Joanna Chlasta

Recently I read this interesting article about the “American Stonehenge”. Apart from being a great, and considering today’s press, surprisingly informative article, it made me think about how we treat the monuments from the old days… Well obviously I mean civilized people, that do not trash and destroy something because it’s from this or that religion.

We kind of subconsciously assign more value to it as opposed to modern pieces. In a way the less we know about a structure, the more mysterious it is and the wilder the theories that surround it. I look at things today and am amazed at things like the pyramids. But then again is it maybe that I am assigning knowledge available to few people to a whole society? Just because modern day humans have the technology that can build structures even greater than the pyramids or Stonehenge, it does not mean a random person in the street could build as much as a simple watch or a car… In similar sense it was probably just very select few who had the skills and knowledge to orchestrate such a great undertaking.

Also at first I was taken aback with the negative attitude of some of the people. Doesn’t matter what the intention is of the builders, it’s not like they are putting some nuclear weapon out there. But when I thought about it for a longer while I remembered something.

My home town Gniezno is located near a bigger city called Poznan, and there near the town centre one can find the Castle. For many years it looked like any castle. The stereotypical grayish-green walls looking old and gloomy. That’s how old castles look, at least all that I have seen up till then, that’s how they looked in the stories etc…

Until one day I went to Poznan and they were in the process of restoring the Castle and a part of it was cleaning the walls - washing of all the dirt and stuff that has accumulated over the centuries. I was in fact lucky enough to get there when the process was half-way done, which meant you could see half of the wall clean and half  with the dirt still on. Not to drag it out much more the restored stones were of a nearly light sandy colour, not really something you associate with old castles.

But the point of this is that it made me realize that when the Castle was built it in a way looked completely differently. And in similar way we will never know whether there were the equivalents of graffiti painters trashing monuments like Stonehenge or commoners whining about what a waste of money the pyramids are. Probably not to the degree that democracy allows us today to voice our opinions, however still the perception at the time of their building might have been just as controversial as of our modern attempts at great architecture.

One day while looking for shoes in Camden (where else would you go looking for fancy shoes, when you prefer a Not So GirlyAvoid Heels Style…) in London we were browsing through several stores and goofing around a bit. In one of the shops I happened to find an advert for the “Anti Shoe”.

It obviously sounds like a very bizarre idea in a shoe store. It was a very small shelf under the brand MBT with just a few designs available. Being a very curious creature I just had to try them on to see for myself what is so special about them.

At this point I probably should mention that this wouldn’t be the first “Anti Shoe” I have heard of. I’ve read before about different initiatives trying to aid our poor spines and feet in different ways. One of which was extremely thin soles which encourage walking barefoot-like. This came with a whole lot of theories about the superiority of toes first walking… Though this is a topic for another day.

Back to the MBT shoes then. The feeling was definitely strange. A bit like if someone had put a tennis ball in the middle  of your shoe and asked you to go for a walk… Though even despite the odd impression, they did make you “roll forward” with a certain lightness.

However I did not buy them back then. Firstly I don’t trust things like that without doing some extra research on customer satisfaction… Secondly the price tag doubled my caution.  When a product is expensive and pretends to be some sort of genius invention there is high risk of charging for some gimmick and or brand name, rather than providing actual, long term value.

Surprisingly I found glowing reviews online. Not only that but it proved to be a medical product claiming to relieve spinal problems, and give your whole leg, as well as your behind an extra workout just be the share fact of walking. Well, who could resist that?

After much deliberation (and a few long trips with my soles ending in blisters…) I thought maybe I should give them a try. This is where I hit a slight retail problem. I was told that because they are classified as a medical product, you cannot buy them online and only certain stores sell them. And even when you find the few stores, they do not stock the whole range (which is not huge to start with).

The problem here was aesthetics… Most of the designs are quite sporty, and I like only two, or three at most. Every store we went to they didn’t have the one I liked, or if they did, it wasn’t in my size. Very frustrating indeed. When I almost gave up hope, I actually got what I was looking for at the last store we had on our list to check. Hurray!

After a whole day of walking from store to store, I was keen to give my new shoes a spin and see if they actually sooth the creeping in sole pain. And they did! What I did not realize was that the “leg workout” tag line was no joke. That day I definitely said hello to some leg muscles I didn’t quite know I had…

The first week in the new shoes seemed an odd trade. I have exchanged the sole pain for pains along the back of my legs. But hey, at least it made me feel like I really am getting a workout. Not to mention the funky “ball rolling” feeling that came with the shoes. In a way you could compare it to climbing stairs, or constantly doing toes - heels, heels - toes while walking.

After a while I must say that the purchase was definitely worth it and I’m considering getting another pair - sandals this time for the coming summer. My feet seem to have gotten used to the funny feeling though, as if the “ball” has gradually disappeared. Maybe I just got used to walking in them.

While on Easter holiday at my parents home we have been going out for daily walks. Living in the countryside has the definite benefit of enjoying some rare sights. Just to mark to really nice encounters - a couple of storks and a pack of young deer I’m giving away two photos - wallpapers. You can use these as you please.

The sky and the stork

The sky and the stork - 1024×768

The sky and the stork - 1200×960

The sky and the stork - 1600×1200

The photo is slightly enhanced to bring out the colours, as it turns out trying to shoot a flighing bird, especially from a far is quite tricky… We met this stork couple in one of the nearby nests and as I have a few more shots of the two I will posting more details about them soon.

Deer in Black & White

Deer in b&w - 1024×768

Deer in b&w - 1280×960

Deer in b&w - 1600×1200

While chasing the stork we spotted this pack of deer up at the very edge of the hill. Really fun to watch!

I’m a perfectionist, with a very short attention span. This unfortunate combination coupled with easy excitement about new ideas/projects can cause a lot of trouble.

When doing any writing or painting I practically fear that first word or the first line. I might have a concept ready, but trying to avoid disappointing myself I tend to ponder a lot before I actually get down to it. With drawings there is often a ready image inside my head, which the perfectionist in me craves to output 1:1. Unfortunately lacking in drawing and painting skills everything after the first line, the very first dot put on paper takes me further and further from that mental ideal of the image…

Does that stop me from doodling and sketching? No. But it does make starting on a piece really hard, as I have to convince myself over and over again, that it is OK to not be perfect. To tell myself that each of those unfortunature caricatures of the mental images actually does improve my overall skills making me that one step closer to the ideal drawing.

Similarly with writing. You have an idea, maybe you have even done some background work for your masterpiece. And yet still getting over that first sentence seems like mission impossible. What if it is not good enough, not enticing enough, not interesting enough. It’s your chance to capture the reader, and you just might blow it.

This is where I need to remind myself that this will just be the first draft, that there is room and time for editing. It might be due to the fact that during school years I always wrote my essays straight away. No drafts, no rewrites. Time start, go, no second chances. I would only go over checking the spelling and punctuation before handing my work over to the teacher.  In many ways this was not some writing heroism. It was a practical solution in the war against total rewrites. I knew myself enough, to be aware that were I to allow myself for more than one or two word corrections I would have never finished.

This leads me to the other part of this post. The finish line - dreaded even more by my inner perfectionist than the beginnings…

Once I start a project and get into it, working on it seems to just roll by itself. Excited by the work and new challenges it provides I plough ahead like a madman. That is until it’s about finished. Around the 80% mark it starts to look like plummeting into a black hole. The closer you get the slower you seem to be progressing towards your goal.

And what actually is this mirage of a finish line? For a long while I had to have projects literally taken away from me by force, as they would never be good enough, and there always was something to tweak or fix. It probably took me about 5 years of work in web development to accept the fact that there is no such thing as a bug free, 100% finished application. There will always be issues, there will always be enhancements and new features requested by the client.

Paradoxically this knowledge combined with the inner need to make things perfect, as well as my hate for testing (I really do suck at it…) means that the closer to the end of the project, I find myself less and less interested in it. This is usually when I get my Next-Great-Idea… At least at worked I have deadlines that push my work forward, but at home it is a whole different story. Suddenly even doing the washing, hovering or cleaning the windows seems more appealing…

So how do you stay motivated up to the last minute?

I heard about the Moleskine notebooks years ago. I stumbled upon them while looking for programs for my tablet pc for taking notes while at university. The software choice was not huge and trying to find some templates I kept ending up on pages selling notebooks like Moleskine or similar single page templates for custom binders.

Back then I looked at it and wondered to myself, why the hell would I pay extra for this not-even-so-fancy notebook? Every now and again I used to keep diaries, and just wrote my thoughts down in simple little notebooks kids use in primary school. Paper is paper, I thought.

And then recently I got one for my birthday… Oh how wrong was I. There really is something special about these notebooks. The texture of the leathery cover - hard but flexible, and the smooth papyrus feel of the inside sheets have something inspiring about them. The tactile experience does in a way help me feel creative.

It really is not the same as typing away or even writing on your usual paper. The thin, soft pages with there yellowish tint do make you feel like an old-school artists doing your sketches or taking notes. The story goes that these notebooks were used by some famous names like: “Van Gogh, Chatwin, Hemingway, Matisse and Céline”, to quote the official website.

There are two extra features a Moleskine notebook comes with - a little string for bookmarking and, at least in my version, a pocket at the back. It’s a great way to put away small things like business cards or other little scraps you need saved quickly for later and/or kept together with your notebook.

Finally this leads to a quick mention of the Moleskine variety. The notebooks come in many styles, the flexible cover being just one of many options. Also the inside pages can be be blank, ruled or squared, just to mention some of the types.

Maybe just having one makes you a snob that tries to give them more meaning than they have. But maybe they really are a great experience for any kind of notetaking. I definitely prefer to think it is the later.