{"id":5995,"date":"2013-02-11T11:17:14","date_gmt":"2013-02-11T19:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/?p=5995"},"modified":"2013-02-11T13:14:16","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T21:14:16","slug":"another-blank-slate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/2013\/02\/11\/another-blank-slate\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Blank Slate"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/h6>\n

Last week I finished my comments on Ecclesiastes. That corresponded coincidentally with our packing up and heading again for a working hiatus in Oregon. After that we spent a day loading the van with all manner of art-making equipment . . . which in Anne’s case also means a heavy hand press, and in my case, many large canvases. Such as this limits our forays to road travel, as opposed to air, at least so far.<\/p>\n

Once again we’ve come to Toledo, Oregon, a mill town just up the river from coastal Newport. Specifically, we’re in a restored and converted Justice of the Peace<\/em> building of two floors, one room each. The lower is for “living” and the upper for “working” (though I continually get those two terms mixed up). Suffice to say the upstairs is studio space, the downstairs for sleeping, showering, eating, reading, writing, thinking, conversing, watching an evening movie and any pacing around wondering what to do.<\/p>\n

This whole time is another blank slate.<\/p>\n

On the way north we traveled the soulful 101 highway (well, not quite as soulful as the slow, coast-hugging Highway 1, but far more than the faster Freeway 5). We made stops. We overnighted in Palo Alto, visiting son Hyatt Jr. and family. He’ll finish his Stanford PhD this spring and is looking into working at Google. They’re pretty selective so there are no guarantees. It would mean his leaving sleep studies. Too bad, because he could apply those to me, but that’s another topic. One of the reasons he’s intrigued with Google is their policy of allotting 20 percent of the time of each employee to work on their own ideas.<\/p>\n

It’s the kind of innovation that continues to catapult that organization into the unknown beyond.<\/p>\n

And it’s reminiscent of what I just read about the 3M<\/em> company, makers of Post-its and Scotch Tape and a thousand or so other products. Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing<\/em> started out mining, but when that proved unproductive, they set their employees free to think up other ideas that might work. Now here they are, established with a century of succeeding and still innovating.<\/p>\n

It’s all tribute to time for the human mind to go where it will.<\/p>\n

And here we are again, at the beginning of three weeks of not 20 percent but more like 80 percent to do what we will.<\/p>\n

And no clear ideas.<\/p>\n

But, as Anne read to me just this morning out of a book on memory,* everything we think, interpret, remember and do is based on something else we’ve already thought, interpreted, remembered and done. So there’s always a fertile field. Though the destination is unknown, the starting place is always “from here.”<\/p>\n

All this is to say that from here I can’t tell where this Blank Slate<\/em> blog is going to go. Nor what the blank canvases are going to look like. I expect Anne (though already in the studio upstairs) is in the same boat. That boat is called, “State of Mind.”<\/p>\n

All that is clear is where it has been; where it will go remains to be seen.<\/p>\n

It’s good to have a few friends along for reporting back. Somehow talking about it helps clarify. So come along, and feel free to comment.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

_______________
\n* \u00a0 Moonwalking with Einstein, The Art and Science of Remembering Everything<\/em>, Joshua Foer
\n** To see this same Oregon retreat we took last year, see Holy Toledo<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here we are again, where we’ve been before . . . the place is the same, the time is different. It’s like every morning . . . another blank slate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5995"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5995"}],"version-history":[{"count":38,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6033,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5995\/revisions\/6033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyattmoore.com\/blank-slate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}