Day Nine : Standing Stones
Akron, Ohio
Clearly, this is an aura alignment device. Note the placement of the cuts in the stone; note the their spacing, then note how they match to positions of the chakras on the human spine. Note the path, leading between them, as if the artist intended that a person should walk with solumn thoughts down the run between the stones, fellow seekers lining the way in white robes holding lit candles.
Or, maybe it’s just a funny rock.
Or both.
Day Eight : Choices
Willoughby, Ohio
Long ago, men would cast their runes and consult the Norns before undertaking any major task. The runes would speak to them, guide them, give them cryptic hints as to what was to come.
Often, the Norns would lie, or at least, not tell the whole truth.
How interesting it would be for each of us to carry Action Dice, like the ones pictured above, to determine what we should attempt to accomplish that day. Would the choices we made be any better or worse than the choices we make on our own?
Day Seven : Full of Stars
Medina, Ohio
I get my coffee from a little custom roastery in the town of Autumn Falls, Ohio. My old friend from high school, Aloysius (Lush, as in, “You drink too much, you lush.”) Washington owns the place. He set it up back in 1995, before Starbucks came to Cleveland. He was the first of us to discover good coffee; I think when his parents split his Mom wound up in Seattle. he would spend the summers there with her, drinking up custom roasts and staying up late in coffeehouses while the rest of us were smuggling beers into the Metroparks.
“Any cup of coffee will wake your body,” Lush would intone, “but the great roasts wake your very soul.”
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Day Six : Red. vs. Blue
Medina, Ohio
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” –Theodore Roosevelt
Day Five : Vision
Medina, Ohio
“Vision without action is a dream.
Action without vision is simply passing the time.
Action with Vision is making a positive difference.”
— Joel Barker
Christopher T. Miller is writer and technologist. He is one of the co-founders of Podiobooks.com and is the Editor-in-Chief of The Secret Lair. He has not yet been eaten by a grue.
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