My brave, free-spirited, restless friend Gardi is all over the place. Literally. Born in Mexico, she lived in Chicago, Toronto, Paris, Sao-Paulo, Ramallah, (and possibly some other cities which aren’t listed here) and now she’s in Guatemala.
We met in Toronto, from which we both escaped in the midst of our graduate studies – but we keep the habit of meeting every once in a while. When she lived in Paris I stayed with her in her bohemian apartment in the Bastille (and managed to lose the key and therefore had to climb in through the windows in order to let us in), when she moved to Ramalla, she was a regular guest in my apartment in Tel-Aviv. Now in our post-academic lives, she’s been moving around and has the habit of taking me to trips with her. She writes the most lively descriptions of the people she meets, the adventures she goes through and colors the scene with so much excitement and panache that i’m always tempted to book a flight and visit her. No matter where she is.
“come Romimiku come” she tells me – “come for as long as you want” – she writes. And I am booking flights, making plans, rebooking the flights and changing the plans, because Gardissima is like the wind, and all over the place.
Gardi, all smile, and curls and sunglasses
These days Gardi is hanging in Central America – and i am so eager to see her. Getting the temporal-spatial coordinates and understanding where we’re meeting and for how long she’s planning to stay in one place could’ve driven anyone insane, but this uncertainty, I must admit, adds more excitement to the adventure.
So it all started in January. In reply to my email asking if I can come visit her in Mexico around April- I got this email:
(dance, dance, dance)
Yes MOTEK come!!!!! as long as you’d like; 2, 3 weeks whatever. I’ll scrape up and maybe I’ll go to the beach with you. And I’ll take you to Puebla. COME!!!
more soonish
muchos besos
g
The initial plan was Mexico City, Puebla (Gardi’s hometown), and head to the beaches – but then G had to move on….
Motek!!
Sorry sorry OK I’m bored here in MC and I want to go away and finish my book and it looks like the destination will be San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas for about 6 weeks; the problem is that Easter Week happens between the last week of March and the first of April which makes travel almost impossible logistically and financially and I’ll most likely go to Guatemala from San Cristóbal to see my friend francis from there. SO I PROPOSE THAT you join me either in Chiapas (before the end of march but if it is to early, the second week of april OR meet me in MC by mid april) SORRY FOR THIS MADNESS!!! and for not having concrete plans; this is what it looks like so far. It’s super cheap to fly from MC to Chiapas (about 250 dlls round trip) AND OF COURSE I’d be happy to come and meet you here in MC (and we’d stay in Miguel’s apartment) anytime around and after mid-april)
g
a Volcano in Puebla, Gardi's hometown
My response was:
Gardi bella
I have to admit that i’ve never heard about Chiapas before but San Cristóbal de las Casas looks beautiful
and i’d love to come meet you and hang out with you wherever you tell me
so the plan sounds great we just need to decide on the dates
yes – it will be easier to travel after easter – no problem with that – may even work for the best if we’ll plan to meet on the second 1/2 of April – can we meet in Chiapas and then hang out in MC?
could that work?
and how far from MC is Chiapas anyway?
i am excited!
Mexico City out – Chiapas in. I googled San Cristóbal de las Casas and loved what I saw. Started planning my trip when this email reached me:
I made it to Chiapas today San Cristobal is more charming than I remember; wayy more hippies, eco freaks, new age weirdos, yogies and zapaturistas than I exxpected: Hence the fact that I haven[t found a place to stay:I"m running away from them!!
So it's pretty much likely that I'm not going to Toronto in May[...] SO MUCH WORK!!!!!!!!
more soon guapa i’m exahusted
xoxoxoxoox
I’m so excited you’re coming I can’t waait to see you!
g
Hippies, eco freaks, new age weirdos, yogies and zapaturistas? Sounds like a party. I got really into this trip to chiapas but apparently G can’t stand them, and couldn’t find a place to stay. and then i got this email:
hey motek!!!
I can’t stand it anymore!!!!
This place is too full with the tecnojjipis, ecotourists, zapatourists, gringos handing out glasses to the indians and doing their teeth, organic restaurants, yoga joints, fair trade joints… and not that tthe native population really benefits from all of this; it’s ridiculous; I found a place to stay but it won’t be free till next week maybe wednesday, maybe friday (!!!) SO my best friend from undergrad Francis offered me to come down and help me find a place in either antigua, guatemala city or somewhere in the jungle (sounds SUPER GOOD)
So I might just do that… when you come I can meet you in San Cristobal (it’s a 12 hr sharut ride); Or meet you in Mexico City (i’d take a flight from Guatemala to MC it’s too far) From MC to Sancris: I left silvia’s house at 10.35, late to take an 11.25 flight i made it and by 2.30 I had a hotel and was sitting down enjoying lunch. You fly from MC to Tuxtla (1.30 mn) and then take a sharut from Tuxtla to San Cristobal (1 h)
g
So it turns out that Chiapas is filled with hippies,”handing out glasses to the indians and doing their teeth”… I guess that’s a good enough reason to move on.
and Antigua is the next stop. Jungles, Volcanoes, adventures – i am in. I love her emails, all energy and caps lock, and exclamation marks. they set my imagination on fire, though i have to admit that my travel agent is a bit exhausted…
Nevertheless – when this email reached me -i really didn’t care anymore….
“hey guapisima!!
Was thinking of you all day
got into Antigua Guatemala last night IT IS GORGEOUS… Yes Antigua is BEAUTIFUL and the places to go to as well; I’m at the very feet of one of the volcanoes (it’s ashing, like my volcano back in Puebla)… 2 others are VERY close.”
ay Gardy! - "The last picture is me below the entrance in antigua to the women's prison'"
she says that the weather is heaven (4 seasons everyday: winter in the morning, night, spring between 10-12, summer 12-4, autumn 4-7) and that she’s already mapped out all the Hippy hangouts around so she knows what to avoid – it’s going to be great, I can feel it. hopefully – no women prisons will be involved…
We felt so disoriented after the yoga and meditation retreat that Matan and I managed to lose our way several times. Driving at the north of Israel, we reached areas not recognized by the GPS system of his iPhone. Since we were feeling pretty relaxed (him) and relieved (me) after the three intense days of the retreat we didn’t really mind getting lost.
Having spent so much time locked in our heads (me) and floating in space (him) – going back to noisy Tel-Aviv had to be “trippy”. The sun was setting while we were looking for the right road, and the landscape was so beautiful, so we didn’t mind all the u-turns and zig-zagging. A phone call from a mutual friend who just returned from a “tantra” retreat at the desert – made us crack out laughing, and provided more entertainment for us.
While we were mainly sitting and being (trying to concentrate on our breathe) – our friend experienced the Israeli-spiritual version of “Eyes Wide Shut”. 180 degrees from what we’ve been through… He was being caressed by 15 women lying blindfolded on his beck, jumped naked for hours, danced, danced, danced, and went through various bizarre and intimate experiences. While we were eating boring vegetarian food – he had feasts. While we were contemplating in silence, he was singing and dancing. When he told us he booked a vacation and that he’s going to Osho’s Ashram in India, we burst out laughing. It was so radically different from what we’ve been through…
There’s an unforgettable scene in a rather lame movie called “I heart Huckabees”
Jason Schwatzman plays an eco- activist who sings praise to a rock for simply existing. He stands in a parking lot and reads a poem: “you rock, rock” – he reads – for sitting and “is”ing. the name of the rock includes its essence – it rocks. it is. it is a rock. hence it rocks to be a rock. what sounds like such a simple thing – is not that easy for us humans, in order to rock, it often feels we need to do things, that being isn’t enough.
One of the lessons i’ve learned during the retreat was to be more attuned to both inner and external noises.
changing perspective helps.
going out of one’s comfort zone helps too.
breaking habits and changing our point of view on reality is so important.
In some of the pictures here Matan tried to look at the world from the point of view of an insect, of a flower, of grass.
I think we’re often missing things because we try to look at them from the outside, from a bird’s eye perspective, striving to learn more about the world by looking at things from a distance. Being more attuned to nature and to ourselves also implies looking at things from within, from below, closing the distance between us and what we’re looking on. I’m sure insects and flowers and grass experience the world differently, hear and see and feel in different colors and sounds. I bet rocks can also sense the world around them. I am sure that other than being (and rocking) they merge with their surrounding, hence, they do things merely by being.
When i was a teenager – i wanted to know everything about everything – especially about movies, books and music. I used to store so much info in my brain – so many names, facts, trivia bits, songs lyrics, you name it – i wonder how my head didn’t explode. In the past, I used to have a good memory – It was important to me to know artists’ discography, filmmakers’ filmography, writers’ bibliography and the possible connections between them (filmmakers that made music-videos or musicians and writers that made movies were a special treat). Today, l often feel like I don’t know my right from my left. As my friend @SageeB puts it: If someone asked me a while ago what is the most important thing a culture journalist needs, I would have told him a good memory: you have to remember tons of information about musicians, producers, actors, directors, writers, authors, publishing houses, you name it. If someone asked me the same question today, I would say that a journalist, any journalist, needs an Internet connection, and that’s it.
Whether or not I agree with Sagee, it’s obvious that the Internet, and Internet technology, allows us today access to information beyond anything we knew before. But how does technology affect the way we remember, forget and especially store things in our memories? How embedded are our memory contents in our daily actions? and to what extent our daily actions reflect (and even reinforce) our dependency on technology?
chasing the internet is hard to do
Is it the information overload prevalent in the Digital Age that makes questions of accessibility and storage (terms emanating from our interactions with computers rather than from a psychological, or even cognitive discourse) relevant to our day-to-day conduct?
It seems that the more dependent we become on the technology around us, the lazier we get (or even stupid) and it is commonplace now that our gadgets, and our online “hang outs” and databases, have become extensions of our brain. On these satellites prosthetic memory pieces are easily accessed, usually to supplement, but sometimes to replace real memory access.
I no longer bother to remember which actor played in which film as IMDB has all this info available for me. Same for albums info (release dates, band members, etc.) thanks to websites such as AllMusic.com that keep track of discography for us. I sometimes feel that I can clear my memory from those trivia data pieces, and yet – whenever I need to stretch my brain and dig out a piece of meaninglessness data – I am so proud of myself!
pieces of what
It seems to me that nowadays the online world, on our computers or the cellular sphere (which no one can deny becomes increasingly connected, almost always-on), has become the heir of so many basic skills that we used our brain for not so long ago. Here are a few examples of how our “convergence” with the internet and with digital surroundings have been affecting our inner dealings.
The Spell Checker
I heard several people say that in a few decades no one will know how to spell anymore. As spell checking becomes more and more popular (it practically runs on every software/web service we’re using), more automated (it can already offer just 2 or 3 options), and more and more advanced, we can ease up on remembering the exact spelling of words. Google Wave’s spelling feature, for instance, can even handle a sentence as tricky as “Iceland is an island”, even if it has two type-o’s: “Icland is an icland”
i have a spelling chcker. It came with my PC
AutoComplete
On top of forgetting how to spell, there’s another skill we’re losing. This one is actually not a big threat to human civilization as spelling, but it’s an alarming trend. Especially because it is so distracting and adds to the noise we are already surrounded with whenever we’re connected. Algorithms included in automated search reflect the popularity of the concept of “wisdom of the crowds”. We come to rely on what other people know, or search for or “just” interested in, and features like “AutoComplete” reflect that. I like to consider the “AutoComplete” as a direct access into the collective memory, in a way.
Having written and researched so much about the ways public and private memory shape and intersect, I am fascinated by this feature. It is merely an addition to the old faithful search box, where when a user begins typing a search term, several completion options (the popular options) are presented. The “AutoComplete” has become a “must” feature in most websites and is considered a “hot” trend in the search and UI worlds. And it’s not limited to words – images can be added too.
This is really a trifle, and still it changes the way we access information stored on our and on other people’s brains.It is in memories’ nature to evoke new and potentially different emotions every time they are recalled. and I can’t help wondering what will be the consequences of relying more and more on collective memory? Will we ever “stop to remember”, will we bother to complete things on our own? “AutoComplete” has also been on the focus of many jokes - they’re even selling merchandise.
and carriers
You AutoComplete me T-shirt
Phone Numbers and Cell Phone Memories
Evidently, it’s not just the Internet that encourages us to clear room in our heads for details we no longer need to store in our minds. Our handheld devices memories do that too.
I can’t remember the last time I memorized a phone number. It was probably years ago – It surprises me that I still know by heart the phone numbers of most of my childhood friends. Isn’t it awkward that I have all those numbers in my head of flats where the parents of my elementary school friends may or may not live?
I find it even more awkward that I never bothered to memorize the numbers I use most frequently, those belonging to my friends today. And why would I want that? They are all safely stored on my cell phone and whenever I want to call them I simply dial. No need to store them in my head to.
Our cell phones have more memory spaces than we do (at least effectively…), so we can simply rely on them to supply us with the details we need.
It seems to me that nowadays the online world, on our computers or the cellular sphere (which no one can deny becomes increasingly connected, almost always-on), has become the heir of so many basic skills that we used our brain for not so long ago. Here are a few examples of how our “convergence” with the internet and with digital surroundings have been affecting our inner dealings.
The Spell Checker
I heard several people say that in a few decades no one will know how to spell anymore. As spell checking becomes more and more popular (it practically runs on every software/web service we’re using), more automated (it can already offer just 2 or 3 options), and more and more advanced, we can ease up on remembering the exact spelling of words. Google Wave’s spelling feature, for instance, can even handle a sentence as tricky as “Iceland is an island”, even if it has two type-o’s: “Icland is an icland”
