confession to nature, childhood and neighbours

To nature, childhood and neighbours

I’m sorry for not showing you that I love you. I keep denying that i like spending time with you. We used to hold hands and talk to each other, without keeping any secrets; we were honest. I would run to you, not because you asked me, but because you called. I thought you were everlasting; my fears only appeared when i realized you were gone.

I’m panicking. Who am i? Why am i here? Why am i so far from you? Where did i go? Who took me away from you?

I’m talking to you baby!

Everything you did to me that fulfilled my desires is buried in an island off in space. I don’t know where to find you! No one around me knows where you are either. Are you dead? Did you get kidnapped? Why would you ever leave me?

I know i should have told you i love you. I’m sorry! I didn’t know you would leave me and i never thought i’d be so lost and hurt without you. I’ve been desperately crying and taking so much medication. No one knows what’s wrong with me. I keep pretending like i’m fine and i want to forget it all. I want to forget that i ever had any feelings for you.

Maybe i hated you for the longest time. Maybe i knew why you left me but never wanted to face it because i’d feel like i would hate myself. I think all along i thought i could keep going and that i’d get somewhere where i’d be so in love that i would forget you and prove to myself that i could be healed.

Now, i realize that i just need to stop and appreciate what i lost so i can find my way back to you. I promise i’ll come back to you.

I love you.

Filed under: community, creativity, future, life, love, philosophy, sustainability

the mark of unity

everything will

come together

with chance

and choice

 

balanced

and designed

with integrity 

and hope

 

yes

we can

Filed under: art, community, creativity, design, education, experience, future, life, love, philosophy, poetry, politics, social community networks, sustainability, work

revolution finished

 

GOD and HUMAN

MOTHER and NATURE

CHICKEN and EGG

MAN and ROOSTER

INVENTOR and INNOVATION

can’t go backwards

LIFE is always forward

and equal.

 

be born

re-birth

revolution

sex

acceptance

Filed under: activism, art, city, community, creativity, cycling, design, education, experience, future, humanity, iran, life, love, music, nature, philosophy, poetry, politics, school, student life, sustainability, work

internetoflife – the collective language to simply learn

Anyone who is reading this is a part of the book. internetoflife is one word but it assembled of three other words that we know in English.

The final direction for my thesis after 1.5 years of research is internetoflife.com

I believe in the power of the collective to share wisdom and create links.

I believe in words to reflect identity.

I believe in words of wisdom, quoted by you.

So please visit the site and contribute.

First round of submissions for final presentation at my gradshow are April 12, 2008.

Anyone, anywhere you are, if you are reading this and you are interested in the concept of my network and want to support it into fruition, please click on the submissions page. I would also like to request for volunteer translators to translate the internetoflife questions into other languages, so we can get a universal network of words. Text and colour are universal languages — lets ’simply’ use them to broadcast ‘who we are’.

More information on how I arrived here will be posted soon.

You are also welcome to add me to facebook since I have nothing to hide about who I am.

Filed under: activism, art, community, creativity, design, education, humanity, life, love, music, philosophy, poetry, problem solving, quotes, school, social community networks, sustainability

succession

i doooooooooooooooooooooo

and then i incubate

i doooooooooooooooooooooo

and then i incubate

i doooooooooooooooooooooo

and then i incubate

i doooooooooooooooooooooo

and then i incubate

My life is always at

’succession’:

(ecology) the gradual and orderly process of change in an ecosystem brought about by the progressive replacement of one community by another until a stable climax is established

doing is growth

incubation is understanding growth

Filed under: life, nature, sustainability

nature is not a well-designed puzzle

“Have you ever seen a child take apart a favorite toy? Did you then see the little one cry after realizing he could not put all the pieces back together again? Well, here is a secret that never makes the headlines: We have taken apart the universe and have no idea how to put it back together. After spending trillions of research dollars to disassemble nature in the last century, we are just now acknowledging that we have no clue how to continue — except to take it apart further.

Reductionism was the driving force behind much of the twentieth century’s scientific research. To comprehend nature, it tells us, we first must decipher its components. The assumption is that once we understand the parts, it will be easy to grasp the whole. Divide and conquer; the devil is in the details. Therefore, for decades we have been forced to see the world through its constituents. We have been trained to study atoms and superstrings to understand the universe; molecules to comprehend life; individual genes to understand complex human behavior; prophets to see the original of fads and religions.

Now we are close to knowing just about everything there is to know about the pieces. But we are as far as we have ever been from understanding nature as a whole. Indeed, the reassembly turned out to be much harder than scientists anticipated. The reason is simple: Riding reductionism, we run into the hard wall of complexity. We have learned that nature is not a well-designed puzzle with only one way to put it back together. In complex systems the components can fit in so many different ways that it would take billions of years for us to try them all. Yet nature assembles the pieces with a grace and precision honed over millions of years. It does so by exploiting the all-encompassing laws of self-organization, whose roots are still largely a mystery to us.

…Networks are present everywhere. All we need is an eye for them.”

-From Introduction in Linked by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

Filed under: community, design, nature, problem solving, social community networks, sustainability

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

Permaculture

“Permaculture looks for the patterns embedded in our natural world as inspirations for designing solutions to the many challenges we are presented today. Permaculture encourages individuals to be resourceful and self-reliant and to become a conscious part of the solution to the many problems which face us both locally and globally. Permaculture means thinking carefully about our environment, our use of resources and how we supply our needs. It aims to create systems that will sustain not only for the present, but also for future generations. The idea is one of the co-operation with nature and each other, of caring for the earth and its people.”

-Jan Martin Bang (Ecovillages: A Practical Guide to Sustainable Communities p. 49)

Filed under: community, nature, problem solving, quotes, sustainability