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It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books — setting out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes. The better way to go about it is to pretend that those books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them. That was Carlyle's procedure in Sartor Resartus, Butler's in The Fair Haven — though those works suffer under the imperfection that they themselves are books, and not a whit less tautological than the others. A more reasonable, more inept, and more lazy man, I have chosen to write notes on imaginary books. Those notes are "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" and "A Survey of the works of Herbert Quain."

— Jorge Luis Borges,
Foreward to Fictions (1944),

Nothing embodies the era of the brand like Nike Town, the company's flagship retail outlets. Each one is a shrine, a place set apart for the faithful, a mausoleum. The Manhattan Nike Town on East Fifty-seventh Street is more than a fancy store fitted with the requisite brushed chrome and blond wood, it is a temple, where the swoosh is worshipped as both art and heroic symbol. The swoosh is equated with Sports at every turn: in reverent glass display cases depicting "The definition of an athlete"; in the inspirational quotes about "Courage," "Honor," "Victory" and "Teamwork" inlaid in the floorboards; and in the building's dedication "to all athletes and their dreams."

I asked a salesperson if there was anything amid the thousands of t-shirts, bathing suits, sports bras or socks that did not have a Nike logo on the outside of the garment. He racked his brain. T-shirts, no. Shoes, no. Track suits? No.

"Why?" he finally asked, sounding a bit hurt. "Is someone allergic to the swoosh?"

Nike, king of the superbrands, is like an inflated Pac-Man, so driven to consume it does so not out of malice but out of jaw-clenching reflex. It is ravenous by nature. It seems fitting that Nike's branding strategy involves an icon that looks like a check mark. Nike is checking off the spaces as it swallows them: superstores? Check. Hockey? Baseball? Soccer? Check. Check. Check. T-shirts? Check. Hats? Check. Underwear? Check. Schools? Bathrooms? Shaved into brush cuts? Check. Check. Check. Since Nike has been the leader in branding clothing, it's not surprising that it has also led the way to the brand's final frontier: the branding of flesh. Not only do dozens of Nike employees have a swoosh tattooed on their calves, but tattoo parlors all over North America report that the swoosh has become their most popular item. Human branding? Check.

Publicity turns consumption into a substitute for democracy. The choice of what one eats (or wears or drives) takes the place of significant political choice. Publicity helps to mask and compensate for all that is undemocratic within society. And it also masks what is happening in the rest of the world.

—excerpt from essay #7,
Ways of Seeing by John Berger

1. Have More Fun Than Anyone Else - Fooling around, finding the good laugh waiting to be discovered. ...Having more fun than anyone else means you always have to work twice as hard at everything for not being serious enough. And you are most likely to be taken less seriously as a result. But trust me on this one: It's always well worth the effort. Nothing refreshes, comforts, and heals like a good time. Nothing exhilarates and sends the soul soaring more than having the best time ever. ...You must know that kind of fun often before you die.

   Four Ways To Have Fun:

   1. Find Fun People. (things to watch for: a good appetite, interesting work, good storytelling, slightly twisted sense of humor, fresh insight, brave choices.)
   2. Don't Think About Yourself Around Other People. (one thing you never want to do before you die is become a rude, boring, selfish, tiresome person)
   3. Be A Fun Person. (a funny person is forever attentive to the present moment and rarely fails to seize its divine opportunity for fun)
   4. If It Looks Like Fun and Doesn't Break the Ten Commandments, Do It.

   Seven More Commandments:
   

   • Don't Work Too Hard.
   • Share.
   • No Hitting or Hurting.
   • Have a real good time.
   • Always Let Conscience Be Your Guide.
   • Forgive and Forget.
   • Let It Be.

2. Get Some Insight - Finding your best self and being that person is the end result of getting some insight. ...If you don't find your best self, others will find many accommodating selves for you, often yielding sad, sometimes disastrous consequences. ...Nothing is worse than dying clueless, so don't mess around. Find and be your best self, now and forever.

        Before you can get some insight, before you can see and hear what's going on within, you will most likely need some kind of peace and quiet in order to hear yourself think. As soon as possible, but most definitely before you die, you must learn to love solitude and make it a part of your everyday life. There's no getting insight without it.

   "The sole cause of our unhappiness is that we do not know how to stay quietly in our room.
   ?Pascal

   "Earth's crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with god -- Those who see take off their shoes. The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries."
   ?E.B. Browning.

3. Get Some Depth - While with insight we find our very best self, with depth we find our very best God. Eventually, wisdom comes, embraces us, and shows us both are really one in the same. ...The only way to get some depth, to get ready to meet your Maker, is to start digging. Go beyond the obvious heart of the matter and try to see the hidden influences at work. ...You can take great comfort now in knowing that after a while, everything that happens to you, everything you dig up, even all the dirt, becomes exceedingly precious and simply divine.

   Seven Things A Good God Will Do:

   • Make You Wait.
   • Calm Fears.
   • Show Next Steps.
   • Make You Laugh or Blink.
   • Get You Through.
   • Keep Life Interesting.
   • Set You Free.
   
   

   Seven Things A Good God Won't Do:

   • Take Pain Away.
   • Kill or Hit.
   • Give Up.
   • Bore You or Waste Your Time.
   • Lie, Cheat, or Steal.
   • Leave You Alone.
   • Whatever You Want.

        Before religion got organized, faith in God meant trusting your intuition, your gut instinct, as divine. It meant always letting conscience be your guide. For believers, the whole world was charged with the grandeur of Gods and all of life was sacred. Those were the good old days. With the universe as temple, the true nonbeliever, much like the true believer, finds as many ways to truth as there are moments in a day, all bearing divine life.

   
   

4. Find a Place to Escape Reality - Some good escapes: read, sleep, exercise...
   

   "There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them."
   ?Sylvia Plath

   
   

5. Write Something at the End of Every Day - It's such good reading material... And it's subtle ability to enhance our consciousness of daily events should never be underestimated. You are far more likely to be attentive to the current events of your day if you know you need to write something about the best and worst of them at night. Writing something at the end of the day is also the only way the habit of doing so can be acquired. ...this is one habit well worth acquiring before you die.

6. Think About Nuns - After all is said and done, I urge you strongly to vow some kind of simple life in order to promote equality; some kind of solitude, possibly celibacy, in order to enrich your love life; and some kind of obedience (or holy disobedience) in order to bring your life together with your heart's desire.

   
   

7. Make Yourself Interesting - The absolute importance of making yourself interesting can never be understated for two big reasons: first, it has everything to do with not wasting your life, and second, it can be done only by you. If your everyday life feels boring, don't blame life, blame yourself. You and only you can make your life interesting.

   Four Ways to Make Yourself Interesting:

   1. Cultivate a Diverse Group of Friends. (...surround yourself with those different from and more interesting than you. All of that interesting energy can really rub off and inspire you, motivate you to become more interesting yourself. Remember, it's our differences that enrich us, delight us, educate us, and keep us alive.)
   2. Work. (Finding your best work is the third of the three biggest finds in your life -- the other two being your best self and God. All three make up your life and cannot survive one apart form the other. Your very best God calls your very best self to your very best work. That's all there is to it. Your best work of art is always what you do with your life, not what life ends up doing with you. And it's the work that often rises from some necessity that always makes us more interesting. ...Just follow the spark of your interest wherever it goes. That's one of the biggest secrets to everlasting life. It's also the singular most interesting thing you can ever do before you die.)
   3. Educate Yourself. (The very minute you lose interest in learning something new every day is the very minute you start becoming ignorant. ...Read. Volunteer. See art and plays. Travel if you can. See the world. Spend time in galleries, museums, and libraries. Take a class. Meditate... Don't die dumb...)
   4. Take Sides. ("Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor never the tormented." - Elie Wiesel, 1986. ...pick your battles carefully. Taking sides on every little thing does nothing but turn you into a royal pain in the neck -- the person everyone loves to hate. Never take sides on the pointless. Take sides only on the important stuff, the stuff that touches your best self... The most intersting, admirable, and enjoyable ones are always those brave enough to take sides. The most boring, deceptive, and sneaky ones usually are those who believe their divinely appointed role in life is to keep the peace.)

8. Live Alone for a While - There are things you need to find out about yourself before you live forever with someone else. You must find and get to know yourself first. It's too hard, sometimes impossible, to do later. Living alone for a while is a saving grace in any relationship as well as one big secret to living happily ever after.

   Best Parts of Living Alone:

   1. Finding peace and quiet.
   2. Hearing voices other than your own.
   3. Finding your very best self.
   4. Find a new life.

   Worst Parts of Living Alone:

   1. It's hard work.
   2. It's more stressful.
   3. It's sometimes lonely.
   4. It's more expensive.
   
   

9. Treat Yourself - When it comes to the care and feeding of your best self, there's no greater way to do both than by treating yourself, being good to yourself, taking care. Treating yourself is one of the first things to learn if you live alone, because if you don't, there's no one else around who will. ...The most important thing treating ourselves does is teach us how to treat others. Rule number one in most religions is always to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

10. Live Like You Have Nothing to Lose - All parts of life gradually become noticably more divine, noticably more fun than ever before. Here too we have one of life's wildest mysteries -- the end and the beginning running into each other over and over again like some kind of eternal life. Which is what these then things aim to do for you before you die: show you how to undo misery and death and live forever.

    

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