Statistical Diaries for the Year 2000
March 08 : on line
March 13 : added Consumption Page
March 16 : added Cause & Effect Page
The Year 2000 was a 3.318
[The following was written on December 5, 2000 in preparation for this website. The corrections made on February 24, 2001 are in brackets.]
I did not make a list of all the
conversations I've had. Only now during the last month of the
year 2000 do I think about it. And that's partly because, on
December 5, I was thinking about, as I usually do nearing the end
of the day, what was the most important thing I learned that day.
The front runners were:
1. RZ ended up running around all last weekend.
2. CP's crush remains so.
3. SP's film, Ceaser's Park, has some hearthbreaking portraits.
4. SP's film cost at least $27,000.
What was the thing that impacted my life the most?
Over a vegetarian Tombstone pizza, I thought this. And then I
thought of the nature of the majority of my entries in the
"I Learn Something New Every Single Day" multimedia
project. I remembered a criticism friend, MS, rendered a week
previous to this writing: A lot of the "things" I've
learned were either gossipy or bizarre facts. While she did say
that she "liked" the on-going project, she did question
"what do the things I [Renato] choose to put down say about
me [Renato]?"
She went on to talk about love and one's relation to it. I gave
her my stock answer to this type of criticism:
"I do not know when I had formed the values to which my life
is governed. When did I find out I was ardently against
capital-punishment? When did I realize that racism was bad?"
To which MS replied, "Yeah, sure but what of the person who
constantly thinks of these things?" Things meaning
"love and human relations."
Thus a person must exist that constantly thinks of the big
questions. What is love? What am I doing here? Who am I? Where am
I going?
I am not currently that person, but on December 5th, I listed as
the most important thing I learned that day as "the
conversation I had with BB about success is the most influential
conversation I've had all year." BB and I were in an a party
that my friend, AD, had invited us to. We were in Chicago. After
spending almost a week in BB's profound and mundane and easy
company, he was to board an Amtrak tomorrow morning to continue
on his film tour. Next stop: Montreal by way of Toronto.
BB was bemoaning his current lot in life. "Is this it?"
he said, in regards to his DIY film tour, which would see him
back in Lubbock, Texas for the holidays. It was difficult for me
to hear him say this, although I had quickly become used to his
infectious pessimism. I told him, "You are successful."
This was easy for me to say to him, a filmmaker who's won at Ann
Arbor, who's been screened at many major festivals, who will have
no problem finding a job teaching what he does.
But by the end of the conversation, I found it easy to say the
same to myself: I am successful. [Somehow we had debunked, for a
moment, the idea of what being successful means. We had unfettered
ourselves from ideas so unrelenting, so ingrained, that it is an easy
task to shackle outselves up again.
]
Without a bit of irony, I commemorate this year's Statistical
Diaries not with last year's Neal Stephenson-esque "Digital
Vulgarity", but with these statements:
1. I rent, I am successful.
2. I owe at least $7,000 in loans, I am successful.
3. I am single, I am successful.
Enjoy the diaries!
note: these pages were designed with a monitor resolution of 1024 x 768. as such, other resolutions may obscure the wonderful layout.
