the niki download

#26
10 / 22 / 2021

Commute

Hello,

Thanks to all the new folks, I met around town this week. It was great to meet you all, I am sure I will see you again soon. If you are interested, all the past Niki Downloads can be found here.

:)

Traveling is the coolest drug, I have deeply missed it.

My recent trip to Paris was the cliché reset I had hoped for.

I can see clearly again and I am grateful and getting off on the simplest of pleasures, especially my daily bicycle commute to work. I make the ride four times, from my apartment, to the office, back home for lunch, and then again to the office to finish out the day. All in all, its about eight miles total.

The pandemic shifted things at work for the better.

I now only need to come to the office three days a week instead of five.

I feel spoiled.

I am happy to be working, like my new friend, Master House-Sider Dan.

As you can see, Dan starts his day smiling…

…and ends it the same way.

Everyday won’t be super happy but we can control how we respond. For example, these sweet ladies above me told me they were having a hard day…

Work, the grind, the unbearable lightness of being, all that.

But they still pulled off this sweet mother and daughter smile.

In the words of Dadio Moriyama, “if you don’t like what you see, blink.”

Or, you know… Hit a vape.

On my commute, I day-dream.

One of my most ingrained neurocircuit fantasy loops is to imagine what I would do differently if I awoke one morning to find my consciousness had slipped back into my twelve-year-old body. I play through the next fifteen years with all the knowledge I have now. I would take more risks, archive my work properly, worry less, dress better and skateboard more. Probably would burn fewer bridges, too.

Then I remember we have no free will, just the illusion of it, I would obviously do everything the same.

Damn that was a strong vape.

I wonder if Stephen M. Ross gets high. He had a 200-year-old Burr Oak moved as a part of the University of Michigan’s “Never Ending Construction Campaign.” I used to think the actual reason was for some occult ritual, but after learning how rich folks buy mature trees and move them all the time, I think it is just hubris (which is probably an occult ritual anyways).

OK, I have a question. Why do we refer to unimaginably rich people as philanthropists instead of, I don’t know… Wealth criminals?

Publicists duh, I know, but seriously these people get rich by paying their workers less than the value of their labor (basic capitalism), then they “donate” (if you get a tax write-off is it truly a donation?) a trivial percentage of their profits and most of us celebrate them.

We think, one day, maybe, I can be that rich fuck.

Wait… Isn’t this a college town, where are the hordes of students?

Oh right, its Fall Break. They are trickling back in.

Looking cool as hell.

Dealing with broken bike chains.

Endlessly running on the wild wheel of life.

It is a bummer to see how higher education has fully assimilated into the corporate model of existence. The people at the top are over paid “idea-people” who could never implement their visions without the talents and labor of their staff. They pay lip service to equity and then are happily rewarded for resigning.

My conservative friends fear that the Universities are creating hordes of radical leftists who are going to destroy America. I can assure you, it is the corporatization of our institutions and the cold profit driven control that comes with it which will be our downfall.

The sculpture above was created by a budding conceptual artist, eleven year old Nicole (who synchronistically goes by Niki). I think of skeletons as sticks, simple tools for doing actions. How are you using your sticks?

Another genius piece in her oeuvre is called “Dog Library,” featuring an expertly curated pile of sticks and a sign instructing the dogs to “take a stick or leave a stick.”

As always, it is the simple pleasures of human expression and playfulness that makes life so beautiful.

See you next week.

-niki

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Newsletter graciously edited by David Pratt