Colin Ellard - You Are Here

Walden

I'm still thinking about a visit to Walden Pond that I took in 2005.  I'm not sure why, trapped in a maelstrom of deadlines and duties, all I can think about is escaping to the woods or at least to a simpler life.  I think the latest round of yearning might have been triggered by an unexpected contact from my dear friend Brooke who, with his wife Kate and their amazing children, homesteads on a farm in Cape Breton Island.  I spent a couple of days with Kate and Brooke (in fact, now that I think of it, it was not long after the visit to Walden) and I sometimes think that those days have been a bigger influence on my life than almost anything that has happened since that time.  Somewhere, I have some pictures.  I'll need to dig them up.  A lot has happened in the intervening years.  I've learned a great deal both about the world and about myself.  I lost sight of some things that were really important.  It's amazing how we can be swept up in events, places, spaces.  It's amazing how we actually become the context that we're in.  I'm not sure what all of this means to me yet, but more than anything right now, I feel like building a cabin in the woods.  I want to be taught by place again.  Family of 8.  Big dog.  Quite a cabin. Ranch style.

Reminiscing

I've been thinking about the past today: not ancient history but not so long ago either.  I have one particular day in mind, when we went to visit Walden Pond in 2006.  It wasn't completely planned, but when we realized how close we were to Walden during a long drive from Boston to a little village in Nova Scotia that we were calling home, I couldn't resist the call.  
  I have a beautiful photograph of my daughter, standing on the edge of the pond on a rainy afternoon, pondering life.  I remember standing there, watching her, hoping that the curious toe dipped in the water would have a permanent effect on her.  So far so good.  I picked up a stone from the beach and brought it home with me, feeling a bit guilty about the fact that if every visitor picked up a souvenir, the place would look a little bare.  But I couldn't resist.

When I left the little house in Nova Scotia, it wrenched me so deeply to move from the only place I've lived in my life that actually felt like home, that I was moved to leave the precious stone behind.  I wanted to leave some part of me there that I could always think of as a kind of anchor that attached me to my only real home.  My little daughter Mei Ling and I found a wonderful Waldorf garden to hide the stone in.

  It's probably not there anymore, but I like to imagine that it is.

All my little words

Ah, yes, so many words over the past few months (and possibly years!) discussing the possibilities for connecting the interweb to the real world for fun, profit, and the good of society.  Now, as all of the bits and pieces come together, and as there is more and more cheap and easy support for making such connections, it's getting close to the time to walk the walk.  I know what I want to do, but I'm at a stage where my reasons for wanting to do so hover somewhere between simple coolness at one extreme and megalomanic ambition at the other.  I think it somehow starts with a shirt embedded with some sensors that can be used to read certain aspects of the wearer's emotional state.  I actually have most of the parts I need to do this scattered through my basement.  It's possible that the only thing that is stopping me from diving in to put a shirt together is the occasional note from helpful friends (thanks Rich) that what I want to do has already been done in Asia using a tiny and absurdly cheap little stick-on device.  

The rest of the project is a little more ambitious -- I'd like a dynamic readout of the wearer's condition to be available and public online.  Even more fun would be to hand out a good number of these shirts and to present the combined affective state of a handful of lunatic volunteers using a gigantic Times Square sized display.  I'm not sure yet whether something like this will work for me or not, but the tinkering will be fun.  Now all I lack is time.  Ha!  The interesting projects pile up on my desk and in my mind.  I just need to somehow clear a space for them.