Love letter #1

  (Not the glass shards one)

Dear,

I'm awake thinking about men who used to stroll around with monocles, curved umbrellas and basset hounds. And what big ideas they saw for the world. And how modernity came like a landslide, and toppled everything they knew. And with what humility and awe a 90-something Roma survivor must feel as he enters the corner tlaperia that is his only unchanged childhood memory.

This is NOT good for robotic computation.

Thank you for being my storytelling friend. I like you. You make me care about the world around me a little more. You ignite my imagination.

Con cariño,
Alicia

Emerging teeth

  Inside an old mansion - which is castle-like because of cold exposed brick, tall hollowed-out archways, and multiple levels with bridges weaving across cavernous central patios - instagram held a party.

The house had been in decay and the old parlor rooms had cracked apart and fallen in like a dungeon. The hand-poured glass had fallen out like teeth. A man saw four stories of abandoned city-center 17th century decrep inid ruins as an investment. He restored the building and filled it with art: local artists' cell phone camera pix of Mexico City, gelatin printed and framed, to fill the restored halls, accompanied by a dj and local organic mezcal. LOOK WHAT WE CAN DO with this neighborhood.

What's going on? The intersection of real estate PR, community documentary, viral tech, colonial history, urban development and art curation?! Yes. And this is 100% Mexico City today. The potential of restoring this city to prior glory requires wild juxtapositions of champions. This is the city of the luchador hero, (lucha libre translates as "free struggle"), the continental conquistador, and the aztec jaguar god, in reverse historical order. The city's most innovative neighborhood (Roma) was once a floating farm, a playground of art nouveau mansions, and a jungle of ancient informal trade depots. Now, it is where techies and hipsters ride free government-funded ecoBicis between organic food stores and discuss green interior design for low-income housing projects.

These juxtapositions make Mexico City one of the realest places in the world to learn about the interdisciplinary necessity of technology. How did instagram become the main event to Re- launch an old castle in the "scariest" area of the federal district? Internet tech is the new language that unites everything, so we have an amazing postmodern opportunity and duty to create new wild champions.

And THIS is the type of thinking where businesses will unlock brilliant, flexible ideas, especially in marketing in emerging markets.

What lifts you out

  Superar

I think of it really as "overcome"/survive/tolerate, but a more glorious version of it. To rise up and above after a struggle with something difficult; similar to "thrive despite roadblocks"; deal with and get over something with inner strength

Popocatepetl

  My senior year in college I painted a volcano in watery aqua paint on my bedroom wall. When I moved to mexico city and found out that an active volcano overlooks the city, my jaw dropped. It somehow had to mean something deep and powerful. I wanted to build a relationship with Popo.

This month, I've been approaching the volcano as a meditative symbol - a tool to find some meaning and some expression in my life.

Here are some amazing things about volcanoes as symbols.

wild, unpredictable

Losing sleep thinking about how awesome volcanoes are.

Maybe I'll become a volcano worshipper. Could be convenient since there's a big one overlooking Mexico City. When Popo spits, I gotta reflect on what I'm giving off..

"The aftermath of volcanic explosions allow for a lush, richness of growth."

Happy Volcano month.

""""""
’ve been asked about symbolic volcano facts, and what volcanoes represent in the realm of philosophical symbolism.

Culturally, we can look to Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes and fire.  As we would expect, her archetypal personality is a bit volcanic; she is honored for her wild, unpredictable, temperamental ways.

Interestingly, legend indicates Pele as a sort of character-builder for humans.  She presents trials and challenges to the human race with the expectation of producing strength and development within those she tempts.  A neat page I found on Pele can be viewed here.

Volcanoes themselves can be viewed as a sort of challenge symbol.  Their formations are mountainous, and as such they represent the upward challenge our lives sometimes present.  Protruding largely (and sometimes ominously) out from an otherwise unassuming landscape, volcanoes remind us of the goals we aspire to reach, the journey to get there, and the value of the climb to the top.

Predominantly, volcano facts reveal the incorporation of all the elements, and as such, volcanoes hold special symbolic power as they encompass the power of Earth, Air, Water and Fire.

Earth:
As an earth symbol, the symbolism of volcanoes reminds us to:

Hold steady to our most dominant anchor
Ground ourselves
Remain rooted in our foundational beliefs
In this manner, volcanoes urge us to not be shaken by external ripples.  Rather, sink deeply into the cool, rich strata that is the depth of our knowledge and remain there for solace, guidance and assurance that our foundations can serve as constant refuge.

Air:
As an air symbol, we see a cooling effect as well as the element of thought and communication.  As we observe the life cycle of the volcano, we realize the element of air plays a symbolic role in asking us questions like:

What kind of smoke signals am I sending out (am I communicating effectively)?
What kind of effect are my thoughts having on my external events?
Do my thoughts harden my experience, or heat things up allowing my proverbial magma to flow more freely?
When we recognize the symbolism of air as a method of communication or thought – we can clearly identify the symbolic smoke of our ruminations.

Water:
A symbol of water is found in the form of flowing lava in symbolic volcano fact & lore.  Fluid, burgeoning, and resistent to limitations lava reminds us of these points:

Am I going with the flow?
How can I more easily move through resistance?
Water is an archetypal symbol of emotion, and as such, water asks us to take stock of our feelings.  When water bears a message to us in the form of volcanic activity, it may indicate a need to enhance our calm.  It may also indicate a need to identify some underlying rage and diffuse it.

Fire:
Lastly as a fire symbol, volcanoes speak to us of passion, action, creativity and power.  When the element of fire explodes onto our philosophical scene, we may ask ourselves questions like:

How can I ride this wave of passionate inspiration for all its worth?
How can I heat up other areas in my life that need a little spicing up?
Am I being called to take action in a situation I’ve been avoiding?
Volcanic fire is complex in that it lurks beneath the surface for a period of time – mulling, brewing.  After compiling tremendous pressure it explodes into stunning manifestations.

This is a key symbolic point of volcanoes.  For those of us who are called to the symbolism of the volcano, it is imperative we keep a watchful inner eye on our subsurface fires.  We who gravitate to volcanic energy tend to hold our firey passions a little too close, and a little too long.  If this is the case, envision letting off a bit of steam every once in a while to avoid cataclysmic (and usually self-destructive) explosions.

However, when eruptions do come (and they will, it is the way of nature) remember regeneration, growth and renewal follow in its footsteps.  The aftermath of volcanic explosions allow for a lush, richness of growth.  Keep this in mind when passions run wild to the point of over-extension and ultimate release.  In the wake of expression, recognize you’ve funneled a way to relief for yourself and others.   You could even say trough a seemingly destructive act comes reconstruction and creation in its stead.

I hope you have enjoyed these thoughts on symbolic volcano facts, but don’t let this post be your only point of reference.

Take the time to meditate and contemplate all the complexities the volcano holds.  Let Pele take you on a journey to her volcanic realms, and let the lava language of volcanoes roll through your psyche with all its revolutionary power.

Design Fantasies

  Mexico city is an unbelievable backdrop to become dedicated to design-based problem solving because the city planners have taken unbelievable risks in order to overcome unthinkable barriers.

One famous example is how the city was founded itself - in a lake; a man-built temple for the center of the Aztec universe surrounded by floating farms and amazing aquatic trade and warfare canal systems. Now occupying some of those canals are double or triple-decker overpass highways, wild feats of engineering hosting almost 3 million vehicles on the road daily. When Mexico found itself in dystopic, polluted, violent decay and "brain drain" to suburbs and the U.S. in the 90s and onwards, planners audaciously installed gigantic live plant towers to suck up highway pollution, hundreds of accessible bike share stations, an electro-responsive skyscraper with programmable wall panels to project images across the city and host futuristic art happenings underground. These are only a few of the amazing solutions to restore vitality to America's most intimidating megatropolis. Not to mention poverty solution at immense scale - flying toilets for slums, sustainable gardens in poor housing projects, platforms to allow informal street tent vendors to form minifranchises. The possibilities are endless and the confrontation of design with ancient civilization and futuristic urbanity makes the potential impact of successful programs scalable to previously unreachable or "impossible" parts of the world where tradition, corruption, and lack of access frustrate others.

But design thrives in Mexico City.

Ode to the tamale man

  Dear Oaxaqueñan Tamale Man, with your speaker larger than your steaming tin pot of your wife's proud tamales, man of the year, Aztec of the new hipster emerald city:

your distribution never ceases to amaze, but from the fade-in fade-out circles around my block at 10pm, I'm sensing your sales rate appears to yield little hope. Since sales efficiency cannot be your priority, certainly, having exhausted the optimized ad frequency by the thousands per human and invading walls with your own repeated, recorded voice (this is not an ice cream truck!), i have to ask you, to make sure you are human, and to preserve my own humanity:

I hate you. I would never buy from you. You're worse than a bum: I can't shut you out. If I went to hell, your tamale recording would play.

But it is you I have chosen to love. Your song is as kind as my favorite E.E. poem:
"I have eaten the plums
In the icebox
Which you were probably saving
For breakfast
Forgive me
They were delicious
So sweet and so cold."

I hear your hum. It is brain-paralyzing.
How meditative is it for you to go on for hours with that speaker? How much joy, curiosity, release and nervous eagerness does a tamale sale give you? Does anyone run out to catch you, a naive immigrant? Who are your old man regulars? Do tamales even matter to you? Or are you perfectly pleased with the echo of your sound through familiar streets, your empire, which you know best?

Tamale man, no one can deny it you are a robot-being, but you are our most loyal guardian; if awake, you see every store awning hung, clausurado sticker pasted; bike unchained and flower sprouted. If you are as you seem- an existential post-death trance of broken pavement, grime and electronics; striking both curiosity and fear in pedestrians who hear you every night from their beds, and every morning naked in their showers; do those familiar eyes give you life? When people look at you as if they know you better than their own spouses, want to see you, yet also loathe you? Don't you ever wish to one day, you could go home and ask your great aunt to sign a hauntingly beautiful love ballad in a native language ... And the following rainy morning, emerge with your bike, haunting everybody with the new song from your speaker? Imagine the physical excitement to rotate the same streets as always, your meditative circuit - and let the lovers, the cooks, the children and the mechanics all hear this new piece of your own intimate life, as you forcibly enter theirs? Tamale man, vulnerable and human? Tamale man monologue? How many ignore you- and close off their senses - since it is impossible to know you? How loved could you be, if you broadcasted your own self one day?

Ever since the yelling morning man stopped yelling with mad ferocity and became two, the yelling brothers, who together began howling lower, more tired, more forgiving.... It made me imagine the yeller sitting before his meal, capable of human sensitivity. The unthinkable, not long ago.