the revolutionary heroes, as writer, romantic and compulsive traveller Chatwin urges, who are ‘not worth a thing until he has been on a good walk. Che Guevara spoke of the “nomadic phase” of the Cuban Revolution. Look what the Long March did for Mao TseTung, or Exodus for Moses.’[4] Think escape and the search for Paradise, by Thelma, Louise, and Gauguin, and the middle-aged European/Australian woman in Bali with the Kuta cowboys, and the modestly-sized Oriental man with the towering platinum-blonde escort. Think religious pilgrimages, rites of passage and existential quests for the meaning of life. Think Romantic, heroic and punishing quests by madmen Fitzcarraldo/Klaus Kinski in the Amazon, and the solo walks from Kiev to Madrid by Werner Herzog himself, as if the very act of a strenuous trek exorcises their demons. Think trade shows, World Expos, and the travelling circus in town. Think Grand Tours to see the world for those with the leisure time (for it did take a bit longer than it would today) and spending power. For those with even more spending power, think travels to outer space, as the guy appropriately named Laliberte did in 2009 – something technologically impossible only years ago, but haunted those rich in imagination for centuries, like George Melies and Arthur C. Clark. Think poetic search for inspirations and new ways of seeing, by Barthes in Japan, and Basho the poet who cured himself of his loneliness by islandhopping in Japan. As Chatwin observes,
travel does not merely broaden the mind. It makes the mind, The raw materials of Proust’s imagination were two walks round the town of Illiers where he spent his family holidays. These walks later became Méséglise and Guermantes Ways in À la Recherche du Temps Perdu. [5]
Chatwin notes also that ‘(m)an walked and swam long before he rode or flew. Our human possibilities are best fulfilled on land or sea. Poor Icarus crashed.’[6]. Think Maldives, Goa, Ibiza. Entire cities and towns perform. Today, globalisation and 1-pence early-bird gimmicks from budget airlines gives everyone the opportunity to fly, making travelling a part of contemporary life. We become tourists, take breaks, have getaways, go for vacations, perform public sex on the beach with strangers [7] in the city constructed for public show-and-tell. Think casino-city Macau, Documenta in Kassel once every 5 years, Olympics in London in 2012. Then, there are also those who travel simply because the act of travelling is pleasurable in itself, like ‘the indefatigable Arab wanderer who strolled from Tangier to China and back for the sake of it’ [8].
Some American brain specialists took encephalograh reading of travellers. They found that changes of scenery and awareness of the passage of seasons trough the year stimulated the rhythms of the brain, contributing to a sense of wellbeing and an active purpose in life. Monotonous surroundings and tedious regular activities wove patterns which produce fatigue, nervous disorders, apathy, self-disgust and violent reactions.
– Chatwin[9]
[1] Bruce Chatwin, Anatomy of Restlessness: Uncollected Writings, New edition (Picador, 1997). (pp 100-106)
[2] ‘Travel – Definition of travel noun’, in (Cambridge Dictionary Online: Free English Dictionary and Thesaurus, 2009) [accessed 30 December 2009].
[3] Temasek was the ancient name of Singapore before its ‘founding’ by the British.
[4] Chatwin.
[5] Chatwin.
[6] Chatwin.
[7] John Bingham and Laura Clout, ‘British couple arrested in Dubai over ‘sex on the beach’’, Telegraph.co.uk, 9 July 2008 [accessed 31 December 2009].
[8] Chatwin.
[9] Chatwin.
KAIDIE’S DISLOCATION PROVOKED A WORLDWIDE HUNT (of sorts). (Perhaps Kaidie had been virtually hanging out with Mika, as pixels)
During Kaidie’s absence, the press was (semi-)hot on its heels to help us hunt her down. Here is one of 2 articles published last week that discusses Kaidie’s dislocation and/or Kaidie in general.
P.S. 1: This article talks about Kaidie’s dislocation without mentioning her disappearance in the past month – so it seems that the journalists here ‘get’ Kaidie’s work! (ie, running in the ambiguous, arbitrary, amorphous gap between reality and imagination)! This is one of the few occassions that the press/public media ‘gets’ Kaidie’s work in her current and previous lives! And this is with-out Kaidie having had ANY contact – remote/virtual/actual – with the journalists of this article. Allow me at this point to stroke my chin (like Kaidie in this picture) and go, ‘Hmmm. Interesting…’
P.S. 2: However, contrary to what this article claims, as far as I am aware of, issues of nationality and identity are irrelevant in Kaidie’s cosmology. Kaidie is born with no family/history/background/ethnicity/culture/gender/citizenship/place/country/allegiance. She begins afresh, ground zero. That said, she is (al-most certainly) female, the last time I checked.
P.S. 3: Why is this categorised as ‘alternative art’? What is this alternative to? What on google-earth is ‘dominant art’? What on google-earth is ‘dominant art’ today? Yesterday’s ‘alternative’ is tomorrow’s mainstream. Fast forward, to the era of Kaidie’s Life 4.0 or 41.1, and this will have been considered as old-school and even classical. Unbelieavable isn’t it. Let me stroke my chin again.
P.S. 4: I am sure Kaidie does not mind charity donations from the readers of the article and this blog for her quest. After all, this has been classified as ‘alternative’, has it not.
P.S. 5: Perhaps Kaidie has not just been continuing her quest for the Meaning of Life 3.0 in Second Life (as we have just established) all this while when she was missing, but cavorting with the not-undelicious Mika and his bubblegum in some storage space as ones and zeroes some where. No wonder she had disappeared! That said, there is clearly a very serious size-compatibility technical issue here: Kaidie’s face alone is the size of Mika’s entire folded-body-on-a-sofa. Tsk tsk tsk! Kaidie should run more loopy loops to shrink into near-no-thing-ness, or drink some magic potion (which we hope is calorie-free) or drink the magic potions while running. Being smaller+lighter+baggage-free, just as being identity/allegiance/race/etc-free, enables her to be dis-located easier any time she needs/wants to. Travelling light is one of the most important rules (along with having good stamina for this multiple-ultra-marathon of transmigration, and endurance – in enduring oneself) for the traveller – more so if you are running. Perhaps Mika knows where/what/when the Meaning of Life 3.0 is? An other chin-stroking time.
Reprinted from CNN Go 23 March 2010. 
THANK YOU for attending Kaidie’s gig last Monday. She has resurfaced – right behind my back, as KAIDIE ABSENT in Second Life. Now that she is re-located, shouldn’t I leave?
Music by Philip Tan.
Thank you very much indeed for attending Kaidie’s gig at Off The Shelf at the Slade School of Dine Art last Monday. Blind and nearly-blind dates are always thrilling, so it was nice meeting some of you in Life 1.0 for the first time. Do note that I mean ‘nice’ in the most ambiguous, generic manner. I am sure you would agree that meetings/encounters in Life 1.0 (offline, face-to-face, material world), Life 2.0 (online, imagination, internal world) and in between – Life 3.0 – are all equally valuable and meaningful (if they are meaningful at all) – for Third-Lifers, who are restless travellers on the move, this is about the only way(s) to meet, ie, halfway, or half of the half, of half of the half of the half, and so on. The notions of eternity, forever-ness and everlasting-ness are but romantic mythologies; a Third-Lifer necessarily runs/travels/migrates/transmigrates alone, and seeks/creates fulfillment in every single moment, however transient. During each of these temporary encounters, the Third-Lifer finds/invents her own drama/climax/closures, and locks them up as happy memories (even if she forgets, they will remain safe and happy, happily ever after). And moves on. (If anything else is forever/eternal/everlasting at all, it is one’s Sisyphean cycle of births-deaths-rebirths-repeated-death-looped-fast-forward-press-play-rewind-press-play-re-press-play-again-in-different-speeds). Lest you think this is a cynical worldview, I suspect that the contrary is true – that Kaidie is yet the most idealistic and romantic of us all. Which was why the invention of a Life 3.0-mixed-reality-goggles (as if life itself is not complicated enough?), as self-delusional and naive as Don Quixote on his grand(iose) quest.
Regardless.
I was hoping that Kaidie, who had been missing for nearly 1 month, would stop running about/away, and return to Life 1.0 for her gigs. She did- briefly – on 14 March, during her 10km charity run for Medecins Sans Frontieres. Fearing that she would not turn up, I had begun the race (for, someone had to answer to her sponsors!). However, halfway through the run, Kaidie appeared. And was she hostile, as she kept trying to trip me and outrun me! Whatever she had eaten while she was away must have been really good, as she was much faster than me, and soon ran past me. The snapshot on the left at the bottom of this post captures that moment that the two of us, Kaidie and Kailives, are locked in a fierce battle, in the same spatio-temporal dimension. But like before, she ran off, and could not be relocated.
On 22 March, I was hoping that Kaidie would turn up for her own gig at the Slade. I went on stage to do what had to be done, hoping that she would join me at some point. And she did. Not in broad daylight, as it was nearly 22:00hrs, but right behind my back! This photograph on the right shows myself speaking in the foreground, in front if the audience, and Kaidie behind me, in the form of video pixels. It was a black-and-white video (see above) of her in the metaverse, the world-within-world of Second Life. There, she is called ‘Kaidie Absent’.
One would have thought that this is the grand moment of cathartic clarification, of disentanglement and denouement, where all loose ends of this long-running tedious (melo)drama are tied together. But this being (Kaidie’s) life, gosh/no/never/dream on/fat chance/what are you talking about/get out of here. And, this being Kaidie’s life, there are now even more questions than the number of hair in your nostrils (when did you last tabulate the results in your Excel sheets?). Some of the ones sticking out include:
Has Kaidie been in Second Life all this while? Isn’t that too easy! Was it The Good Pirate who kidnapped her there? Was it the Good Pirate who kept the promise of releasing Kaidie for the charity run? What does the Good Pirate want? What is the ransom? After the run, did Kaidie return to SL? Where in SL is she? What is she doing? Where is she visiting? Who is she meeting? Are they like her Life 1.0 brief encounters, or briefer still? Is Kaidie on the ‘Always Run’ motion mode in there? Does she have blisters in SL? She looks like she’s enjoying flying, but does she get (e)motion sickness from flying, like she did on the day that we first met? Has she found the obscure object of her 1000-day quest, the Meaning of Life 3.0? (Must she find The Meaning Of Life 2.0 [?] before that?) Did Kaidie upload the video on her Youtube channel herself? If so, does this mean that she is coming back, to communicate with us, to run her own Facebook account and other Web 2.0 accounts?
If she comes back, shouldn’t I go? Surely I was just Kaidie’s temporary stand-in in Life 1.0 and Life 2.0 outside of the world-within-world of SL while she was in there. Surely I should not figure in the logic of the world of Life 3.0, for the whole point is that Kaidie runs to-and-fro between Life 1.0 and Life 2.0, and that Life 3.0 is an in-between and even transcendent spatio-temporal dimension. Surely only Kaidie should be the real deal, our first guinea pig for the theory of Life 3.0. (Unless, of course, when Kaidie needs a helping hand – Kaidie did dis-locate a part of her body. I am also an avid reader of her blog, so I would have been disappointed if it was not updated. As Kaidie’s firm Facebook Friend, it is right that I help her keep up appearances.)
But enough already. When will Kaidie return to write this blog herself?
Dear Friends of Kaidie, wouldn’t you be so kind as to go locate ‘Kaidie Absent’ in Second Life? Talk to her. Ask her to come back. Coax her to leave her kidnapper. Remind her that Second Life is not the only life, that there is First Life as well as her Third.
She knows it.
Where has Kaidie been all this while? After the run, where did Kaidie go? Latest conspiracy theory: LUCY SUSPECTS THAT KAIDIE HAS TRANS-MIGRATED (or hitchhiked) TO AN ONLINE NAPLES AND OTHER GREENER PASTURES.
Guest post by Lucy Natarajan
Dislocating Kaidie: ONE OF KAIDIE’S GLOVES FOUND AT ST PANCREAS STATION! AND OTHER SIGHTINGS. HAVE YOU SPOTTED KAIDIE IN THE PAST 3 DAYS?
Kaidie has been missing since 3 March. Referring to the Nondon A-Z, I scoured around Nondon in my kickscooter tracing some of Kaidie’s hangouts such as Regents Fark, Pings Pross, Lupus Street and Faker Street.
Finally, at the St Pancreas Station, I spotted one of Kaidie’s gloves on the ground. Which sets off a loopy chain of questions:
Where could Kaidie be? Why has she disappeared? Has her fall at Fuston Road made her take a reality check and decide to transform herself into thin air? Have her wound cuts become infested with onionringworms and ticks and moulds and ingrown toenails that her body became eaten away by the new foreign invaders and she was left to die young at DAY 80? What has she fallen head-over-heels with, that has imprisoned her heart (has she got any?) and soul (does she have one?) and physical being? Has she been mugged/kidnapped/murdered/raped/mutilated/slashed/burnt/crashed/hacked into, and had her dislocated limbs strewn all over the Hackney marshes and mixed with the stuffs that are to go into the Olympics Stadium, or has her supersized brain with multiple plugins shredded into pieces by the vultures encircling this sceptred isle? Has she become disoriented from her oh-so-anti-linear derives? Has she lost her bearings after the batteries of her GPS Garmin Etrex went flat? Kaidie’s Facebook wall is a wall of silence- is it because she has hit the wall? Or banged her head against it? Has she gone into hiding? What is she hiding from? Has she found the object of her quest, the Meaning of Life 3.0, and spontaneously combusted in the Holy Mother of All Climaxes? Has she hit jackpot of g-spots of ‘THE truth about what in the bloody world this is all bloody about’, and choked herself to death in her self-congratulatory pants/sighs/porksqueals of orgasmic delight? Are the satellites able to detect Kaidie’s whereabouts? Where has she gone? Has she left Nondon? Has Nondon the metropolis devoured and crippled her? Has Kaidie died (and become just ‘Kai’)? Has she given up her impossible quest? Has she chickened out? Has she concluded the experiment with what she had already known, that is, that there is no such thing as ‘A/The Meaning of Life’ (3.0, 2.0, 1.0, or 4.0, or 44.3 etc, for that matter). Has she been sucked into the offline world of Life 1.0, or that of the online metaverses in Life 2.0, and stopped travelling to-&-fro in the chaosmos of Life 3.0? Is she still in the amorphous space-time of Life 3.0 at all, or has she shapeshifted into an earthly avatar in Life 1.o, or an e-Orlando in Life 2.0? Has she given up Life 3.0, given her extreme impatience ? How can we continue with this? Shall we conclude and wind up the experiment of Kaidie’s Life 3.0 already, more than 900 days ahead of schedule? (Whoo-hoo! I punch my fists in the air.)
And of course, not to forget other pertinent questions such as: Where is Kaidie’s other glove? What can one do with 1 glove? Can you hear the sound of 1 hand clapping? Can you swear the hound of 1 glove slapping? Did Kaidie deliberately leave 1 glove behind? Is it a Hansel-&-Gretel cookie trail?
Frankly speaking, given that she is merely an object of experiment, we would not much care if Kaidie is dead/alive, but it just seems slightly irresponsible of her to simply evaporate, given that this month, Kaidie has also been scheduled to appear in several events. The first one comes up in a couple of days, on Tuesday 9 March 11:30am at Nondon College of Communication, and on Sunday 14 March, Kaidie is supposed to run for Medecins Sans Frontieres at Regents Fark. I have also been informed that during Kaidie’s absence, there has been a fresh donation by ‘Miss Nim’ for Kaidie’s run. (On Kaidie’s behalf, THANK YOU MISS NIM!!)
At the meantime, Kaidie is nowhere to be found, yet. There has been sightings here and there. Some are cryptic, others seem plausible. Like a Rashomon conundrum, can any of these be verified? Who is telling the truth(s)? Can we conjure up Kaidie’s dead ghost to enlighten (or scare) us? Have you spotted Kaidie in Nondon in the past 3 days? Have you spotted Kaidie outside of Nondon in the past 3 days? Any other clues? Write in and help find the missing person please! There will be a mystery reward.
Now I am slightly flummoxed – what if we cannot find Kaidie in time? Must I exercise executive power and cancel all events? Or, should/must I find someone to impersonate her, as if nothing has happened? Would YOU like to take over Kaidie’s avatar, for a change? Wanna swop? Shall we barter trade or play chess at the beach?
DAY 72: THE KAPUTT HAPPINESS PLUGIN 3.0.
The first image he told me about was of three children on a road in Iceland, in 1965. He said that for him it was the image of happiness and also that he had tried several times to link it to other images, but it never worked. He wrote me: one day I’ll have to put it all alone at the beginning of a film with a long piece of black leader; if they don’t see happiness in the picture, at least they’ll see the black.
– Chris Marker, Sans Soleil, 1982 Argos Film.
Are you happy? Have you ever been happy? Are you happy now? Will you stay happy? How do you know? Do you know if you are happy? Do you think you are happy? How are you certain? How certain are you? How do you measure it? What is the duration of your happiness? Is it intermittent? Does it flicker? How long does it stay? Was it invited? Was it nice? Was it difficult to upload it? Were there any errors? Did your laptop crash? Which version of the plugin have you got? What are the reviews? Has it been updated? When was it created? Is it still relevant? Is it obsolete? Is it of importance? Does it work? Is it working? Is one enough? How many do you have per day? Is it permanently switched on? Does it come on at will? Is there waiting time? Is there downtime? What is the cost? What is the price you pay? Is it open source? How long does it last? Does it last? What is a good duration for you? Do you prefer a short intense kick-in or a slow-burning diluted long-drawn one? Are you a sprinter or an endurance runner? Or do you like fartleks? Will the plugin survive? Will you survive? What is its size? Is it light? Is it easy to attach? Are you attached to it? Are you able to detach yourself from it? Are you sure? Are you in control? Is is large? Is it a comfortable fit? Is it measurable? What are the units? How many bytes? How many kilobytes? How many gigabytes? How many terabytes? Does it fit in your hardware? Do you need an external drive for this? Have you remembered to back it up in 3 different locations lest you lose it? Is it weightless? Is it a burden? Is is immeasurable? Is it small? Is it portable? Is it laughably tiny? Is it obscure? Do you even know if it’s there? Does it even know if it was you it was looking for? What if it wasn’t? So what? What if it was? How often do you put it on? Is it automatic? Is it an automatic upgrade? Are you sure it is safe to download it? What makes you happy? How does it smell? What is its colour? Is it mixed with black? Is it black? What shade of black? How does it taste? Does it have an aftertaste? How does it feel? Rough? Nice? Same? New? Different? Does the same-ness comfort you? Does the familiarity make you happy? Does the new-ness excite you? Does the difference enhance your happiness? After it is used does it still make you happy? Do you discard it? What is the source of happiness? Does it matter? Where is it located? Is it in Nondon? Where in Nondon? How do I get there? What time should I get there? How many km does it take? How long does it take for me to walk there? How long does it take for me to swim there? Can I reach there in the next 928 days? Can I get specific directions from google map? Can my Mini, my GPS foretrex trackking system, map it down nicely? Can Mini see it? Can Mini feel it? Are the satellite signals obscured? Are there satellite signals when it kicks in? Is the plugin in conflict with other plugins? Must I deactivate others to get this running? What is the name of your happiness plugin? Is it Mini? Is it Major? Is it Many? Is it Few? Is it One? Is it Only? Is it Some? Is it the one and only? Do you believe in permanence? Do you believe in non-permanence? How do you hold on to permanence? How do you hold on to impermanence? What is left after the filtration process? What do you leave behind in the throwaway culture? What do you throwaway? What do you re-use? Why is the rusty bit on your pencil case or purse acceptable? Why is that speck of doubt on your beard unacceptable? Why do you smile? Do you smile because you are happy? Do you smile because you are not happy? Do you smile only when you are happy? Do you smile only when you are not happy? Do you have different grades of smiles? Do you laugh? Do you bend over backwards with laughter in happiness? Do you snigger? Don’t you snigger? Do you want snickers at sainsburys which cost 5 for a pound? Do you scoff at other people’s happiness? Do you show teeth when you smile when you are happy? Do you cover your mouth when you laugh when you are happy? When you smile when you are not happy, is it the same smile? When you laugh when you are not happy, is it the same laughter? Do you laugh when you are happy and nervous? Do you laugh when your happiness plugin works? Do you laugh when you happiness plugin is kaputt? Do you smile when you happiness plugin kicks in? Do you smile when you happiness plugin fails? Do you grin? How do you grin? Do you smile to yourself? Why? What are you thinking of when you smile to yourself? What triggers off that smile? Do you rate it? Do you rate your level of happiness? How would you rate your level of happiness now? How would you rate your level of happiness in general? Are you happy with your score? Do you want to improve? How happy do you want to be? Would you know when you get there? Do you know the concept of enough? Do you have low expectations? Do you have low expectations because you adjust your expectations? Do you learn from your experiences? Do you list your happiness? Do you have a list of happiness? Do you, like Sei Shonagon, have a list of things that quicken the heart? Does you heart quicken when you are happy? Does you heart slow down when you are happy? Do you have a heart? Do you have a strong heart? Do you have a weak heart? Does your heart quicken when you are not happy? Is the pursuit of happiness important? Do you pursue happiness? How do you pursue happiness? Does happiness court you? How do you flirt? Does happiness take the lead? Do you step back? Do you lunge forward? How hard do you want it? Do you let go? Who is aggressive? Who plays passive? What is the courtship process like? Who wins? Who plays hard to get? Who is the obscure object of desire? How do you let go? How do you score? How do you get it? How do you know that you get it? Do you actively pursue it? Is there effort? Is the effort worth it? Is the result worth the effort? How do you measure your success? Do you do well? Do you do well easily? Do you do well by practice? Is it difficult to get there? How do I get there? How do I get there there? Why did it go kaputt? When did it go kaputt? When will it go kaputt? When does it die? When does it expire? Can I repair it? Can I resuscitate it? Can I get a new one? What do I do with the kaputt one? Where can I recycle it? What is its material? Does it burn? Is it combustable? Is it volatile? Is it infectious? Where can I dispose of it safely? Why do you want to be happy? Is it important to be happy? Why is it important to be happy? Why should one be happy? Do you make happiness plugins? How much does it cost? Do you take credit cards? Is there an extra charge? Do you take debit cards? But my debit card is kaputt because some one used it to buy his happiness in my name. Do you accept cash? What currency? Can I round up the figures? Can I have a discount please? I want to buy several as backups. Can I buy in bulk? Is there a special discount for bulk purchasing? Will it arrive overnight? What time? Must I stay at home to wait for delivery? When is it shipped? Is it insured? Is it bubble-wrapped? Can I poke the bubbles of the bubble wrap? Are they large or normal bubbles? I like the large bubbles as they make a nicer sound when I jump on them. Can you wrap them in 2 layers please? Just in case the first layer gets burst? How many plugins must I use for it to kick in? Do you fight happiness? Do you fight non-happiness? How do you fight non-happiness? Do you have enough storage space for happiness? Do you have any storage place for happiness? What is the wait for the next one? What is the average wait for it? Where is the button to press? How do I know if the wait is over? How long does it take for me to doggypaddle from here to the other side? How long does it take for me to run there? How long will I run before I get run over by a Nondon driver? How long will I run before I get run down? What is the signal opposite? What is an opposite signal? Opposite to what? What is opposite to happiness? Where is the signal opposite? When is the signal opposite? Are the signals in conflict? How can I help? Where do I stand? Are they talking to each other? Are they in cahoots against me? Who can come on my side to fight them? What do I need to fight them? How can I win this battle? How can I cross with care? Shall I cross? How much longer must I wait?
DAY 68: LOVE IN LIFE 3.0: ONE OF THE POSSIBLE MEANINGS OF LIFE 3.0? (HAPPY BELATED VALENTINE’S DAY.)
In my lifelong quest for The Meaning of A Life 3.0, Guillaume, one of my Dear Readers, writes in and advises me to seek love in Life 3.0. Specifically, he does not suggest that I ‘find love’ in general; instead, he says that I should ‘find many loves’. Perhaps that can help me to find the meaning of life / my Life 3.0?
As a 2+month old, ‘love’ is an abstract concept to me, be it in the single or plural form. What better place for an answer, or rather, many pseudo-answers, than the Internet. I wikipedia-ed the 4-letter word, learn a little about it. (For that matter, ‘life’ is another 4-letter word that is abstract, though perhaps slightly less so since I am a practitioner of it [and you too, I assume?]). Love sounds like an interesting notion. I (assume that I) know how to ‘be’, but ‘being in love’ is something else. In the past 67 days, I have fallen off the treadmill before, but I have not fallen in love. With the ups and downs, pain and pleasure, anticipation and disappointment, hoo and haa and brouhaha, performance and ritual, melodrama and horror+slapstick+action and all that, I wouldn’t mind toying with my emotions. In this short life, I have nothing to lose.
In my short lesson to learn about all that theorising about love, I come across another 4-letter word: date. Given however that I have much less time (932 days left only in my entire life) than most other people ‘out there’, I can not afford to date date. Instead, I must speed date. So I did.
All photographs, except that of the book, are taken by Mr Lorenzo Levrini. The faces of the participants become pixelated from the propsect of experiencing l-o-v-e.
With Valentine’s Day in the backdrop, I soak in the atmosphere, although this time I do it not by turning myself into a sponge, but by seeking matchmaker Afterdita Pacrami, who encourages me to participate in a speed-dating event, called London Loves Speeddating. I bring along a book called Virtual Dimension (John Beckmann 1998).
So there are 8 men and 8 women, and there is a band playing. The idea is that after every tune, ie about 3-4 minutes, the men rotate themselves. Given my very short attention span due to my very young age, this format suits me just fine. Many of the men are indeed very interesting people. Some can speak exotic languages, some have lived in faraway lands, one unpacks Gaudi’s influences eloquently, others are sexily into law and the hard sciences. Most seem to be nice, kind and lovely people. But it stops there – love-ly, but not love itself. Sadly there is none of that topsyturvyturmoil that is described on the internet about l-o-v-e itself.
So Kaidie’s first ever dating, and speed dating event, has failed. (Maybe I should try speedhating instead?) My attempt to find love has resulted to nought. Thank you Guillaume for your advice, but I have to report that I can find not even one single love, let alone ‘many loves’, but I will still keep an other 4-letter word, h-o-p-e.
For now, let me plunge deeper into the Virtual Dimension, until something n-i-c-e comes along. As usual, your k-i-n-d advice is welcome.
DONATE ONLINE NOW!! SUPPORT KAIDIE’S 10km RUN FOR MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES 14 MARCH SUNDAY 0900hrs REGENTS FARK.
Kaidie is grateful to Joel Cunningham of UCL Friends of MSF for helping to create this post.
On the 14th of March Sunday, 0900hrs, Kaidie will run a 10km race in Nondon’s Regent’s Fark to raise money for Médecins Sans Frontières. DO show your support by DONATING TO KAIDIE’S RUN! This is a pain-free process. CLICK HERE TO DONATE NOW! Simply write at the message box ‘KAIDIE NONDON’. If you are UK tax payer, this site makes it easy for MSF to claim back an extra 28% from your donation. ANY amount is fine! NO amount is too small! (And of course, NO amount if too big!) A small effort/token is better than none!
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international humanitarian medical aid charity which is currently working in around 60 countries around the globe. Some of their recent efforts have been directed towards the devastating earthquake in Haiti, the ongoing unrest in Sudan and the so-called ‘neglected diseases’ such as Chagas. This year there will be at least 200 people from in and around London running.
Like Kaidie, please visit the following sites to learn more about MSF’s work, as well as the 2010 run: * The efforts of MSF * MSF on Youtube * MSF UK on Twitter * Friends of MSF Charity Run 2010 Facebook Event * Friends of MSF Charity Run 2010 blog * UCL Friends of MSF’s Photostream
- Left: Astride Louissaint, 25 years old. Middle: Psychologist Marie Lafortune assesses patients in Martissant for psychological needs. Right: Haitian nurses comforting each other in Martissant. Photographs by Julie Remy/MSF.
My Dear Readers, DO support MSF’s work by contributing your hardearned £, $, cents, pennies, euros, francs, marks, schillings, dinars, leva, pesos, rupiahs, kroner, rupees, shekels, yen, guilders, zlotychs, won, lira, for Kadie’s run! We all know how many excuses we (you and I) can come up with, so this process has been made painless, JUST FOR YOU. Donate online NOW! Click on this long link NOW!! If you understand the logic of cause-effect/karma, you should do what you’ve got to do, NOW. If you don’t understand that ‘for every action there is a reaction’, well, just wait and see. And wait. And see. See?
From today, I will also be updating my Dear Readers here, Twitter and Facebook about the amount I have raised, and also publish your name. After the run, I will compile the list of donors, and also share pictures with you. As usual, we can also have live chats via Facebook or this website (scroll down), for any inquiries you may have with regards to this campaign-within-a-campaign (of looking for a meaning of Life 3.0).
If you’d like to come and support me on the day – the run will be starting from ‘The Hub’ in the middle of Regents Park in London at about 9am. Worried that you cannot recognise me? Simply look out for the last person to come in, or one that is crawling, or the last person to leave the Fark when it closes at night. As I have stated that I wish to run a marathon by 2011 for a charitable cause, this is a good, small beginning. Again this is but a miniscule, pathetic effort from Kaidie, but better a small gesture than none (?), so do support! See you soon!
- These images are from charity runs from previous years. Photos by UCL Friends of MSF’s Photostream.
Médecins Sans Frontières
Médecins Sans Frontières is an independent international medical humanitarian organization that delivers emergency aid in around 60 countries to people affected by armed conflict; epidemics; natural or man-made disasters; or exclusion from health care.
In emergencies and their aftermath, MSF rehabilitates and runs hospitals and clinics, performs surgery, battles epidemics, carries out vaccination campaigns, operates feeding centres for malnourished children and offers mental health care. When needed, MSF also constructs wells, dispenses clean drinking water, and provides shelter materials like blankets and plastic sheeting.
Through longer-term programmes, MSF treats patients with infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, sleeping sickness, and HIV/AIDS and provides medical and psychological care to marginalized groups such as street children.
MSF was born in the early 1970s out of the exasperation of a group of French doctors who worked in desperate conditions in the Biafra War (1967-1970). They were determined to create a movement to deliver independent humanitarian aid wherever it was needed, and one that would speak out about the plight of the victims it helped. In order to fulfil these goals, MSF was created in complete independence of any political, religious or economic powers. The organisation remains fiercely protective of these core values today.
In recognition of its humanitarian actions in such areas as Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Rwanda, the MSF movement was awarded the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize.
The UK office was established in London in 1993. It supports MSF’s field work by recruiting volunteers, collecting donations and raising awareness of humanitarian crises through the media. A specialist medical team works directly with the field projects to help solve urgent clinical problems.
The Friends of Médecins sans Frontières
Friends of MSF are student societies based in universities all around the UK and Ireland. They are the official student support organisation for MSF across both nations, and are run on a voluntary basis.
DOUBLETHINK: CONTRADICTORY IN TERMS
One of Kaidie’s guidebooks in Life 3.0 is George Orwell’s 1984, for several reasons. Like Life 3.0, the city of London is the novel’s mise-en-scene. In Orwell’s universe, reality is seen through an inverted lens, where the Ministry of Defence fights permanent wars, and the Ministry of Love (I love this- ‘miniluv’) operates through the mechanism of fear. That deep parallels can be drawn with our reality today can not be emphasised enough. And, like the notion of doublethink, Life 3.0 embodies contradictions without contradiction, with no apology. Like Smith, Kaidie is an experiment; while Smith’s choices may seem limited compared to Kaidie’s in Life 3.0, like Kaidie, Smith contrives to seek spaces within which he could exist/live/be. Orwell’s depiction of Smith’s process of torture through to reeducation and final love of Big Brother, is so slowburning that the final inevitable explosion – or, more accurately, implosion – resembles fingernails scratching a chalkboard, largo, breaking in the process and the small sharp bits scratching and incising the pink raw skin where the nail once was itself, a procedure so calculated and clinical as to be chilling, heartbreaking, repulsive and devastating as it is sublimely beautiful, a la Pasolini’s 120 Days of Sodom, Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange or a Gould’s rendition of the slow movement of the Emperor concerto. Yet another reason why 1984 resonates with Kaidie is of course, how it has been said that the circumstances of one of her previous lives was ‘Orwellian’.
ON TRIAL: PARTICIPANT 12(F) WITH ELECTRODES, SNAKES, 1k TONE, KY JELLY, 2 X (PLACEBO) PILLS.
Kadie undertook her first experiment as a lab rat last week. Now, Kadie is no longer Kaidie, but 12(F).
It would have been impossible to not be affected in any degree, with 4 hours of pills, existential ennui, electric shocks of varying degrees on the left hand, liberal applications of a nice lubrication, and staring at stills of snakes alternating with frames of blacks and crimson, oscillating between silence, very loud dead tones and its feedback, just like a copycat Paul Sharits or Peter Kubelka flicker film (I implore you my Dear Readers to kindly hook up your laptop to speakers, turn volume to the max, and WATCH FULLSCREEN, or, better still, projected large in a darkened space. Yes, we do know that a Web 2.0 representation does no justice whatsoever to these mindblowing films, but since the alternative is not watching them at all, sometimes a poor simulation is a lesser evil).
Hello World. My name is not Kaidie. My name is 12F. Like Smith in the final act after his elaborate reeducation process, my transformation is complete. I feel real, for once. I smile incessantly now. Life is no longer dark and hypocritical , and I am living a lie no more. I am converted. Everything is all right. The struggle was finished. 2 gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of my nose. I feel jolly wonderful. I have a perpetual smile on my face and black bars across my eyes (and so does the researcher, who must have undergone the experiment himself as well). The experiment succeeded.
I will now see Nondon with a new set of eyes. A few shades darker, if at all, if I could peek through that black bar.
AN EXPERIMENT-WITHIN-AN-EXPERIMENT-WITHIN-AN-EXPERIMENT: TEST RAT / GUINEA PIG / FAT CAT / BROWN COW
Values in Life
* WHAT: I am opening myself to science – I am willing to be a test rat for new medicines and any other related experiments in the field/name of science.
* HOW: Scans, psychology tests, new medicines, etc. As I have no thing to lose, and, for all we know, Kaidie might even find the, The, THE Meaning Of Life 3.0! In which case, Kaidie’s endeavour (and this travel blog) can be shut down way before 09.09.2012 as planned!! Hence I am up for any thing. Try me.
* WHY:
1. As an experiment myself, I am keen to undertake other people’s experiments as well. And if we wish to be grand about this (for Kaidie’s coming into being is as grand as it is pathetic), life – yes yours too, darling – is an experiment. I like experimenting with being an experiment-within-experiment-within-an-experiment (just as I enjoy trips-within-a-trip-within-a-trip).
2. Having already been a cockroach, hamster, a sponge, a human being and a cheap Swiss chocolate bar in my short life, it would be meaningful now to be a guinea pig, fat cat or brown cow.
3. Perhaps, if I am lucky, I may undergo yet other transformations with some of these tests! Is a pseudo-Orlan Feminist deformity sexy? Or a quasi-Stelarc cyborgian appendage oh-so-macho? Naah, neither, no thanks. That is not quite the territory that Kaidie the Turdlifer likes to tread. Instead, she much prefers to become a brilliant Wim Delvoye product – a lovely warm piece of turd at the end of an elaborate scheme.
4. Being a make-believe being that straddles between the real and the imaginary, I would be keen to see how yet other artificial means can push my mind and body. So ‘high risk’ tests are welcome!
5. By offering myself to Science, I would be able to save other animals from being subjected to cruel scientific experiments for our selfish benefit. Save the cuddly rats! Save the cute panda bears! Save the whales! Save the tickworms! Save the cockroaches!
6. My kind contribution to man kind (sic) (if mankind deserves to receive contributions [sic]) and its quest for longevity /immortality (if these are perceived as positive goals?).
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?
I WILL RUN 155.0KM, AS A PATHETIC GESTURE FOR MY NONDON-ZURICH-NONDON FLIGHT. (Better a pathetic gesture, than nothing at all.) (No, NOTHING is better than nothing at all.) (Either way, it’s a lose-lose situation.)
As you, my Very Dear Readers (yes, you are now not only my ‘dear readers’ or ‘Dear Readers’, but ‘Very Dear Readers’ – what have you done to earn that, I wonder? Maybe you could next be My Very Dear Reader?) know, I am travelling to Zurich soon.
The question is, how should I get there? Like the Romantic and heroic Richard Long, and one of my favouritest, favouritest filmmakers Werner Herzog, I would have loved to get there by foot. Nonetheless, simple calculation reveals that that will take quite a while – all the snow in the Alps would have melted (not that it isn’t already speedily doing that – much thanks to the combined efforts of you and I, no doubt! Well done us.). I do think that the legendary Heidi should moved on with ‘the times’ – but a Coppertoned bikini-clad one would be a bit of a stretch wouldn’t it.
So I am flying. No, not with my plastic stapled wings, but metallic ones, economy. (That said, ‘economy’, in this case, sounds like a euphemism..)
I am one who believes in earning my pleasure. In spite of my superpower (of having superpowers) in Life 3.0, I do not abuse it. (I am one of those 21st century existentially-troubled heroes burdened with super/posthuman gifts – the difference being that they exist on TV and they often screw up. I do not.) A life too easy simply does not attract me. I am a sucker for challenges, and I like it that I have to fight for things I want; if they are easy, I would probably not find them desirable.
Hence I wish to undertake a gesture to pay back for my contribution (along with you) in turning the Alps tropical and slowly suiciding our race (no, it is not mercy killing, but rather like a carbon monoxidal poisoning, so slow as to be even graceful, haha.). Of course, this gesture/token is necessarily pathetic; no thing can, in the remotest way, by all stretches of imagination, match up. Non-delusional as one is, one nonetheless tasks oneself with a small deed.
The total distance for my return trip (Nondon – Zurich – Nondon) is 1550km. I would have liked to task myself with running the same distance in a given period of time. However, it does not seem realistic. As I imagine that I will be flying frequently within my life time, including long haul, I need to find a do-able enough formulation of a task that I can undertake each time. See, even in the hyperrealistic Life 3.0, there is some sense of realism.
Let us calculate the amount of distance I run in a week. I recorded the week of 21 December 2009 as such:
• 21 December / DAY 10: 15km (0- 2 degrees Celsius) Regents Fark.
• DAY 11: 20km (2 degrees)
• DAY 12: 11.5km: gym: (5km treadmill, 5km cycle, 0.5km only on the tedious ski machine, 1km on rower; then leg extension, chest press, shoulder press (yuks), pulldown, weights, 20 situps. The gym equipment, by the way, is branded ‘TECHNOGYM’. High tech!)
• DAY 13: Same as DAY 12, but 4km of which were of a 2.5 gradient.
• DAY 14: 15km run (3 degrees), with a sprain for the first 4km, Regents Fark.
• DAY 15: 13 km: (9 degrees) with a sprain for the first 6km
• DAY 16: 15 km (7 degrees) pain free (due to the installation of my Mind over Matter M&M plugin)
TOTAL FOR THE WEEK: 101km.
This looks pretty nice- but this was an exceptionally good week. With the patchy weather now, I am not certain if I can afford many outdoor runs. Indoors, I can hardly run now. Not being a hamster anymore running on the treadmill bloody bores me to tears. I used to be able to do a 5km sprint; lately, I cannot even bear 1km, and even then, I do it in much anger (To help curb the dread and claustrophobia, my Winter indoor/gym routine consists of 5 minutes on each machine and 4 sets of 5 on the boring, boring weights. Enough to work up some sweat, but not enough to create endorphins and any degree of satisfaction- hence more anger). I have found out that there will be a pool near where I will live in Winterthur; I can typically swim 1-1.5km each time.
(Last weekend, however, I finally managed to break my dreadful spell by running at Regents Fark. Previously, icy road conditions, as well as having been an enormous sponge for the Winter break, have prevented me from doing this. What a lovely feeling it is, to be re-connected with nature and one’s body. At an incredibly warm and sunny 7 degree Celsius, I needed only 1 T-shirt. I started, and stayed, very slow, but I was happy. To sweat, to be out of breath, outdoors, running on, not tired, not speeding, simply moving on. I felt a calm I haven’t been able to in a while.)
Coming back to the question of how I could compensate for my carbon footprints, I worked out that a gesture (realistic enough, though still requiring enough effort) would be as such:
For my 1550km flight, I will run/swim/walk/work out 155.0KM, in the space of 1 month (late January – late February).
So I moved 1 decimal point. Go on, mock me, but I could have moved 2, or 3. Or 4.
So how does this sound? What do you think, my Very Dear Reader? Unless you have any other suggestions? Better be good!
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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WHAT TO DO WITH MY LIFE THIS LIFE (PROJECTIONS)
2009 12.12: *Kaidie comes into being
2010: * January: Kaidie in Heidiland + Dignitas, Zurich: Alive Performance: Kaidie’s first ever Life 1.0 appearance, at Villa Straueli * Before April: Visit Olympics Park construction at Ratford * March 2: talk at art college (TBC) * March 8: Conference presentation at the Bartlett School of Architecture * 22 March: Word Image exhibition UCL * March: Visit V & A Decode * 25 April: Film London Marathon * Summer: Hempstead Heath Lido * Jaipur International Film Festival * August: Pearly Kings & Queens * 19 September: Kaidie runs her firstest, ever ever marathon, Farnham Pilgrims’ Marathon in Surrey! * November: Guy Gawkes * Other real-live appearances of Kaidie(s).
2011: * Year of marathon-tourism: to participate in at least 2 of the following. To run with camera, run to check out city, not for time (only to complete marathon). *DO YOU WISH TO JOIN KAIDIE? DO YOU KNOW OF ANY OTHER RACES (HALF OR FULL MARATHONS) IN NONDON? * 1 Jan: Zurich: first marathon of the year + coldest * April: Nondon: Nondon Marathon backing a charity * May: Belfast: City marathon * June: Norway: Midnight sun run* June: Sweden: Arctic Circle midnight sun run * October: Turkey: Eurasia City marathon: across Europe & Asia! * October: Nondon: Half marathon * October: Slovakia: oldest running event in Europe * December: hibernation
2012: * Summer: Kaidie begins to prepare for her death. * 27 July-12 August: Nondon Olympics * 29 Aug – 9 September: Nondon Paralympics
2012 09.09: * Kaidie ceases being. See you later / sooner or later.
WHAT ELSE APART FROM ALL THIS RUNNING CAN KAIDIE DO IN NONDON THAT COULD BE MEANINGFUL? SURELY LIFE HAS MORE TO OFFER! DO TELL ME!! AN EVENT, A PLACE TO VISIT, A PERSON TO SPEAK WITH, ETC – FILL UP MY CALENDAR! MAKE ME HAVE THINGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO!
