i said: yes, but i would say

he said: life is game and we’re all players
i said: yes, but i would say we are athletes of our own sport

he said: life is a movie and we’re all actors
i said: yes, but I would say we are performers of our own theatre

he said: life is a dream and we’re all dreamers
i said: yes, but i would say we are dreamers living our own dream

he said: i’d rather say it so everyone can connect to it
i said: that’s done, but what do you do after what you say gets old?

he said: i need people like you to take care of that answer
i said: if it’s words that are speaking then we must use vocabulary to speak another language

he said: I guess so.
i said: yes, but i would say we all feel so.

Filed under: creativity, design, life, poetry

i care to DO

I’m frustrated with everything and I’m only saying this because I believe that I have answers for how to find the answers. I have a voice that I’ve made through listening and thinking. My voice is of DOING. I have a voice that cares to voice others because the voice of others is my voice.

I have never fit in, nor have I ever thought I had to fit in. Now people look at me and think that I’m too young to have answers, but I’m not telling you that I’M THE ANSWER, I’m telling you I know where the answers are and I care enough about them to bring them to the forefront of the conversation if we’re talking about answers. So don’t get intimidated by me or think that I’m self-indulgent. I just love what I DO because I do it for people and communities, hence I should love myself for doing it. I want to share the love with you all. You might see tears in my eyes if you catch me in a passionate conversation.

I just got home to my parent’s Thornhill condo suite, after a very important panel lecture series Manufacturing Neighbourhoods held by Toronto’s Architecture for Humanity at the Gardner Museum. The panel speakers included Bruce Hinds (my professor, close friend and project supporter) along with the highly reputable Ken Greenberg and other engaged reputable speakers just as concerned about community development in Toronto.

I thought it was a wonderful discussion and I just had to put my foot in there and talk about community activism since I know what that is about, because I practice it and preach it simultaneously. Sitting in the front row and having my hand up since the floor could ask questions, being dismissed about 5 times before the moderator came to hand me the microphone, I spilled my heart out on this topic of ‘building community’.

I’ve been at OCAD for 4 years and I have involved myself in its community and politics — because I care about making it a better institution with better education, more exposure to its possibilities and direction for building a unique community. Bottom line, I’m telling you, I know OCAD because I’ve experienced it and I care about its future. Everyone on the administration knows me. I have made myself and my voice visible, fearless and passionate. I have tried my best to speak for the majority of the population of the school and enhancement of its education for its students precisely with ‘building community’ and increasing student engagement, which mind you is not any different than doing something for a neighborhood. I have DONE things and that goes to tell you that I can speak about them and have a right to make a statement after doing something that people care about and don’t care enough to do something about.

Here is proof ONE and TWO of what I have done. Boom. Done. I’m publicizing myself because no one else on earth is going to do it for me. It’s not just two, it’s more! I care about my gradshow, so I care to get involved in making a structure for it so that the students are involved in the future. I put myself through challenges and hours of volunteering to initiate something I believe in. I care about the decisions made for the school. I care to speak up and give an input, because if I don’t, no one will know that I actually care. I want a better future for others and if I don’t act on what matters, then what matters will never have my voice in it. I know my voice creates vibrations and it’s those vibrations that I believe in, nothing else.

I’m fed up with people who don’t DO and sit and complain and complain and complain. There are people who talk about doing, tons of them might I add. In fact, that’s all we do! We (as in majority of Western society) just talk about doing and then the next time we do the same thing again. As much as I whole-heartedly agree the doing begins by having a conversation, but what about making the conversation HAPPEN? Who wants to take responsibility of that and who wants to invest their time in something that they’ve never done? Stop watching your damn television and stop listening to how hard it is to do things. It’s all built to scare you and turn you away. You’re not MEANT to have a voice; that’s what you’re meant for through the media.

Media yourself for goodness sakes! I’m a nobody and I’m media-ing me and through that I want to media my values and beliefs. Does that make sense? Ofcourse not, because you’ve never heard of it. You think that media is supposed to come to you because media is so far away and hard to reach.

It’s not though; it’s really not. Internet confuses us, because we’re confused with ourselves so when we enter a digital world with confusion of ourselves, we are even more confused and don’t know how to translate anything into reality. Hence we talk about it.

I’m also working on a community project as you should know by now if you’ve talked to me or know me, because it’s really my life. You cannot do a community project if you don’t fall in love with the community. It simply will not work. You will fail miserably and become pessimistic about doing anything ever again. I’m in love with this project and I’m in love with it because (here we go again), I simply GIVE A DAMN. Research on an area with statistics, numbers, assumptions and politics is the easy part. Understanding what the community has to offer is the most important and the most time-consuming part. This requires listening, observing, making friends and showing appreciation for what exists. If you don’t show appreciation for what is already there, you will again, fail miserably and continue to go the wrong way to make change.

Here is the link to a brief description to TheStoreFront project and here is TheStoreFrontCommunity.com which I highly suggest you join if you are in Toronto since we are holding an inaugural festival in the area: The BIG Festival. I have now understood this community, and I realize still how little I know about what is going on and I’m dying to be a part of it — this is why I want to MOVE THERE and live there and experience the community — being a member of the community that I change.

Now what else have I done? I spoke up to this community! I clearly made the effort to show that I cared about them. I’ve understood what community groups exist. I KNOW who these people are now and they KNOW ME TOO! This is how you make a change! You come in as an outsider and see it your responsibility to be humble and listen. If you want to be a therapist — which is literally what urban planners and designers are for communities at large — you need to listen and understand. You need to realize that there are no fingers to be pointed. It is your responsibility to find out how to do it so that IT WORKS and that local residents and businesses ‘take ownership of their communities’ — the answer to the question Bruce Hinds proposed to the group.

Now listen to me, I’m telling you that I’ve done this and done the investigation alone. And I can speak about it for that very reason; because I have done it and I know how it needs to be done after going through difficulty figuring it out. I’m not done and I never will be, but I hope that someone listens and follows some of these steps that I’ve learnt by DOING what you’re TALKING about. Who am I kidding, no one will buy in until it’s all over the media, and then you can come and ask me, “how do you do it?” Ask me now because I’m always in the search for answers. Maybe what I say will be of value, despite my age.

Filed under: activism, community, design, education, life, love, problem solving, student life, sustainability, work

inactivity

Seven months — I need a change.

I hate this building. I hate how I stay in it all weekend because I feel lazy to go anywhere in this area, a boring and dull neighbourhood that isn’t even really a neighbourhood — it’s just a bunch of sky-rise buildings. I hate how I can’t just open the door and walk out. I hate how I can’t see my neighbours. I don’t belong here. I want to be in a natural human environment. I love how I’m with my family, but it doesn’t mean that I’m with the rest of my community. I’m not engaged in my natural environment. We all used to, way back in Iran. We have a history of a rich community of family and local habitat. I was brought up around trees, vegetables, rocks, water and grass. I used to go swimming everyday. I picked cherries, climbed the walnut tree, pet the dog, watered herbs, played games, chased after birds. I hate it here! I want to go back to my childhood and be more engaged in my environment.

What is the point of sitting here and pretending to do work? I sit in my room with my laptop all day! I hate it! I hate the fact that where I live limits my interactions within my local environment and affects my daily cycles. I don’t go for walks or runs; I don’t walk to a local farmer’s market; I don’t bike anywhere; I don’t plant anything; I don’t have any pets. I really don’t do anything except for stare at this screen and think about life.

Well, I’m exaggerating a little bit, because when I’m not home I’m really happy. I really like being around people. It’s just when I’m stagnant for too long, I feel like I’m not myself and that I limit my actions because I’m stuck in a loop. I think I’m priviledged to be living with my parents but I worry for them too. I worry that they’ve conditioned themselves to this unengaged environment and way of life, that they’ve forgotten what life is really about.

Or, maybe it’s different for them. Maybe they’ve been doing this for years and all that matters to them is family. In Iran we were around more familiarity so we were more involved as a family in activities and gatherings. Or, perhaps this is what the majority of the world is now? Immigrating to a new country and moving into “good” neighbourhoods (suburbs), buying a car and driving everywhere and providing for the family. What I’m concerned about is these “good” neighbourhoods because I can clearly see how they are “bad” neighbourhoods because there is no sign of a neighbourhood, just your suite. Or, maybe it’s these condominiums that are really the problem. They make us lazier and encourage us to stay in our homes. Or, maybe we have just become so lazy that we are hesitant to do different things because we mold our lives to inactivity and condition our bodies to underengage in our residential communities.

Filed under: community, life

precipitation

precipitation, floundering my state of mind
i start drowning myself in one breath of time
until i feel the wetness of my bones, and get cold
and begin to lose control of my soul
i panic and scream: “death is near, death is near”
but no one is here, no one is here
no one comes even close to my near
i cry i cry, i ask myself why
why does it have to rain when i cry
floundering perceptions, truthful directions
keeping my mind as the roof of protections
opposing senses, i see that it’s red
i start yelling: “it’s red, it’s red!”
but it’s my blood that’s already bled
my tears that i’ve already shed

i’m alive and i’m helplessly giving
precipitation is bedazzlement
my bones wet, swimming

Filed under: poetry

a new language

…we have to play tricks with language until finally we generate a certain vertigo in ourselves through which words, falsely assumed to transmit knowledge, lose their apparent meaning until a more real discourse is possible — implying ultimately the invention of a new language, a language that does not only have to be spoken and written. In the future I believe books will never be written again, books will be ‘done’, thus literalizing the cliched metaphor that writing is an act.

-David Cooper
from The Death of the Family
1971

Filed under: quotes

UI

U and I
two letters found at chance
in the community of alphabet
let’s get married
and make a new word

Filed under: philosophy, poetry

do what you do best ghazaleh: design.

Alright, this is straight-up talk. One on one Ghaz, lets go.

You are a graphic designer, alright? As much as you’d like to argue that you’re not, you still have graphic design skills. You can still make a book, you know what typography is all about, you know how to position information and you know how to do this well. Now, I know you want to be crazy and call yourself an ‘insane pragmatist’ or whatever new term you want to make for yourself, you’re still graduating from a design school and people are going to come and expect some nice graphic work from you. You did it at Ringling — you produced a lot of work and you got recognized for it. You know how to design. Boom.

What else? Well, you also love writing don’t you? I mean, a lot of people have said that you’re good at it. Your English teachers in high school said it, your teacher for Graphic Design History said it, your thesis teacher said it. Just because it’s not full of fancy big words that researchers use and it’s not in an essay format doesn’t mean you can’t think of it as a strength in your abilities. You know how to communicate well, whether with text, conversation or visuals, you’re downright a graphic designer! You know all about the field and now it’s your time to show it off!

I know you have big dreams because you think big and you just can’t stop the learning process. It’s time to design Ghazaleh, and you have to get practical. You know how to write, you know what your point is, you have tons of research that will set you apart from others, you have tons of photographs, you’re good at documenting your experiences and you know how important presentation is.

Do it! Write that book and design it dammit! How long have I been telling you to do it? Get to it. You have your thesis, you have all the content — get writing and kick some ass.

Filed under: design, student life

Patterns in Nature (by Jan Bang)

“The idea of Permaculture ecological design: reading nature’s book

A very short history of the development of human conciousness

We all have our various points of view, in our everyday lives and also in our deeper consciousness. We might experience the same events, but we often interpret them completely differently. In a similar way different eras throughout history have also seen the world from different points of view. There is a popular idea that our knowledge of the world has grown and developed during the course of our history. That in the beginning we knew very little and that now we know a lot. That we have developed from ignorance to knowledge. But when we look closer we find that people just experienced the world differently when we look closer we find that people just experienced the world differently in past ages and that our development is not simply a straight line ascending.

In the age of Mythology our experience of the world was full of meaning and significance. The ocean, for example, was enormous, changing, deep, wild or calm. It reflected our own mind, it was an experience of a personality, Poseidon to the Greeks. Everywhere in nature there were faces and personalities. The natural world around us was a reflection of ourselves and we could gain insight into ourselves by observing it.

About half a millennium before Christ there occurred in the West, in Greece specifically, a change from Mythos to Logos. A change form the mythological consciousness to logical thinking and rational thought. The philosophers began to ask questions about the nature of the world. Where does it come from? What is it made up of? One of their starting points was the idea of the four elements, earth, water, air and fire.

Hippocrates laid the foundations of western medicine around 450 BC. He was obsessed with process and how the temperaments related to various substances of the body. Air was related to blood and the sanguine temperament, water to phlegm and the phlegmatic. Fire was clearly choleric and had to do with yellow gall, while earth was melancholic and related to dark gall.

This system of thinking continued and was developed without structural changes for the next two thousand years. Alchemy continued the aspect of process in a strong way, relating various elements, such as mercury, sulphur and salt, to the four elements already defined by the ancient Greeks. Process was still seen as the most important aspect of the world and the human being. Paracelsus, 1493-15441, was an alchemist and is still regarded as an important figure in medical history. Alchemy today is widely regraded as some kind of medieval superstition, but today’s chemistry is actually mostly alchemy without the spiritual bit, ‘Alchemy Lite.’

With the Renaissance there came a complete break from the traditions of the ancient world. Copernicus discovered the heliocentric nature of our solar system, Luther broke with the venerable and dominating Catholic Church and eventually Descartes declared that anything that cannot be measured is not worth considering. Materialism gradually came to dominate our western thinking and this began to spread around the world with the so-called Age of Discovery. Art, Science and Religion had until then been regarded as an undivided trilogy; gradually they drifted apart. Today they seem to be completely unrelated.

Since the Renaissance we have taken apart the world. We have become caught up in a reductionist science that removes the spiritual component as unmeasurable and therefore irrelevant. For Descartes nature was dumb, there was no spirit in sticks and stones, nature was res extensa, a dead thing, while res cogitas was the thinking component which was the foundation of our existence: ‘I think therefore I am.’

Surely we are much more than just thought. We walk, talk, intuit, feel and act. ‘I walk, therefore I am,’ or ‘I talk, therefore I am,’ or even ‘I intuit, therefore I am.’

In our era, having completed the journey from the whole to the part, our task is to put both the world and the human being together again. We need to reintroduce the wholeness of the world and the creatures within it.

Writing something may be taken as analogy: I have an idea; to begin with it is a complete whole, but I analyse it, break it up into manageable components and begin formulating chapters, paragraphs, and finally compose sentences made up of words and letters. I hope that someone will read these letters and words, understand the sentences and eventually come to share my understanding which initially inspired me to write. In our view of the world we may now be at the stage of being obsessed by its letters. But the idea of writing is that what I write should be read by someone. Now that we are able to read the letters of existence, surely the next step is to read what is written.

This is the immediate task for us at this point in the development of our consciousness, to read the book of the universe we have been given. To arrive back at the Big Idea by laboriously making sense of the letters, getting the understanding implied by each sentence and finally comprehending the universe by the flow of ideas we perceive in the paragraphs and chapters given to us by nature. This is what Permaculture sets out to do.”

Ecovillages: A Practical Guide to Sustainable Communities p.38-39

Filed under: community, design, life, nature, quotes

Web Innovation: stop looking for it!

I’ve realized how long it takes to allow a really great idea to emerge. The more time you spend thinking about what you’re doing and absorbing yourself only by what you’ve labeled as your idea, the more you confuse yourself.

A really great idea is innovational. You can’t go looking to make innovation– it’s nowhere to be found. You can’t find it if you don’t know what it looks like. Innovation is so simple, that it’s invisible.

This is why I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know what I was doing even though I was a year ahead of everyone on my concept development for thesis in my current fourth year. I wasn’t sure, because I didn’t know why I was doing it and I was curious to find out what I really wanted to do. I wanted to make innovation and I was really keen on it.

That’s not how you do it — no! I realized this because I’ve had enough of it! I’ve had enough of reading about social networking, Web2.0, the next in technology, media, popular culture, online business and fancy tools! Get the hell out of here! All of you! I’m tired of reading about your stupid, lame-ass observations that I thought were going to give me answers! I didn’t waste my time because I got obsessed with you and now I’m letting you go for good, because I realize how little I connect with you! You just don’t get it do you? Does anyone get it? All you can do is write your books and make theories. I was disgusted to walk into Chapters and see stacks of books on the Web! Get the hell out of here! I’m not what you guys are talking about. I don’t want to be that! You’re brainwashing me and making me think I’m doing something else! Why are you so addictive? Why are you people doing this? Stop buzzing! Innovation is something you can’t find if you just talk about the same thing over and over and over! You’re going to wait around to point fingers and go “ooo”, “aaah”, “noooo”, “yeees”, “goooood”, “baaaaad”.

None of you get it! None of you who talk GET IT! Fuck your Facebook that ruined my life. I looked up to you, and I’m ashamed of it. I don’t trust anything but my gut and my gut won over your hypnotic. My gut is creative and I do not settle for anything less than what corresponds with my beliefs.

Do you want to know why I’m so mad? I’m mad at myself! I’m mad at brainwashing myself for so long with my eager and ambition to do something big. I’m mad at letting what’s out there on the web be an example of what I want to do. Because frankly, I don’t want to do anything that is close to what already exists online. I want to do something for people who can use what I do and appreciate what it can do for them. I want to help people and I have a unique personality and I know it. I’m mad because I sold myself short. I’m mad because I let my addiction to technology freeze me. I’m mad because I’m letting myself be like others when I know I’m capable of a lot more than others.

I’m mad because I’m tired of how people think! I’m tired of all this fluff and I’m tired of IT talk. I’m mad at designers for not being leaders and I’m mad at creative people who sell themselves short and don’t push it far enough! I’m mad what the Web is doing to our human factor — it is DEhumanizing us.

All I care about is nature. I care about true nature and its ability to transform and evolve and change. Fuck what you think matters because evidently, you have no idea what nature means. Therefore, you will always look for innovation and never make it.

If you don’t understand power, you will never have it.

Filed under: creativity, design, life, love, school, social community networks, student life

THESIS: 1.5 years – action time!

I’ve finally got it. After a year and a half of process, I’ve finally reached the process of execution, which will be a long and challenging process — I’m all up for it. It came out of last week’s thesis meeting with my prof Keith Rushton and in particular from Brian’s challenge — a former student of Keith’s working in the industry, who sits in on our meetings. I’m not saying that he revealed anything specifically, but he did make a spark go off. He challenged me to a point where I began to question my presentation for the grad show. I instantly rethought everything for my approach.

Brian said, “Web2.0 is dead in a couple months.” As much as I can argue and articulate what Web2.0 really means and explain O’Reilley’s 7 principles to inform people on the definition of the term, I realized that he had a great point.

My thesis is not about Web2.0, and particularly, I do not want people to have any preconceived thoughts on what my thesis is about. Immediately people will think about the social community networks that already exist on the web before they comprehend the intelligence behind my research and purpose.

I told myself, “You do ‘not’ want to be be compared to anything that is out there, so don’t present yourself that way and don’t set yourself up for that.”

The thesis started off with my vision for the web being used positively to connect people. The more I researched into it, the more I bookmarked social web, and the more I read about Web2.0 tools, theories, essays, opinions and research in technology, the more knowledgeable I became on how to measure success.

For over a year, all I did was research the web and read about the web. I bookmarked dozens of websites, rewrote my statement dozens of times, and exposed my thoughts to dozens of people, vocally repeating my purpose. The idea evolved, the focus changed, the strategies fluctuated, the passion transformed and the true purpose revealed itself to me through ongoing projects, involvements, and reflective experiential research. I am using my thesis to provide a unique and thorough experience through interaction and sharing of knowledge using a model that I create as a framework to facilitate productivity and interconnectivity.

Filed under: design, life, problem solving, school, social community networks, student life, work