December 2006 Archives

is even more fun with rock shoes and a rope.

and a tent.

on the same page once again.

love and wine
are as old as the stars
i look at the tiles on the bathroom wall
five floors of hubris above the earth
and smile; this is not real

no more than love
and wine

in my life so far, certain moment stand out as weird, or inspirational, or portentious, or just plain fun.

thursday morning i stayed home waiting for the cable guy. after he left, i had to call the cableco and negotiate my rate: i dont like to pay 60$/mo for internet when i really don't have to. and guess what? i don't have to! anyhow, i struggled with my rate all morning long, and finally moseyed on in to work. before moseying, though, i cleaned off my vanity: scrubbing and re-arranging and tidying and so on, in preparation for the saturday afternoon arrival of 203.

see that bold part? read it again.

my tasks at home finished, i arrived at the office, sat down at my desk, and got to work. i wasn't expecting to get much done, i hadn't gotten in until just before lunchtime.

my lunch mate came by, which was rather quite unusual: he rarely (never?) comes by before lunchtime. he said that he was in the mood, that day, for an especially "meaty" lunch. i said that would not be a problem with me. just then, 203 called me on my cell to tell me about... something. i don't remember what. i signalled to the lunchmate that it was 203; he waved and left. she hung up and i returned my concentration to the Very Important Work Related Email that i was a-typing. type, type, type, i typed.

then, there were hands over my eyes. smallish, feminine hands. strong hands, i discovered, as i tried to remove them. one hand, i was later told, though i remember two. as i struggled to remove them i said something witty like "hey!" and my mind began to move quickly, attempting -- vainly -- to figure out just who in the office had smallish, storng, feminine hands, and would be standing behind me covering my eyes with them. i was drawing a total blank on that one. total. blank.

while i was drawing a total blank on that one (total. blank. (as mentioned)) the hands (hand, really, i've been told) withdrew and i sensed that the owner of the hand had leapt over to my right, which is the direction in which i swiveled my chair in order to see who it was that had snuck up on me while i was so involved in my email composition that i had failed to take advantage of the reflective properties of my monitor.

and then, dear readers, i had a most fascinating experience.

standing there, smiling and me, and looking very, very pleased with herself, was none other than 203. this was thursday morning. if necessary, dear reader, you may scroll back and read the bold texted part of this posting. 203 was not supposed to arrive until saturday afternoon. 203 was supposed to have a final each afternoon on thursday and friday. 203 was supposed to be in arizona at that very moment. i had spoken on the phone to 203 not more than 10 minutes prior, and i was darned sure that she had been in arizona at the time.

and yet, there she was, standing there, all pleased with herself, as previously mentioned. my mind was still paralyzed as i tried to come to grips with the obvious impossibility of the situation.

i failed, but i'm the sort that tries things at least twice before giving up. i tried again. i'm sure i said something insightful, like "wha??" or "whoooo?". this wasn't just a moment of surprise. this was total paralysis of the mind. it wasn't something i'd experienced before, and it's only been a couple of days so it's also not something i've experienced since. the surprise itself, and the month's planning that went into it are blogworthy, i reckon, but even more incredible, to me, was that simple moment when my understanding of the universe was so clearly and fundamentally broken that my mind broke with it, and as i stared at the woman i'm soon to marry, i simply didn't recognize her, because, although the person in front of me damn sure looked like 203, 203 just couldn't possibly have been there.

i had nothing to say to her. i had no hug for her. i had no smile, no welcome, no laughter, all because i really, truly, didn't know who the blistering buggering fuck she was!

the stunned feeling didn't really wear off until sometime yesterday, when i had planned to be with her. as all my little surprises (clean house, bowtie on the door key, new beer, etc.) one by one trembled and shrank before the awesome might of her superior surprise, the reality of the situation set in. i changed the singularity counter -- i had expected a singularity, which, indeed, was why i had chosen the name. i just hadn't expected a mind-paralysis. i hadn't expected the word to be so apt.

another thing i'd expected was for things after the singularity to become clear. i reckoned that once i'd passed the event horizon, i'd see where i was going. that has not been the case.

there have been moments -- when i went to get some beer from the closet and caught sight of a napping 203, f'rinstance -- when i realized deeply in what passes for my soul that things were going to turn out well. but beyond that, i still just don't know.

things they are a-changing, and the singularity counter does not deserve to be removed. it's not a thing for me to pass through, evidently. i'm still in it.

i used to have a special bottle of wine.

back when i was just a lad, an intern in college, i had a friend at my job. he was also my boss, more or less, and a mentor. i learned a lot from him: how to program, how to slack, how to interact with my peers and my actual boss, how to be respectful to my coworkers, and so forth. he also introduced me to port, that most yummy of all fortified wines. when i departed to move up to the bay area, he gave me a nice bottle of vintage port. i kept it with me all these seven long years: it drove up to the bay area with me in the front seat of my car, wrapped carefully in a towel. it hid out, properly laid on its side, in my cupboard in my first apartment, and it rested dustily on its side away far back in the dark recesses of my kitchen in the new(er) apartment. i took it out and prepped it last week.

last night i opened it. poorly, i might add. i got some cork in it (sigh) but i shared it with 203. i don't think my erstwhile mentor commanded me, as picard's brother did in the second episode of the fourth season, to not drink it alone. i don't think he did, but i planned long ago to only open it with someone as special as my only "special" bottle of wine. and so, to welcome her into my life for good, i opened it for 203, who, appropriately enough, has roots in portugal. it was, even corked and inexpertly decanted, the best port i've ever had. but maybe that was just the company.

i've been laughing a lot lateley.

wednesday evening, after i'd hung up with 203, i happened to catch myself in the mirror, smiling. i broke out into laughter, thinking to myself how she'd be with me, soon.

last night, i was dreaming. i woke up a couple of times, but each time i fell back asleep, the dream would resume. 203 and i were together at last, in my dream, but she was on her way out in less than a week. also, we were hiking around in a cave with my 95 year old aunt and someone disrespected her (the aunt) and had to be killed. but the main plotline was 203's impending departure. there was an airport scene and a couple other leaving-related settings.

during one of these 203-leaving-vignettes, i rolled over, awake, and bumped into the real 203. i laughed out loud, not loud enough to wake her, before i went back to sleep.

12/14/06 => 12 + 14 + 06 =>32

well, duh!

my internet went out yesterday morning. i called comcast and they "rolled" a truck (they really enjoy using jargon with customers). i was surprised by the ease with which i got a truck "rolled" for me, though i was concerned that there might be a fee and they wouldn't tell me exactly what conditions would trigger the fee.

well, the guy "rolled" on up to my door but by the time he knocked he'd already fixed the problem.

some comcast mouth breather came by yesterday morning and, checking his records, saw that i wasn't paying for cable *television* and disconnected my cable *internet*. today's tech just plugged the gorram cable back in.

i asked if he'd put a note on it so this wouldn't happen again. he said he had.

sigh.

the ruleage

edited: this guy rules even more than i thought (i hate to link myspace, bleah) : http://www.myspace.com/lassegjertsen

my memory has strong associations with music (see this and its link).

"elation station" by infected mushroom (who else?) is a song that brings many happy memories whenever it sounds. when i drove off from a hike, more often than not, if i wasn't listening to bagpipes, i was listening to elation station, speakers as loud as i dared. as the music soared, on so many of those drives home, on twisty mountain roads, so did my mood. i was happy.

i was sad, a bit, because hearing this song invariably meant that i had just parted ways with to-be-203. but much greater than my sadness was my happiness, that i was fortunate to have been able to spend time with her -- quality time, every minute. ES is the musical expression of the feeling: "it's good to be alive". and that was just what i felt after a long day of sun, sweat, PB, and 203.

now, when i hear the song, i think of those times past, and the happiness i felt, but even more, i feel the song capturing my mood in the present: my hopefulness, my happiness-to-come, the impending elation that is bearing down on me like an unstoppable train.

she's almost here.

.

it's over. my last weekend as a bachelor.

went better than expected.

this morning in the can, i noticed a problem. so i whipped out my caulk and fixed it.

i imagine this will become an increasingly common solution to my life's problems in the near and distant future.

absence has its place in books
and songs and someone else's life
but nearness i shall always crave
with you, who will soon be my wife

last 5/23, i had this to say.

i wonder, do i know what i will have to say 163 days from now, 365 days from then?

i do.

sitting here listening, at random, to a trance classic: robert miles' "children" (dream version). a song that can lift me into the sky and send me back to my college years, or forward to infinite unknown, or, best of all, to right now.

People long for big thrills. Peak experiences. Some people come to Zen expecting that Enlightenment will be the Ultimate Peak Experience. The Mother of All Peak Experiences. But real enlightenment is the most ordinary of the ordinary. Once I had an amazing vision. I saw myself transported through time and space. Millions, no, billions, trillions, Godzillions of years passed. Not figuratively, but literally. Whizzed by. I found myself at the very rim of time and space, a vast giant being composed of the living minds and bodies of every thing that ever was. It was an incredibly moving experience. Exhilarating. I was high for weeks. Finally I told Nishijima Sensei about it . He said it was nonsense. Just my imagination. I can't tell you how that made me feel. Imagination? This was as real an experience as any I've ever had. I just about cried. Later on that day I was eating a tangerine. I noticed how incredibly lovely a thing it was. So delicate. So amazingly orange. So very tasty. So I told Nishijima about that. That experience, he said, was enlightenment.

yesterday as i read through my book on chaos magic, i was beset by a pair of thoughts: first, i was pleased that i have, evidently, reached (at last) a state of familiarity with the subject of esoterica and the occult where i can spot fundamental misunderstandings, especially of crowley. second, in spotting just such a misunderstanding, i gained a deeper understanding of crowley, myself, and what "it" is all about.

magic is often defined as: effecting change in the universe in accordance with one's will.

crowley, in starting his own religion, stated as law: do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

unlce al, being, of course, a big fan of subtlety, did not mean "go crazy you wild kids," and this is the subtlety that i think the author of the current book i'm reading possibly does not grasp, or at least, certainly has not made clear thus far. many books on magic (including, so far, this one) talk about performing magic to accomplish various things: cure sickness, bring money, find love. in essence: to improve one's standing in life.

whether one takes as given that these things are possible through the techniques described, it is definitely the case that when crowley said "do what thou wilt" he had a very specific meaning -- a constraint on "will" that i happen to find inspiring and beautiful, which renders rather ridiculous in my estimation people in funny hats and robes mucking about with crystals and incense to get a job or a lover (though crowley himself, in a wonderful example of his Human capacity for hypocricy, many times did exactly that).

the definition of crowley's "will" also influences the understanding of the "will" in the definition of magic that i gave above. simply put, crowley's will had much more to do with purpose than desire. crowley taught that the aim of a magician should be to discover his True Will, essentialy, what it is that the Universe has in store for the magician; what it is that the Universe wants of him. crowley felt, and founded a religion based on it, that each of us is "here for a reason" and that once we discover that reason, we put ourselves in harmony with the universe, at which point, everyhing that we do to satisfy our True Will becomes the easiest thing to do in the entire Universe. indeed, the Universe "wants" us to accomplish our True Will, and thus, once we have discovered it, the Universe will gladly lend us a hand in git'r'done-ing it.

"do what thou wilt" encourages us to accomplish our individual purpose of existence. it is not a license for rape and pillage, and it never was. likewise, crowley would argue that magic being a tool for effecting change in accordance with ones will applies only to ones True Will. all other magic is, in essence, masturbation, and as the story of onan demonstrates, god does not take kindly to the choking of the chicken.

last night, as i drove up the 101 from mountain view to a nicer place, in the pouring rain, with moonlight and headlight and lamplight illuminating the mist, and music which elevates my soul playing loud as it was needed through my favorite set of speakers, i looked out my passenger-side window at the very large front tire of a very fast moving big rig. i was entranced by the way in which it threw off clouds of mist, providing an ephemeral, delicate dance platform for the ambient light. how such a monster of human ugliness barreling down a rude stretch of crumbling blacktop crowded with my fellow idiots could generate so sublime a host for heavenly beauty, amidst a backdrop of musical beauty and speed. at that moment, i felt something amazing, that i've felt before. i felt as though i was a part of the universe, i felt yoga, and that by my actions i had helped bring myself into alignment with my own True Will (whether i believe in such a thing or not) and thus with the Universe itself, and that by my own, insignificant application of Will, i have helped bring the universe a little bit closer to an ideal state.

a moment of transcendence, it was.

a bit of a self-applied head-job, it was.

seven more days and it all goes away.

seven more days to "enjoy" my "bachelor lifestyle"

seven more days until i must change my bedsheets.

<no words>

my car speakers are bose, which, any audiophile will tell you, is crap. fortunately, i am no audiophile, so i can be happy with them. and i am. "the shen" sounds freakin amazing, but maybe that's just because it's excellent driving music. still, i consider my car stereo to be the benchmark for all my other stereos, mp3 players, etc, and few seem able to match it. go figure.

it's been a lot of months since my last run, but i returned today to my beloved blacktop for about 3 and a half miles. after 5 steps i asked myself, "why did i ever stop doing this?" and then after another 100 steps i answered: "oh yeah, tha'ts why".

i stopped running because i wanted to start squatting and the two interfere. then i started climbing, too, and the knee-wrenching moves that i began to perform 2x/week really didn't mesh with the 2-3x/week knee-poundings i got from running. so i stopped running and my squats and my climbing improved.

next weekend (!!!) 203 is arriving sometime around noon (none too soooon) and i wont have time for a hike. so i decided, wisely, to run next weekend, and (this is the wise part) to give it a trial run (har!) today to get myself re-acclimated so i won't be too dft next week at her arrival. whelp, now i'm acclimated.

it's depressing how quickly i've lost my running stamina. at 3 miles i was thinking, "i've done 10 miles before? bullshit!" breakfast was struggling to come out and say hi, the whole time. after, i was (am!) flushed and tired-ish.

but it does still have the nice effect of being an appetite depressant, a quality i've clearly been lacking since i stopped running and began packing on the jiggly.

i've got opinions, gorram it, and you're gonna ruttin' listen to them!

or else!

steve tells it like it is.

i like steve. i read steve daily.

steve nails it. i talk to folks and tell them that hillary will not be president, and not because she's a woman, but because, unlike her husband, she is a loony.

i railed on her the last time she made a stink about video games. but, just as i said the other day about the model who starved herself to death, steve says about hillary: this is what you've got to think about?

nobody fucking cares about video game ratings even when there isn't something more important to worry about, like, for instance, oh, i dunno, a cop emptying 31 rounds into an unarmed man in a car. and yet this is what senator clinton spends her time prentending to care about.

i mean, nobody expects a politician to really care about something, we all know they're just pretending. but the least they can do -- and what senator clinton fails to do -- is refrain from disturbing our fantasy by pretending to care about things that matter.

like, for example, a real copy emptying 31 real rounds into a real unarmed man in a car, instead of a video game gangster empting 31 video game rounds into a video game cop.

one of these things happened in the real world, where real presidents preside (however poorly) over real countries. the other happened in fantasy land, which is where hillary will continue to preside, poorly.

i've said i was a chaote enough times that i no longer need to link to the previous posts. i finally put my money where my mouth is and bought a book on the subject of chaos magic, to see just exactly how much i fit in.

the intro chapter is, quite strikingly, a recapitulation of this, particularly this:

the mechanism is more important than the system built atop the mechanism.

along the way, much dogma has accumulated on how to prepare
oneself for such experiences (purity laws, taboos, law (e.g. talmud,
shar'ia, etc.)) and how, simply, while we've got your ear, to be nice
to one another.

i've only read a short few pages (it only took 12.5 pages before Eris got mentioned, huzzah!) and whenever books on this subject tend, as this particular book does, and as many do, to conflate their methods with science -- indeed, to claim that their methods are about to replace science, any damn minute now -- i get a little nervous. books of this nature have been claiming such things for at least a hundred years, probably longer, and it still hasn't happened yet. crowley thought that by now we'd all be magickians, leary thought that by now we'd be using LSD to rehabilitate criminals, and everyone thought that by now we'd have flying cars. but none of these things is currently true, yet, and none of these things show any signs of becoming true any time soon.

there are a lot of very, very smart people working magick, or magic, or whatever they choose to call it. some of them even have a firm grasp of high physics and mathematics -- just not me, and not, i reckon, any of the authors who claim that chaos theory or QM or relativity, or basic algebra "prove" their system of magic. i think people that say this science or that "proves" the bible are cranks, and, if i want to be a good skeptic (i do! i do! it's what keeps my fortunes close to me), i must also regard as cranks those whose beliefs amount to the same, even though outwardly they may be less repugnant.

my philosophy, and that of chaos magic, if i understand it right (which i probably don't, i'm still in the intro of my intro book), is that if it works, it works, and why bother mucking around with "why"?

now, this has some weaknesses, which is why it's not really my philosophy even though i just said it is. i tend to be interested in understanding why things work, for the simple reason that if i can grasp the mechanism by which things work, i can leverage my understanding into controlling new, different things. if i understand the mechanism by which food is cooked, i can cook most anything, instead of relying always on martha stewart and rachel ray. if i understand the mechanism by which a rock is climbed, then i can climb rocks besides the ones i have practised. if i understand the mechanism by which cars are driven, i can drive cars of almost any make and model.

similarly, if i understand the mechanism by which a magical talisman or amulet (such as, for example, my SVB) works, i can leverage that understanding to make new magical talismans or amulets (such as, for example, my SVB) without resorting to a book or a tutorial or a class or, god forbid, a guru.

and yet, as alabama 3 so aptly said:

mao tse tung said change must come
change must come
through the barrel of a gun
not through talking and not through waiting
sitting around and contemplating
on the facts
'cuz we know what they are
so let mao tse tung be your guiding star

and so on.

the point: to make use of things we need not necessarily know the mechanism by which they operate. i do not know exactly how it is that i get better at climbing each time i go to the gym or why i get better at running the more i do it (though not if i overdo it!) but i do not need to know the exact reasons to benefit from the effects.

that, of course, is a basic premise of the so-called magical arts, that one need not understand why they work (and thus get caught up in messy theology and dogma) to make use of them. i dont know how my car works, and i use it. i dont know how my phone works, but i benefit from it. if i weren't so lazy, i could benefit from things while investigating their workings, but instead, i am happy just to know how to use them (instead of knowing how they work).

and so, by balancing (ah, balance!) the desire to know how things work so i can make other things work with the desire to get on with things and use what i've got now, i can effect change in accordance with my will. and that, of course, is magic.

and magic devoid of crufty dogma, it seems, is chaos magic, and precisely what i evidently believe in.

get a real job.

this is no "tragedy". "tragedy" is when you're stuck 9 days in a car in freezing snow and ice and set out, desparate and delirious from hypothermia, to get help for your family, then die alone, confused, and frightened while your family is rescued.

starving yourself to death while surrounded by wealth and food because you have no useful skill beyond showing your shrunken, 8 year-old boobs to also-useless "fashion designers" is so far divorced from reality that it would have to jump universes to be able to aspire to "tragedy".

She said her daughter had been trying to help her 
family with the money she made as a model.

no doubt. so what? james kim made a series of bad choices over the span of two weeks and he left his family without a father or a husband.

this woman made a series of bad choices over a series of years (i assume, since, whereas wilderness survival was a new development suddenly thrust undesiredly upon the Kim family, anorexia was a career choice consciously chosen over time by Ms. Reston).

Kim didn't have the luxury of consulting an expert and asking, "is it a good idea to leave my car? is it a good idea to leave the road?" and while, as a result of her constant hypoglycemia, Ms. Reston's brain may have been in a similar state of disorientation to Kim's, she certainly had the means and opportunity to listen to her fucking family and stop slowly killing herself by methods well-known to be deadly. not everybody knows that you don't leave your car when you're stranded, even after 9 days. everybody knows that you shouldn't starve yourself to death. one of these things is a learned skill. the other is an instinct built in to every animal born on this planet.

no, i find it a little hard to get worked up to anything but anger or apathy at the non-tragic anorexic demise of a fashion model, so far divorced from the harsh realities of real survival. ask the living members of the Kim family about survival and tragedy. you want to put food on your family's table? get a job that doesn't involve suicide.

sometimes i really am a good writer.

other times i just ramble.

today the counter slipped down into single digits. i've been verbally grabbing and shaking all my friends, figuratively shouting at them, "don't you get it! nine days! then it's all over!"

i don't think they really hear me, maybe because i'm only figuratively shouting, and maybe because when i "get like that" people tend to tune me out. that's fine. i have other outlets. and inlets, for that matter, though not the greatest.

only nine more days, then it's all over!

but... what, exactly, will be over nine days from now?

once upon a time, in the land of poorly written fiction, i put words down on paper that described my planned post high-school suicide. (did i go through with it? i leave this as an exercise for the reader.) (did my character go through with it? that's an even more pointless and challenging exercise for the reader.) the feeling -- the emotions -- that occupied me at that time in my life are strikingly similar to the ones that occupy me now. it's the reaction to those feelings that differs.

in both cases, the un-known and un-knowable was rapidly approaching. in that case, it was my first time moving out from my parents house. in this case, it is my first time moving in with my girlfriend. whom i will shortly thereafter proceed to wed.

but you see, dear reader, in both cases, i was at a major turning-point in my life. in both cases, i was at the major turning-point in my life, up to that point (though i could argue that events of 9 days from now are actually minor compared to the several other recent turning-points which have led to the impending turning-point. still, i will not foolishly argue that the events of 9 days hence do not represent at least a major turning-point).

(i'm not ready to leave this parenthetical just yet, i guess. it is interesting (to me!) to compare the "majorness" of these two turning-points. in the one, the turning-point is reversible -- i could always cancel my college plans and stay with my parents. the other, while technically reversible, is much less reversible even in theory. i have made a commitment to provide housing which (and please realize, dear reader, just how far into Fairy Land we've traveled at this point), were i to get cold feet (look! the Tooth Fairy!), i could not easily cancel without feeling like a much bigger schmo than a 17 year old scared of leaving home for the first time. in the one case, i made a commitment to an institution. in the other i've made a commitment to a person. in my mind, those are mighty different responsibilities.)

also, more importantly, and to bust out of the parenthetical, i'm a much different person than i was back then.

but then: these are all reactions, not the emotion. back to the "feeling".

i was planning to write in here some place that since i've been experimenting with love, i've become a much more emotional person (since, of course, experimenting with love implies opening up to emotion) and much more likely to sway my course based on whim or other fuzzy indicators. now that i think of it, though, what could be more emotional (not to mention immature) than a snuffing-it response to impending parental separation? no, i dont think i can blame the onset of "weird feelings of impending something-or-another" on love.

but i can still document my feelings to bore all of posterity well into the next millenium.

but first: a little bit of REM that does describe my feeling now, but not then:

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

that's the crux of the feeling, and the crux of the difference. in both cases it was/is the end of the world as i know it. but as i learned in college (ooh, guess that gave away the answer to the suicide question, huh?) shiva's destruction is followed by brahma's creation. the end of the world will bring about the creation of a new world. it happened then, it will happen now.

i'm a lot older now and a little wiser, and i can see brahma coming this time, where last time all i saw was gary oldman's shiva-of-broken-glass from the fifth element.

i will state it plainly: i am older, more capable, and less fearful now than at any time before in my life. i am not afraid of failure, and i am confident that i will encounter none. and so, though i am even less sure of what the move-in will entail than i was sure about what the move-out would entail, i am certain that nothing bad will come of it (though i do anticipate plenty of discomfort).

what's the point of all this? there isn't one. sorry if i led you on. there's no point, just a feeling: a confusing, disorienting, enjoy-it-while-you-can-because-it's-all-going-away-though-not-in-a-bad-way-but-still-it-will-never-be-the-same-but-then-again-what-ever-is feeling.

as if i'm about to move from one dream to another.

and the reason i want to shake people and scream at them is because i want -- emotionally, fuzzily, feeling-without-form -- for them to realize the enormity of i know not what. it is not a little thing for me.

i just don't know what, exactly, "it" is.

enough on that. on to waiting, yes?

single digits. 9 days left, and maybe only 8, now.

for me, this waiting -- even the measly less-than-3-weeks of it that i'm in the middle of right now -- is like being a tube of expired toothpaste. i'm squeezed and squeezed and a lot of crud makes its way out. i suspect it's the trauma of unbelievably good stretches of being together followed immediately, inevitably, and quickly by longer stretches of being apart. i'm not nearly as close to wigging out as i have been in the semi-recent past, but at the same time, i'm having thoughts and emotional responses that are definitely maladaptive.

the solutions to my problems are well known to me -- sadly, they're not always available.

sigh.

it's seven months later, and i was largely correct. but it's been a couple of weeks too long. i found out already what it is that i'm in love with, and the extra three weeks, though they're filled with fabulous gains in the weight room and the climbing gym, good times in front of the boob tube, and plenty-o-scotch, are not necessary for me.

the separation has for me, insofar as i ever really believed that it had one, served its purpose. and now as the end of it draws near, my sad, fragile little mind is crushed, twisted, squeezed, and bruised by all the whiplash it's been subjected to. i could survive on visits indefinitely, i think, as long as i had some immeasurably long (like 6 months, ha ha ha) time to wait for the visits to transform into habitation, but now, when the count is 9, those 9 seem torturously gratutious.

i feel better now.

203: When I think of living with you
203: it is the mundane things
203: Oh, what was that word?
me: ooh
me: i know the one you mean
203: well, anyway
me: dont know what it is tho
203: it is the daily, mundane things that I anticipate
203: like going to the grocery
203: maybe sampling some cheese
203: discussing if we like it
203: then buying some to eat at home
203: or making dinner together

i know just what you (she) mean(s).

just as the hasidic jew attempts to elevate the mundane to the divine by accompanying his every act with prayers to G-d, so too will the mundanities of our lives be elevated beyond their measure by the love and playfulness that will imbue every moment we spend together.

as much as i constantly fantasize about jumping your bones at every possible chance, even more frequently do i think, when doing simple things -- washing dishes, buying cereal, depositing a check -- how much more i will enjoy these simple, quotidian moments when they are not dull and solitary, but invigorated with love and smiles.

i heard a woman on npr this morning. she was a famous performance artist who writes plays and specializes in one-woman shows.

good for her.

the host of the show brought up a point that surprised the artist. since i was lifting at the time i did not hear the startling revelation in its entirely, but based on the artist's response, i think i can reconstruct it:

HOST : (reconstructed) did you know that states like ohio and north dakota have, per capita, greater funding/appreciation for the arts than CA?
GUEST: (not reconstructed) (shocked disbelief) but, but, i've been to CA! i've lived there! i'm so surprised! san francisco! berkeley! los angeles!

this attitude, of course, is why, in many places in the nation, "artists" are looked down upon as effete, useless morons, and californians are looked down upon as "artists".

what this "artist" failed to understand is that CA is a mighty big place encompassing such towns as sacramento, bakersfield, and king city. population-wise, the majority of californians are farmers (i think. i'm too lazy and disinterested in my own point to actually look it up. anyhow, this is in the new category, "angarrrrrgh!!!" which really does not beg for actual facts). the noisiest californians are loud-mouthed small-brained hollywood actors (who occasionally get elected governor/potus) and that's what much of the country thinks of all of us.

now, what the heck was my point?

i think it was this: i'm irritated by people who think the solution to all the worlds problems is to forget that there exist people outside of sfba, and who think we'd all just get along if we watched more plays about lesbians and racial harmony.

in other words: i'm irritated by people that are more sheltered than me (quite an accomplishment, actually) but believe themselves not to be.

looks like perhaps our first draft 12/31/06 plans are crumbling before my eyes.

but you know what it is that i love about the other person in the "our" up there?

i happen to know that i can whip out a perfectly acceptable, easily accomplished fallback plan that is sure to be a hit.

(almost) like walter to the dude, i can always tell my love: fuck it dude, let's go camping.

doing some house cleaning (hah!) i found the following unposted post:

it was the moment i said to myself "stop whining and do
something about it".

now, that's kind of abstract. but i can do better than that. i
remember the "it" that i needed to do something about. the "it" was
that i was fat and i no longer enjoyed being fat. and the "something"
was exercise.

up to that point in my life, there were many hints, and building
blocks, and signposts, and guides, and tools, and even books. i had
all i needed to "do something about it", except the will. the
drive. the maturity.

so one day i got the final building block and everything snapped into
place. i mark the day i did my first home deadlift as the day i grew
up and began the slow transformation into "the new me". i could look
up the date. i have records.

50 lbs of fat and 200lbs of deadlifted iron later, i'm not the same
person. but i'm not finished.

being an adult -- mature -- is not a binary state. it's a measure. a
thing of degree. i am an adult to the extent to which i stop whining
and do something about it. i don't do something about
all my problems. i still whine. i still have some maturing to do.

this weekend <LINKLINKLINK> i woke up on saturday with a horrible sore
throat. it ruined my weekend. i got all congested and thought i had
a cold. maybe i did. maybe it was a flu. maybe it was allergies. i
suspect it was allergies.

i decided on monday to stop whining about my allergies and do
something about them. this reinforced my recent resolution to stop
whining about my general lack of cleanliness and style and do
something about it (hence the <LINKLINKLINK> coffee table and
<LINKLINKLINK> fridge). as a result, i'm on a cleaning spree. a
deep cleaning spree. i'm vacuuming and moving furniture and
cleaning on my hands and knees with a flashlight and a soggy paper
towel. it's killing me. my allergies are so bad from the cleaning
that i can't breathe, even through my paper dust mask.

so what.

fuck it. i'm not going to whine about, i'm doing something about it.

and the simple matter of doing something about it has
revolutionized my attitude. i'm just as sick and allergic as i was on
the weekend. i'm just as unable to breathe or smell things. but this
weekend i was miserable, and down, and depressed. now i've never felt
more positive.

for christmas i will have a nice, clean apartment, for the first time
in a long time.

and i'll be one step closer to the "new" new "new" new "new" mature me.

that there is a better piece of music than "the shen"

and that it is not "meduzz"

and that it is not by beethoven

i will call you a liar.

pants on fire!

for the past N>4 months, the city of <retarded city where i work and used to live before i moved out on account of it's just too retarded> has been doing inconceivably unnecessary road repairs on both of the major routes between my home and my office.

each day, as i descend the final bridge before the perpetually torn-up intersection that marks the home stretch to work, i confront a new, bewildering configuration of orange-cone delimited "lanes". today, as i approached, i noticed that the middle of the intersection was completely torn up, and cars were all entering the right turn lane to go "straight" in a wide berth around the "workers" and their "work". some were actually turning right, but most went straight. i needed to go straight. as i approached the green light, several cars went straight ahead (by which i mean, they made an exaggerated arc through the intersection to avoid getting their cars covered with jackhammer dust). the car immediately in front of me turned right. as i slowed nearly to a stop to safely pass through the intersection, a moustachioed construction worker sauntered lazily from my car's right front quadrant toward the left front, carrying a cone, which he placed directly in front of my car, blocking my progress with the cone and his person. he approached my window and said something.

i rolled down my window, turned off my radio, and asked, "huh?"

"you're in a right turn lane," he told me.

by now the light was red so i had all the time in the world to engage this helpful person in meaningful conversation.

"how am i supposed to go straight?" i asked.

he pointed at the incomprehensibly coned-off section to my left. "there," he said, as he walked off.

i looked back and tried to figure how i could possibly have ended up "there" instead of "here", from which everyone before me had gone straight without incurring the ire of this traffic shaping genius. making a right turn at this point would add an additional 10 minutes to the remaining 1 minute of my journey to work.

as i pondered, failing to make out any path that could have led me to "there", a thought occurred to me:

this is a guy with an orange hat and a molester moustache, not a badge and a copstache. i broke 17 traffic laws just backing out of my parking space this morning. what the fuck do i care about this maroon?

when the light turned green i circumvented the cone and went straight on my merry way. i suspect all the people behind me did the same.

linky

it is said: why strive after the difficult, when what comes easily is so much more likely to be well received and appreciated?

12,800 lbs / bench pressed (approx)
1 / trip to the grocery
2 / disposable razor blades (perhaps)
2 / hours of firefly
2 / loads of laundry
14 / cups of coffee
29 / toothbrush sessions (i hope)
many / glasses of scotch
1 / paycheck
1 / work deadline
2 / barefoot writing sessions (we'll see)
4 / trips to PG
millions / cheesy jokes
a plethora / blog postings
14 / lonely sunrises

it's that time of year, again, when millions of mouth-breathing mental midgets all around the nation suddenly become masters of lashing and knotsmanship; so confident are they in their annually exercised rope skills that they lash trees to the top of their single-seater suburbans and barrel down twisty, dark, single-lane mountain roads spewing and strewing evergreen portions across the pocked concrete, as if they were able to drive capably even without a tenth of a forest loosely and precariously adhered to the top of their double-wide armored grocery transports.

yep, that's the time of year it is.

i am getting back into the swing of things.

i found myself, for a change, back at virtual maps, and my visit brought forth a flood of memories and feelings.

the last time i can remember visiting this site was well over a year ago, when i went searching one friday afternoon (if my habits have not changed) for a map of nisene marks. that saturday morning i would drive happily down the peninsula in my saturn, wielding a printed map that would find great use as i hiked 17 miles with my good pal and my wife-to-be.

that was our second hike together. over the months i would look forward desperately to the weekends, when a friday afternoon/night phone call would precede a saturday morning reunion in some near-by far-off new-to-me place of sun and green and life and joy, to spend as long a day together as we could manage to extract from the trails of the bay area.

when i saw that webpage just minutes ago i was struck by more powerful longing than i've felt in a while. i wished (sorry rictor/veg) that it was 203 that i was meeting tomorrow morning. i hope that a year from now, the excitement of waking up to her smile does not diminish the familiar excitement of finding that same smile waiting for me at the trailhead of some near-by far-off place.

i've been wearing my magnificent new cap all week long, and the habit has bequeathed unto me to a stunning new hair-do: the christopher walkenesque hat-hair look, and it looks great on me.

unfortunately, it evidently can go horribly wrong, as it has today. today i have billowing-fog hat-hair, where apparently a coastal cold front from the back side of my head has driven huge billows of hair inland toward the front of my head.

i'd put my hat back on if i could wear both it and my headphones.

i said i wan't going to have more to say about 11/23/2006, but i'm going back on that. what else would you expect from an atheist-leaning fan of that notorious satan worshipper and dirty homosexual pervert, a. crowley? that's right: nothing but dirty homosexual perverted lies.

so, there they were, now for the honest part.

early on in my visit, 203's dad related a tale of how, just weeks prior, he had approached his local catholic priest and posited this question, paraphrased of course, and likely misremembered:

the jews are brainwashed into believing that jesus is not the messiah, as are the ay-rabs. why aren't we, who consider jesus to be our savior, also considered brainwashed?

now, i know he said it very differently than that, but that was the thrust. the priest, spinelessly answered something along the lines of "i don't know," rather than "because we're right".

i should have pursued the topic with the man, but at that point i'd only known him half a day or so and wasn't ready for that sort of conversation. i write this because upon reading my post of yesterday, 203 wondered why i didn't reference this subject. i told her that the idea of "brainwashing" was a latent subtext in my post, which, unlike my filthy stinking liarage about not posting about 11/23 again, was the truth.

his confrontational question is a fascinating one and reveals perhaps that he's come to similar conclusions as i have. i do not consider "all religions equal", as a pragmatist, i believe in doing what works. for him, evidently, the big C is working. his question indicates that to some (unknown by me) extent, he sees through the hand waving to what's going on beneath. any modern programming language can be made to do any modern programming task. similarly, and modern religion (huh, there's a funny) can be made to do any modern religious task. if you've been a practicing java programmer for 10 years, or a practising Catholic for 70, and your programming language and religion are getting the job done for you, why switch now, even if you can see the wool over your eyes?

the answer, of course, has to do with using the right tool for the job. but just as with programming languages, so with religion: while there may be a better tool for the job, you're faced with a deadline and learning a new tool may take more time than you've got, or at least, more time than is worth the incremental gain in efficiency offered by the new tool.

imho, someone who can realize that his way of thinking is a result, to some extent, of brainwashing is light years ahead of the majority of the human species.

how many young people die for their version of dogmatic theism (or any other dogma of choice) without having the chance to consider that other dogmatic theisms may be just as personally compelling, and therefore, just as (in)valid?

we actually discussed brainwashing at least one other time during TG, in regards to new rules in army boot camp (where sister #2's son #2 works). in the past, recruits were not allowed to use the phone during basic. now, they can. sister #2's son #2 wondered aloud, jokingly, how recruits could be expected to receive proper brainwashing if they could call outside. i pointed out that it was no joking matter: the first and most basic technique of brainwashing is isolation (see "V for Vendetta" for a superb illustration). the open culture in much of america these days makes difficult the successful religious brainwashing, because children come into contact with other children of different persuasions (where this is not the case, the homogenous adherence to a particular dogma is apparent and self-reinforcing). but how much better a chance a young person growing up in even a place like Waynesville, MO has of escaping (or choosing not to escape) the brainwashing of his community than a young person growing up in Gaza!

but even the young person of Gaza has a decent fighting chance these days (perhaps a better chance than someone growing up in Waynesville -- I may have it backward), being in close proximity to jews, christians, and atheists -- so long as they're not shooting at him and his family. religious brainwashing is not the only or most necessary form. hatred can be just as effective, if not more effective, than dogmatic theistic mind control.

exposure to the big bad world out there is the most effective counter (after imagination) to the various brainwashings that we all labour through.

clearly, 203's dad has made it well beyond the stage of "young person", and, if his story was accurately relayed, has also made it to a point of (again, imho) wisdom far greater than the priest he talked to, the priest who had no answer to why his own religion was better than islam or judaism, but (presumably) remained a priest. exposure to the big bad world out there is not something that 203's parents lack.

203 worried that i might think her folks were "simple country folk", which i knew was nonsense before i met them. at the time 203's dad told us this story, i thought it just an example of how he is a joker with his head screwed on right (later re-verified by his thanksgiving "grace"). now, a little analysis later, i realize that it also indicates that we're closer than might be guessed in our understandings of how the world turns. and that, as i knew going in, her folks are no slouches intellectually.

which is why we got along so well, no doubt.