Last week's field notes was unavoidably skipped due to an impromptu visit to Sydney to make some new friends. I felt the loss of writing quite dearly, although the Sydney trip was worth it.
This week, we're making up for lost time with two items I encountered in Melbourne. The first of which is the tea timer pictured below. As much as I love coffee, I enjoy the quieter, more peaceful rituals of tea. Part of good tea is the steep time, and the cafe I found myself at today has an elegant solution: a 3 piece sandglass timer. They show when the tea hit the hot water; the green sand is 1 minute, the black sand is 3 minutes, and the white sand is 5 minutes. For a beverage treated as an afterthought at most cafes, this was a delightful experience.

The small touch of the tea timer brings me to our next item for the week - Ordinary Abundance. It's so easy to get caught up in everything wrong with the world, and this digital exhibit reminds us that we're living in abundance beyond measure compared to 99% of human history. Music on demand, light whenever we need it, not needing to spend a day cleaning clothes. I enjoyed the reminder to pause and enjoy the comfort beyond measure that modern life provides.

Also filed under the "good news" basket, a Harvard Medical School study found that taxi and ambulance drivers are the least likely to die of Alzheimers. The research has a good write up here. The theory is that the demands of navigating a complex environment such as a city has a protective element for the brain. I was already returning to paper maps, but this is a good excuse to keep going. Despite the mild difficulty in using a paper map, the effort pays off with a warm and fuzzy feeling when you manage to make to your destination. Or, as has happened to me, find something equally interesting while you get lost and work to un-lose yourself.
I'd wager that you could find free tourist maps at your local library (City of Melbourne libraries provide them) - grab one and get a little more lost than usual?

Story Inspiration of the week

Quite by accident last week I was in Middle Footscray - a train had caught fire and my commute was delayed. I abandoned ship to find coffee, and it was on the walk that I spotted the above poster. On its own it makes a great start, but in case you wanted more, here's the beginnings of a story.

• Antagonist: The Arcane Institute - a secret society whose members fill the halls of power. They use their enormous wealth to pull strings in the country, declaring themselves to be "post-government". The source of their wealth is something they call "The Ivory Gate" - a portal to a parallel world. The Gate is only accessible via lucid dreaming, and while anyone can learn the skill, it usually takes months of training at the Institute to successfully pull it off.
• Protagonist: An apprentice working in a print studio (with letterpress machines) begins to experience strange prophetic dreams about the Gate. Something on the other side is reaching out. After mentioning it to a colleague, they are arrested as a collaborator with the Fulcrum, a growing resistance movement fighting against the Institute's influence.
• Location: A country in turmoil - the masses chafe against the tightening strictures of power helmed by the Institute and its lackeys. Revolution is in the air, and the Fulcrum is the preeminent group leading the unrest. The unrest is pushing the country to extremes - secret police, closed courts, and mass arrests are growing in number.

I’m glad you’re here,
Justin

This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0