Walking Through Walls... & Le Nature's

So today I get two beautiful little emails. The first one was from Brad Simpson about a dream with me in it. The funny thing was that at the same time he was having the dream he wrote me about, I was writing a generals proposal to do more or less what he was dreaming I was doing. Here's his dream email:

you can teach anything!

i had a totally amazing dream that you knew how to walk through walls, and the wall did this crazy ripple effect when you walked through them. and then you succesfully taught me and alec resnick how to do it as well. the trick was to put your fingertips on the wall first, and wait until the wall would "let" you pass in, it would start to sort of give way. thanks for teaching me how to walk through walls.

Meanwhile, I was at Joy Labs writing about how things like walls are more than just walls and if we can learn to see them the right way anything is possible with them. I was writing my goals for the next few years and how to accomplish them. I wrote them as notes to prepare myself to write a proposal for my generals exams. Here's the notes I wrote to myself while he was dreaming (at the same time):

GOAL
Obtaining Limitless Vision: Learning to see every day life without limiting the possibilities of what we and our friends can become. This allows people to create their own world any way they imagine it and think of themselves as limitless and wonderful beings.

MISSION
I want to help people learn to see the limitless possibilities of their everyday life. This means thinking without preconceived notions about what something is. These somethings include: your friends, trash, pencils, grandpa, trees, fridge food, rain, cats, t-shirts, play-dough, etc.

In "Last Child in the Woods," Louv says the loose components of nature itself are the world's biggest toolkit. I say Modern Nature has supplanted archetypal notions of nature. Modern Nature is both urban nature and personal nature. Urban nature includes wild and manmade. Personal means your hyperlocal environment is your actual real nature, not some picture of a mountain (unless that's where you live).

THESIS
I plan to persue this in my PhD thesis by creating rituals, techniques, and tools for re'seeing and re'imagining the possibilities in our everyday lives. I will narrow the contexts to small and practical domains, like Drawdio does by only allowing musical notes as the output, while taking anything in your modern nature environment as the input.

GENERALS
For my generals, I would like to study how people make their view of the world (education/constructivism/constructionism/unschooling) with Mitch, how the everyday world can be transformed into textiles and interactive components can be woven in the fabric of life with Leah, and _______________ with ______________ (currently talking with Edith Ackerman and Nicholaes Roosevelt)

I thought this was a beautiful coincidence and it gave me a lot of confidence that I was on the right track. Around the same time I got a really interesting email about Le Nature's. I asked the author if I could share it and he said yes. I can't believe how much drama there is around this topic and that appreciation and information about what I wrote about Le Nature's continues to role in years later. Here's the letter about Le Nature's:

Hi Jay,

I was doing a search on breaking news about LeNature's and their scumbag management when I ran across your posting on ASS Water (funny as hell and very weird, all at the same time). Just thought you'd enjoy knowing that the former president, Greg Podlucky, and his henchmen are being indicted for their actions while at the helm of that shill of a company to the tune of $806 million.

Why am I interested in Podlucky? His dad took over the Jones Brewing Company in Smithton, PA back in the eighties, where my dad had worked for 35 years. He too deceived the government, scammed money, and ran that business into a premature demise. Sound familiar? Greg was actually an officer at Jones for a while, and his own dad fired him!

I'm not surprised that you were threatened by those juveniles, nor am I surprised that justice will eventually be served. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, boy!

Really enjoyed your posting!

Best regards,
xxxxxx xxxxxx