Set Your Clocks



Worldchanging is putting out an exciting solution/innovation driven book about ways to build a better future, from the massive changes, like eradicating poverty and building greener cities, to the more minute, like how a cell phone or a bicycle can be re-imagined for the better.

But tomorrow, they will try to hack the publishing system. Check it out, and maybe pick a copy up too on Amazon, at 11:11 am, PST?

PS: I've just joined the Worldchanging team as one of their California writers. Will be focusing on sustainable design/mobility and exciting conscious film/media projects. Will put up some articles soon!

bubbles


city of the hemispheres, superstudio



seaside bubbles, archigram


float, deflate, breathe, exhale, grow, blow up your mind.

i.

My uncle is having a smoke outside, his third cigar of the evening, he goes through them swiftly, like flipped pages in a magazine. He’s watching the sky. We talk about Vietnam. He hasn’t gone back since he left. Never set foot in Hue, can’t imagine ever seeing Hanoi. But his daughters talk about going. Maybe one day he will go back because of them. His dog, Akai, is nervously running around the backyard. I take a photo of Akai with a flash and it doesn’t scare her.

I meet my cousins for the first time, and we kiss each others’ cheeks. I’ve been wondering when I’d meet them since I was 12. Now they’re that age, and I’m the one who’s grown-up. They think that I look like a bad guy. I think I should have shaved. We introduce ourselves by drawing portraits of each other. I carry one of them on my shoulders, the other in my hand. It’s like we’re pretending to be a tree, I think.

One of them steals my wallet. It takes me a whole morning to get it back. My uncle tells me to make sure they didn’t steal anything else. I think, “maybe they stole my heart.” But I keep it to myself. It’s sort of cheesy.

ii.

Moonlight in the midst of the Mission, Vinh and I lost at poker so we throw on a scarf of cigarette smoke and head up onto a rooftop. From up here, we’re as tall as the streetlamps. I miss San Francisco, I think, especially on nights like this, the streets are quiet, and when we toss our cigarette butts into the air they look a little like shooting stars. It’s been too long.

I ask Jimmy if he’d like to bike riding at 2 in the morning. After an episode of Ali G, he replies. Him and Ben took off one night on bicycles and have ended up all the way in Hanoi.

iii.

I think, maybe someone needs to invent a camera that can take photographs of what we dream about, but maybe it’s better to just make it happen. Ok, that’s pretty cheesy too.

i couldn’t sleep; so i dreamt that i sent you a postcard of a river, a water threading through the cloth of two continents, this postcard smells like mangos and cut apples since I like to eat while writing, i’m wondering if these sharpie strokes know that your name popped up when i took a polaroid of graffiti outside a museum, and I don’t know if I have enough room in the back to write about the music I heard or the places I visited, I just want to etch in what it means to travel with no real destination except for the direction your black ink pulls me to, or to not have a return address; just this river I’m following to the beach between this dream and the ocean.