This weekend, I
- went for a run, then a bike, then lifted weights like a fiend.
- haven't had a drink since friday the 13th. Or possibly before.
- told my brother exactly what i think about his life right now. Out of love. Out of hope. Out of faith. Out of necssity.
- spent all of one night (literally, it was until 8:00 am or so) learning, coding php
Oh, ye cares of yesterday, where are ya now?
The mountain is not tame when you cross it.
Nay, the only change is in you.
You have become wilder.
Ye cares of tommorrow, fuck off. I'm going to bed.
some cacophony of avian noises disturbs my perusal of some newfound blogs. [links added below].
what rooster-impressionist has ojai substituded for the standard cock's morning crow?
this sounds like a cross between a tire squealing, a cat in pain, and a stretched out squeaky toy.
On second thought, maybe the neighbor's cat was making off with the neighbors squeaky toy, so he ran it over. Who knows, this is ojai? Who cares, its 6.27 am.
blogging again. actually, been doing more web design than actual blogging today/night...
the morning sky has yet to get bright, so night i suppose is more accurate (like Dylan says, "The night time is the right time...")...
Yes, so i suppose you have noticed the new commenting functions and such. Wonderful.
Just had a far out experience with a buddy of mine, a real musician, who had to be carried into the bed of the truck which was taking him to the airport (in 2.5 hours) after his (did anyone say wild?) bachelor party... I was a designated driver...
So the muse flows on and on...
I suppose I shall leave
this
Wasteland of Bodies
Despair, Debauchery, Bachelor's Celebration Refuse
There is despair, curled up in a ball, in a sleeping bag, on the floor.
It grows cold in here.
But there is life, and where's there's life, there's hope.
And this is a sleeping kind of life, and sleep is a hoping kind of living.
For those who slumber, may awake, and the world may be a bit brighter,
And their wits a bit less dull,
And forgiveness that much closer
And despair still curled up but possibly left behind.
Peace.
There have been some strange coincidences in my life lately. Like my class performance and overall study time have both increased, and my drinking and blogging activities have both been curtailed. Nah, no causal relationship there...
The razor i just shaved with was so dull that i probably should have used steel wool instead, or a butane lighter, or something. My throat looks like i narrowly escaped being de-esophagusized by some roaming carnivorous predator.
On the coming of Springtime
Spring time is coming,
I sensed it three days hence,
Spring time is near,
The birds cackle on the fence.
Newly-weds are smiling,
The vine is green and young,
The winds have blown the winter away,
The new song is being sung.
The wise old winter's sages,
Will come again another year,
But as for youthful hearts a-beating,
The only care's that spring is here.
Middle-of-the-Night-Thought
Out of the Good
Some is Taken,
     More remains.
How can it be depleted?
Post-Game Analysis
It's when you're tired that depression hits.
Sitting in a little room, because, ultimately
It's you alone who have to experience life.
Life is fundamentally lonely, simply because
Your soul is a prisoner.
Others fade away, you remain. Nobody can
Feel your pain except you.
It's when you're tired that depression hits.
Going over the Ojai grade tonight,
The bright full moon shining low above the horizon,
Coming home from climbing, my first day.
New loves awakened, old heartsores ripped asunder
By something as simple as a few chords...
A few quick thoughts about blogging and poetry...
I think blogging (and poetry?) is something that is done,
At least in the literary form, afterwards by definition.
You do something, you think, you move, you act, you go.
Then you go home, drink several pints, black and tans,
A glass or two of beam or jack, and talk about it.
There is something quintessentially human about the
Post-game, locker-room rumble of opinions about that
Last tackle, or that last missed catch, basket, or what have you.
This is where blogging comes in. Poetry is the capture of the
Essence, the motion, the beauty of the moment. Sometimes it is
The capture of the beauty of the moment which is contemplation of a
Previous moment. But poetry is action. Blogging is sorta like the
Post-game analysis. Of life in general. And, properly done, it shouldn't
Detract from the moment one bit, but rather expand on it after the moment,
And expound on Absurdity, Beauty, and Creation-in-general. Which may or may not come to the same thing...
Peace...
The long slow process of dehibilitation that has been my life...
No, I just wanted to say that phrase...
Yeah, so just spent an evening with Stephen Koch, one of the foremost adventurers in our day and age, he is living his dream to snowboard the seven summits, the highest peaks in each continent, climb up them and snowboard down them...
Kinda makes me wonder about my life, about the dreams that i have had and not pursued, the things that i have always wanted to do, but for some stupid, silly reason have blown off. Life is there to be grabbed, to be taken, to be lived to the hilt, to be done.
I am tired of excuses. While men are out scaling the world's highest peaks, i am sitting on my rear, tinkering with some little electronic device.
It is time to stand up, half-drunk and getting sick, to the world's challenge. To life's challenge. It is time to say "I am going to do it." It is time to act. To make life that much more worth living. We need to be doers, we men. We need to get shit done.
So i finished that ol' ISI college guide survey question thingie. Being pressed for time, like the busy student i am, I took the short way out and simply answered "No, I do heroin." to every question. This resulted in some gems like:
3) The campus has strict rules about opposite-sex dorm visitation, drugs, and alcohol. Are these enforced, or are the rules frequently broken?
No. I do heroin.
6) Are student-faculty relationships close?
No. I do heroin.
7) Describe any extracurricular activities that you particularly enjoy.
No. I do heroin.
9) Do you consider the academic workload heavy?
No. I do heroin.
Any mention of drug names, properties, and effects on this website are purely academical, and to be used for the sole purpose of education. The author of this document and this website does not condone the use, possesion, or transfer of any illegal drugs, including but not limited to heroin, mary-wanna, pcp, 'shrooms, acid, or any of the other drugs mentioned by Sublime in Scarlet Begonias. As well as every other drug in existence. We also think that you should always wear your seat belt.
Links Associated with this Post ::
isi_college_guide_heroin.doc
Heroin Sublime Scarlet BegoniasShe is like a mother tree
Arching over me
She pats and rubs my head,
Smiles and grins,
Sees my sins,
- Knows that i am flawed
And loves me anyways
After six days (or is it seven) of flossing, my gums are ceasing to bleed. PErhaps years of chewing tobbaco can be worked off with a simple regimen of inter-toothal stringing. Hmm.
This probably is a waste of time for many of your intellects, but i penned it during seminar. I confess the complete works of e.e. cummings have been hovering over my nocturnal equivocal catharsing sessions for some time now.
[wow, this is really cynical and bitter...sorry]
Semphintnar
Fractibled the forw'rd
foon,
Givered the gast
gable,
Howered the heek
heftpurd,
Ind rubled the
duble dung.
Hech wasst mein
   Semphintnar.
     Fhork.
Snippets from Theology Class, Tuesday, February 3, 2004
We have grown
    Accustomed to each other
Over the years
Time has flown
    She became a mother
We faced fears
Now the lawn is mown
    By the second brother
Old age nears
[Don leaves the classroom, and promptly forgets which one he is in. After looking in 3 or 4, he intuits the right one]
she has
   smelly feet,
things that
   let me
      know
that we
   are not
in heaven
make
   me
      laugh.
Tooth
Tooth
Sits on a counter
Missing -
Rows of
   Crockery
   Soldiers
Stand Aghast
Through
   the hole
   in their
   Ranks
Black
   Chocolate
   Night
Smothers
    Their
    Crystal
    Shine
[PAX]
Of Course You Do, Dude...
Post-Road Trip craze running down coyote (pronounced KYE-oat, two syllables, southern speak, from where they're a threat to...something) in ojai with the car, beer, warm sleeping bag, whiskey, feet.
Morning, car, one nutter-butter left lying forlornly on the dash, the product of some crazed starvation to-hell-with-health-i-need-food moment of weakness at a southern cali gas station.
The theme of this trip was doing everything that we didn't have enough time to do... And we did it all: Santa Cruz, Joko's in Nipomo, San Jose, San Francisco, San Rafael, Fairfax, Doc Watson with David Holt and Richard Watson, Budweiser, G & T's, Two new blogs, Three laptops, Two computer repairs, and 800 miles. And I'm probably leaving many things out, like the travel-belt-notch that is earned from the development of the on-road-liquid-waste-elimination skill...
Oh yes, and burned seats and burned-out immersion heaters, lego animations, and bedrooms completely funkified by unshaved, unshowered, burrito-eating, beer-drinking men.
So there's the weekend in a nutshell. Good times.
Who Is This Marauder?
She has broken through my defenses
And yet, I am a man
Strong, towering marble fences
She floats over the land
Because flowers and summer islands
Render thoughts of blossoms near
Shifting dancers wave their hands;
Time speaks of fruits so near
Wasting not the drops of wine
That linger in my cup
Eating through the bitter rine
Of all i've left to sup
My thoughts turn once again to her
Blogging once again. Crazy times, trips, travels... Up and down the coast of california, company, comradery, and caravans... Time perhaps will provide the reasons which we do not see as yet...
When the cold winds come to find you
Blowing down from the top of the high rise
I'll come and take you back down to Soho
Away from all those mad men's eyes
       - The Pogues, London Girl
1:53 am. The muse, ruthlessly and remorselessly drags me out of bed.
2:03 am. She drops me hanging, naked; tired, teased, taut and uninspired; she is playing with me, flirting, sentences, fragments, comings and goings in my mind, unable to be expressed and lost forever. Or something like that. She leaves me stranded in front of this keyboard.
Yes, naked. Because everything worth doing is worth doing naked. Even snowboarding. Especially blogging.
It was one of those days, today, where, having no ante-meridian duties, and having had plenty of post-reasonable-man's-bedtime activities the last night, make that the last week (or decade, to be still more accurate), it was one of those days where a late morning of beauty sleep was quite in order. Add that to a week of slept-in mornings and you reach tonight's dilemma: a circadian rythmn that is set roughly to the time of the Poly-wonga islands. Wonderful. The body does not lke going to sleep only nine hours after awakening. It wants more like fifteen, which puts me at scheduled sleepy time about three am this night...
I wanted to examine the narcissic side of blogging, make a real investigation into it, for it is something that has been mentioned over and over again in these blogs... these phalanxes of the revolution... and something that does not sit well within my soul, for it would seem to contradict the nobility of the honest blogger... Thus...
The overwhelming urge to "express ourselves."
It is as if the reality is only behind the concept of needing to "express ourselves" the same way that something is and must be within a concept in order for it to be a perversion. Simply naming this draw as the need to "express ourselves" and leaving it there is atrocious. For that meaning ultimately rings hollow - with the hollow ring that deceit and pride lend to any activity they taint.
And thus, i begin to see why calling blogging narcisstic and selfish and prideful irritates me. Not only because i resemble that remark and hate that fact, but because that shows the perversion. And the perversion, falling, as all evil does, as a privation of the good, and what can the good be here but expression of the truth? Thus, I believe that mans need to express himself is only a (rather poor) way of characterizing what he really needs to express - the truth. And, ultimately, perhaps not simple truth, but the ultimate Truth.
How does the fact that what i'm saying is MINE effect this? Certainly men are almost universally attached to their own opinions. Certainly this often times taints their view of what is actually true.
But this seems like the same sense in which people (myself included) defend the artist.
"Oh, but it's what's in his soul."
Yes, but what if his soul sucks? If it's filled with grit and pain and exhaustion, that's one thing (and he sings the blues), but what if it has surpassed being grimy, and is deceitful, despairing, and odious? What if it is not truthful, or true? Does it not then violate some standard of commmon decency, some standard that says "hear no evil" ? It seems like that standard can only be truthfulness.
And the truth does not admit of ownership. One thing is not "my truth." It is simply the truth. The very nature of the true is the universal, that which can be had by all, and that which can be shared withou limit - and yet be undiminished. It applies to all. It is the counter-weight, the anti-greed, the sunshine, the essence of freedom, God's gift to all.
(and it's better naked.)
So every man desires to express truth, and what better truth to express than the truth he knows the best, perhaps that which is in his own soul. And many times, especially in a society that fosters moral relativism, and in a land that practically demands self-deification and self-worship, many times that need gets subverted and robbed of its meaning, and is channeled into a base need to express... what, anything? something, anything but what is true, but definately that which is yours...
Ultimately that which is ours is sin. Everything else belongs to the Truth. Thus, the point of the blog, like other expression, it to express truth, and beauty, and what we can of the good. The Good, the True, the Beautiful. And so it should not matter who says what, but rather that the truth is said, and shared, and known. And though it is encouraging to know that there may well be some truth within you, and manifested through you, it is necessary, proper, and romantic to know that it is not your truth,and that you are but an instrument, striving to conform to the truth, and not to deform yourself in the process. Boast in the Lord.
Thus, the need for expression found in all men is intricately tied in with the need for God. Men must express, but they must express the Truth. Not only do they yearn for God, they also yearn to glorify Him.
[a tired Don goes to bed at 3:0o am]
"As for me, I'm still on the Road, headed for another joint..."
       - Bob Dylan
Ever wonder what sort of joint he was talking about there?
<<< blog entry thu 2004.01.29 1.35 am >>>
Some things you do in the day
Some things you do in the dark
Some things you just can't say
Strange moods, feelings, depressions of many of those around me... Are spritual attacks that widespread? Is a cool change coming? Is the moment being forced to a crisis?
Spent today battling materialism - on a very tangible and personal level: somehow i had accumulated so many clothes (due in part to, A, horror of washing, B, not wanting have to think about them and so acquiring enough to always have around) that i did five loads of laundry for the dirty ones. Five! And there we still plenty of clothes on the rack in the room. So something snapped. Muttering things like "Absurdity, that's all there is too it!" I visciously attacked the clothes. My roommate helped render a number of garments, which we then cast out... It was wonderfully therapeutic...
I am going to attack some stuff soon, and achieve my mastery over it by the utter denial of it.
The clots loosen their hold during my rosary...
For some reason my 4:30 am mind got distracted, so here is the Townes Van Zandt piece i wanted to quote for y'all. Though this may seem sacriledge to you, there are many (I get the feeling they are mostly texans, however) people who would go toe to toe with (people who are perfectly respectable, intelligent, cultured people) you over who the greater singer/songwriter is between Townes and Bob. Believe it or not.
Some one once said (to me), and I think it was my high school english prof, that the poetry of our day and age is really in the musicians... And the poetry worth reading is certainly done by some of these soulful singer/songwriters... Tell me this isn't poetry...
Don't you take it too bad
by Townes Van Zandt
Don't you take it too bad
if you're feelin' unlovin'
if you're feelin unfeelin'
if you're feelin' alone
Don't take it too bad
'Cause it ain't you to blame, babe
Lord, it's just some kind of game made
out of all of this living
that we got left to do
And if you go searchin'
for rhyme or for reason
then you won't have the time
that it take just for talkin'
about the places you've been, babe
about the places you've seen, babe
and how soft the time flies
past your window at night
And we just can't have that, girl
'cause it's a sad, lonesome, cold world
and a man need a woman just to stand by his side
and whisper sweet words in his ears about daydreams
and roses and playthings
and the sweetness of springtime
and the sound of the rain
Its some kind of Zen beauty-appreciation. The real Truth, i believe, lies hidden inside as well.
Another...
To live is to fly
by Townes Van Zandt
Proofread and authorized by Jeanene Van Zandt
Won't say I love you babe
Won't say I need you babe
But, I'm gonna get you babe
And I will not do you wrong
Livin's mostly wastin' time
I waste my share of mine
But it never feels too good
So let's don't take too long
You're soft as glass
And I'm a gentle man
We got the sky to talk about
And the world to lie upon.
Days up and down they come
Like rain on a conga drum
Forget most, remember some
But don't turn none away
Everything is not enough
Nothin' is to much to bear
Where you been is good and gone
All you keep is the gettin' there
To live is to fly
Low and high
So shake the dust off of your wings
And the sleep out of your eyes
It's goodbye to all my friends
It's time to go again
Think on all the poetry
And the pickin' down the line
I'll miss the system here
The bottom's low and the treble's clear
But it don't pay to think to much
On things you leave behind
I may be gone
But it won't be long
I will be a-bringin' back the melody
And the rhythm that I find
We all got holes to fill
Them holes are all that's real
Some fall on you like a storm
Sometimes you dig your own
But choice is yours to make
And time is yours to take
Some dive into the sea
Some toil upon the stone
To live is to fly
Low and high,
So shake the dust off of your wings
And the sleep out of your eyes
So shake the dust off of your wings
And the tears out of your eyes
...and i'll leave you with that for now.
The Sun is Shining.
Slash P. P.
Patty Griffin tells me to "count [my] ribs and say [my] prayers and get to sleep," but i am still up and not so much bloggin, but rather crusing others blogs ... domain registrars... [don't register without talking to me, i should have my reseller papers in soon and be able to cut you an amazing deal...
Maybe its those two point five cups of coffee early this evening (having broken the pure cement addiction to the cruel black oil definitively two years ago and being decidely unused to the stimulant now, however much mate you consume... different buzzes, like different alcohols, affect you differently...hmm...
Whatever it is, the fact that it is nearing five am does not seem to effect me. Maybe it is the fact that tommorrow is St. Thomas Aquinas day, (in the old calendar, i'm pretty sure) and our interestingly-minded school (soon to be alma-mater, hopefully) has pronounced a day of festivities in honor of its namesake, which for me seems to be waking up at about 3 in the afternoon, switching the loads of laundry, and hoping to pick up an extra 12er of corona while vons still has the 9-buck sale... oh, and maybe some seminar...
At this point in the evening
When we are in our boxers
         When sleep looms
And intimacy is a foreign word
"You kiss at me"
A russian's utterance crosses my mind
You, perhaps, do not get the reference,
But manys the man who thought the russians were coming.
"Perhaps, in her own way [insert woman's name here] she consitutes an entire second front."
In the high august style of the Straussian:
Yesssss, Yeesssss, second front, that isssss gooooood....
For the confused, The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming.
Perhaps it would be useful to have a permanent resource established "For the Confused"...
[Don makes the mistake of putting on the headphones again. This immediately precipitates the desire for another beer, and taps once again into the (seemingly) inexhaustible of the late-night blogger, especially one without any responsibilities for the ever-nearer morrow.]
<<<blog entry wed 2004.01.28 4:28 am >>>
Hence, The Blues
Lying on my floor
Between my drunk roommates
(In fact all the roommates i've ever had lie drunk inside this house)
No, that's lie, for though he may be more properly soulmate, though we did share a house , a hut, a hovel [even that last is a stretch] we were roommates in someway, and he is here and not drunk tonight...
I still have some of that budweiser left, which is a blessing and a curse: a blessing in that it means i haven't debauched myself recently, a curse as it is still left on the menu...
Yes so here I lie on the floor of what i generally refer to as "The Pad" typing my blog on an extremely sexy blue glowing keyboard, with incredibly responsive keys... its sooooo beautiful...
Yes, i mentioned network crimping tonight in a disparaging tone. I did not mean that, really. I said, "yes, i'm going to crimp some network cable, cause its not a party, unless...
But i did not mean to trail off there. I did not mean to imply that it is funny that network-cable-crimping must go on at a party. For we have all been there, at those parties, you and i, where, deep in the city of mammon, we have been enticed to attend... I have crimped network cable at those parties... At the parties where you would like to think that the hostess invited you because her sister likes your friend, but where you know the real reason is that she is sleeping alone - and has been since last week, when she broke up with your buddy... And she is not used to sleeping alone, here, in the city of the flesh, Sacramento California. And so, I crimp network cable. Not because it has to be done, but because sticking those damn tiny loopy wires into their little slots after those six gin and tonics and five beers is the only thing keeping your sanity alive and thus your morality and thus saving yourself from the 28 or so steps it would take to be fucking her.
And so, you crimp network cable. And thus, at every party, there must be someone crimping network cable. And this is good, because it preserves the right order of things.
God Bless RJ45!
Rock the House!
So what's with the vaguely depressed post lamenting moral restrictions regarding sexual boundaries? Nothing, it just seems that within the act of denying temptations lies the painful growth of the human soul. The journey to God. The ultimate self-denial. The surrendering of your will to His. This is the foundation of the blues.
For the blues are sung as an act of self pity, but - and here's where the beauty lies - they are not sung without hope. The blues are sung as a comedy, a play upon life, a pun upon death, and a sarcastic mockery of all that evil stands for. Because we know that life is absurd. We know that what temptation promises us is phony. We know that to take it at its word is to embrace a farce, a lie, that to sin is not only to be untruthful, but to rub our untruthfulness in the face of Truth Himself, and that is absurd. It is absolutely ridiculous, one that we would do that at all (being rational, sort of), two that, we doing that, He has the gumption and bravado and honest-to-goodness cojones to forgive us despite our actions! Hence, the blues. We know its wrong and bad for us, yet we choose it anyway; He knows that we know what we do and yet forgives us anyway.
Of course, that does us no good, unless we finally admit that He is right and that we are wrong - for some on the deathbed, for some in between the bridge and the water; for some, never at all, it is sad... But those who sing the blues, THEY know... That self-pity is not such a bad thing ("Weep for yourselves and your children, Do not weep for Me") as long as it (1) is proportional, (2) honest and part of the process ("I would think it strange if, for many, there were not many late nights of weeping..."), and (3) comes to an end. Perhaps above all it must be comical, sung with a certain leer, a lilt, a tone that implies that all our supports have been knocked out, all our allies have forsaken us, and that God has forced our reliance to rest ultimately in Him, and in no other. No person, no material thing, not even ourselves. For some of us, He turns our lives upside down until we reach that state of utter abandon. For some of us, he keeps reducing us to that state because we just don't get it [I hope you get it soon, River-Man, whatever it is in particular that He wants. You are in my prayers.]...
And so the bloggin continues late into the night... The various sleeping roommates and accomplices [sic] are no doubt kept from the deepest levels of sleep by my glaring monitor light, glowing keyboard, muted desk lamp, and perhaps even the faint echos of the tunes just added to augment my blogging experience... Ah, no matter, their dreams will be all the more interesting for being REMed so much tonight...
In order to comply with proper blog fashion, or at least as my sources tell me that the fashion is, i will try to include more general linkage in my pots... er, posts...
man, I think i have a signifcant soft spot in my hard heart for lucinda williams... maybe its that brutally honest gritty geetar of her's...
speaking of the blues earlier and now of lucinda (a name now that will always imply unpleasantry, when mentioned by itself), lucinda williams, it seems a good time to quote some... it seems that for some reason i belive my audience has not been exposed to nearly enough Townes Van Zandt (now this may be a gross misperception, please inform me if it is...
[the paper delivery boy informs me that it is 4:22 am as he throws the paper out on the path and then reverses with that beautiful golf-cart-electric-whir that only a honda can provide, myself knowing well from the experience of the lovely '83 accord, the Blue Charger which my brother and i shared, and that i never really came to grips with his wrecking it and selling what was left to cover the costs of fixing it up...]
Well, nothing to do tommorrow but catch-up on the catch-up stuff itself, try to reassemble some semblence of rationality within the framework of a life whose only stability is its Purpose, whose only life is His life... or so i strive for... only kidding myself when a notion of completion or goal reached crosses my mind... for while there are many stepping stones, the river is not crossed until we die... it really is that long... and hence, the blues. God Bless 'em. I'll bet Jesus could have sung the blues better than anyone, if he had the mind to. Time for bed.
Cheap microwave food
The kind of food that makes you bloated and fat
And dying, forever dying
Alcoholic Mystic rants about dying and wanting to leave a very personal diary in his grave, saying that when he is exhumed and found to be incorrupt that he wants a message there to be broadcast, namely - "I am not a saint, I merely ingested vast quatities of alcohol and preservatives"...
Ahh yes, the blogs of friends and accomplices in arms (see The Revolutionaries) are starting to trickle in... It is, after all, only 1:16 in the morning on this pregnant, midweek night.
And though the three of us are well into our second twelver, and the drunken munchies have exacted their toll on our bodies - and our wallets, providing the "dorm store" with undeserved profits - despite that, the night is still laden with much potential...
And though I fight the nemesis, the curse/blessing that is the gift of sleep, I struggle to blog on...
[And fail...]
<<< Monday, Jan 26th :: Book, Movie, Music Update >>>
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|
God Alone Suffices, Slawomir Biela |
Lagaan |
Bill Monroe Doc Watson Bob Dylan |
So...
Back at school...
Wishing intellectual stimulation, but lacking it...
In half an hour i will go and sit in seminar - unstudied, stinking, starving, hurting, and apathetic.
Locke's system of something will unfold itself in the bickering debacle of the frenzied minds of aspiring philosophers. My thoughts will wander, in and out, for two hours... How will I manage? By taking it one minute at a time...
Starvation
I have starved you
Starved you of what you need
And, finally, I bring you the plate
The feast, the food
And you cannot eat
For you are dead.
Blogging By The Seat Of Your Pants
Are you going to blog on the way down?
having not thought anything about it but, of course
i get in the car, and begin to drive, hear this faint beeping sound... in my head i run through the list of electronic devices in the car... none that i know of make that type of electronic beep... eventually i turn to the backpack which houses the laptop and pull it open. the beeps get louder... i flip open the screen, and the laptop has been sitting there, running down its battery, waiting for me to start, softly calling to me with its friendly beeps...
the 101 north of san fran cruising into the tunnel, through beautiful marin
it's a road you CANNOT fall off of, the tourists, mistakenly creep at 45, the locals know its banked for 95+...
i have figured out what flying by the seat of your pants, flying term WWII fighter pilot talk.
i thought that it just meant flying from instinct, but it actually means using your body's internal gyroscope to guide your vehicle through a course that you have already plotted with your eye... this is unlike normal vehicular operation, which involves directing the vehicle with your eyes along the pre-programmed visual route...
Some people want to steal her heart.
           - Bilt to Spill
I am going to build a non-automated robot arm, for the car, and name it/him Logan Hotfur.
South San Fran, 280, fast freeway...
No one goes slow on the two-eighty, this side of san francisco...
[Don narrowly makes his turn off to the 380, then 101...]
if they wanted to go slow, they would have taken the 101 through the city. Everyone knows where they are going on the 280. Either to San Francisco or away. Out of the many varied Freeway Philosophies (tm), its one of the simplest. Another, simpler one is that of the CA-126... West of Fillmore, please, where it starts again, the veterans memorial highway is unmentionable...
Lover Of God And Nature, Holder-Of-Things-For-Users Robot
The philosophy of the 126 is, "In the sun."
No notion, of destination, direction, departure, deviation, death, degeneration, development, decesion, derivation, or dissension...
Look for the record with me on the cover!
           - Bilt to Spill
40 miles of blogging so far... I wonder if it will get so that i must be driving somwhere in order to blog... Or maybe i'll just have to be "In the Sun."
I need to write down a list of the "misquotes" of the things i heard wrong the first time, and for that reason still hear wrong.
Its actually a feeling in the seat of your pants. It feels like a combination between liquid energy flow and adrenal rush, and it sustains itself for a long time continually...
And it works. Thats all that can be said about it... Maybe some people find it easier to tap into at will than others...
Its that same feeling that i have gotten as a passenger when i felt the car lose traction right beforen it slid (or careened is the better word)...
The car slid
Or careened (is a better word)
And as we flew
No sound was heard
We hid our fifth,
and called a truck,
Huddled and shivered,
Cursed our luck
Prayed for a winch,
Thought thoughts of warm
Our car loving the ditch,
In this record storm.
A lovely [providential ?>>>!] acidental [in the philosophic sense, please!, meaning not from proper cause] speed change spares my bacon from the san jose pork...
When your lane slows down, change it. PUSH. consistently...
Idols [equivocally] : Mandolin - Bill Monroe, Banjo - Bela Fleck, - Doc Watson [why do all these guys play bluegrass?, not meaning it like that, of course...]
Here we go, Remixers - Kruder & Dorfmeister, Electric Guitar - Jerrry Garcia (heck, everything he does, except drug usuage), Drug Usuage - Hunter S. Thompson, "The Chop" - David Grisham (heck, EVERYTHING he does, well, excepting that he should ratify the new covenant as well)
They say that a commercial airliner is only heading on course fewer thanj 10 percent of the time. Heck, i'm doing MUCH better than that [Don knocks on wood, superstitiously - and maybe even sacreligeously]
[pause to attone for his sins]
[passes 4 cops]
Three thoughts from prayer...:
...forgive us our sons, er, sins... thought flash: for some, their sons are their sins, though [chuckle and equivocation]
if i pray for someone and their intentions, and i'm in their intentions, some of my prayerfulness is directed at myself! Wonderful! It's like a spiritual loopback [device]...
I wonder what my ip is on the spiritual network?
(gasp) and what is my subnet mask?!
[cruising cop observes don blogging, and don maintaining a steady 4 over the speed limit, and keeps cruising, bless him]
Is life a progression from a non-routable subnet to a class A?
Are saints routers with rip enabled, contemplatives those with static routes?
Then packets must be prayers, fragmentation diffused thoughts, and i'm way carried away by this crazy analogy!
100 miles from 215k, 512 from the next palindrome.
[Strange Interlude]
I'm rolling all the time.
           - Bill Monroe
just was in some kind of mental cloud, WAY out there some where... Stopped for gas, saw a sign out of the corner of my eye that said :Flick your BIC" andliterally jumped when i saw it, thinking it said something else, namely, something about a four letter anglo saxon word and a female dog belonging to the accosted. I was much taken aback. Perhaps i've been on the road too long... Nah!
I remember really liking where i was, where ever that was...
And it wasn't king city, thats for damnsure. [a whole chain of thougts too non sequiter to relate, or actually too weird-sequiter too relate]
[Don blogs during a high speed pass along some "Historic Route"]
215k.. Doc Watson, interrupting a few hours of Bill Monroe informs me that he has the "lonesome jailhouse blues" (i think Monroe is playing with him). Coffee, Mate, and Red Bull play with me.]
What is the loneliest hour of the night?
She took all the love that a poor boy could give her.
           - Bill Monroe
I wonder if i've ever been to heaven?
Yes, I think that I have...
See Canyon
Next Right
           - Road Sign, No. of Avila Beach Dr.
I was wrong about that upcoming palindrome... It was 600 miles not, 500...
Mattie Rd
Spyglass Dr
           - Road Sign
Perhaps, as a great cosmic joke, our fates are laid out in road signs all over the world. Perhaps that explains my need to travel, merely to read uyp on myself [!absurdity>>>insight!]
[Bill Monroe abruptly gives way to far-out-hefner-space-groove-thing]
[We fly passed Donny's farthest Northern exposure - as a surfer]
[arms ache from massive stimulant intake and over-strenuous typing posture, but good posture, and oh so safe]
Happy Angel Band
Suddenly Don's heart leaps!
Childhod fears of being "bored" in heaven disperse and turn to naught!
We will be making music in heaven!
[And I will be able to sing...]
I think we ought to build checks into our lives - things that (manually or artificially, even) enforce patience and hard work, sweat, things like that. Do not grow soft, or relax for too long.
Fatigue tries to battle its way through the barricade of taurine, cafeine, and mateine... It always does get through, eventually... And if you make the barricade too thick or tough, when it finally breaks through it will have summoned enough force to kill you...
Ricky Scaggs and Bill Monroe do this version of Blue Moon of Kentuckey that has CrazyBass(tm).
Everybody Must Get Stoned is actually called "rainy day women." how beautiful is that!?!!! [very]
AaAazA
warmth creeps throgh mylegs - a post red bull burn... santa barbara, ventura, sulphur mountain road. backwoods califonia redneck territory. Must stop and pick up an 18 pack of high life, or bud.
Listening to Dylan's Blond on Blonde, part way through it for the second time...
It ain't a road trip without Dylan, just like its not a party unless someone is crimping network cable, as i've always said.
[don stops for the afprementioned 18-pack]
Turned out to be bud... I guess the wallet-manager programme is feeling the effects of spurious but perhaps necessary [!] road trips - and the vast quantities of petroleum products consumed upon them....
and there were the three requisite jacked up pickups and 4 wheelers, with engines running, and youthful hicklings sounding of their horns outside the circle k.
the fuzz welcome me baCK to signal street, i turn, and thus this post ends.
Pushing The Envelope
one line that sticks in my mind is the [sage?] advice to do one thing every day that scares you.
[significant pause, for breath and effect]
whether that means you should do something really stupid and dangerous is one question.
whether you should do something that scares the farging crap, white as a sheet, feces everywhere, adrenaline rush so high that the world shakes and shivers below you, and shimmers and blurs away and you ride the pure intoxicating high of life one instant shy of death.
Blogging at 75 miles an hour.
Tea is the intellectual's drink.
           - JMSF
The red glare of the optical mouse sins on the seat as the car magestically sails around a smooth asphalt curve.
You have to love life to lose it... You have to lose life to love it... You caan't love life without being willing to lose it. Life is essentially loss... Specifically, loss of yourself, which is the only thing that you could ever own, and [irony], you can't own it in this life, and when you can, you find you don't want it, and never did.
The keyboard glows blue on the dash, townes sings on the radio [equivocation].
Chuck Yeager was always talking about "Pushing the Envelope."
You go higher faster farther, you taste a glimpse of peace, which only comes by the juxtaposition of yourself against the infinite and understanding that...
The Ocean. Someday, this, too will be explained...
180 miles to San Francisco...
Townes says he isn't coming back.
Codename :: Tiny spoke of the American Haiku... Perhaps my "fragments" fit that image, i don't know... I love the way that mockery and derision of them only shows the depths of the reality represented... The words, trite and corny, carry the trancendental meaning, despite themselves, and the mockery lets the words slide away, and thus only the meaning remains...
Somewhere
Just east of Pismo Beach
I whisper her name
Guy Clark's Dublin Blues make me cry again
I wanna say "I'll bet no one has ever done this before" and be right more times than anyone else.
Is life stretched out before me, or behind me?
We absorb an awful lot. Are humans essentially sponges?
Dripping when squeezed, dried in the heat, shrunken when wrung out, and finally good for nothing, kept under the sink in case someone needs to scrape some dog shit off an old shoe, and then, carefully placed, with much annoyance, disgust and distaste, into a used plastic sandwich baggie, and gingeerly dropped into the outside garbage can and left for the three am, stinking, unshaven, half-baked, rolling, and ploughed disposal service man, who with one more day on the job, doesn't return the lids to any of the 4,291 cans he services on route 12, every tuesday, here in ohio.
[Don mocks a "going out of your mind scream," and bangs his head with his left hand.]
"Give your lover a call," Townes says...
130 miles to San Francisco.
[Townes sings about coacaine. We sweep through them lights of Gonzales together.]
Sometime later the second powerade bottle makes the ultumate sacrifice. Its utility used up, it tries to reconcile its bitter fate with some principle of divine justice. If only my death was not so analagous to my purpose, it moans, sighs, feels sorry, cries, yet does not regret, repent, or relent. I have made my decision, he says. I have now earned - though not through my own strength, or choice - the right to bear that proud red badge of humility.
Cherise squawks a quarter mile from the potter road turn off.
Townes sings of dead-woman-he-loved, he thinks. Boomer-humor rings in my head.
Its not so much the jokes these fellows told, but the fact that they told 'em.
Not meaning the Boomdog, though he might be in that category one day.
Nothing quite like road grime, to cover you and make you smile 295 miles into the journey, hands smell of wiper, you rub your nose, 75% alertness... more tea...
San Francisco greets me in the fog. sixth street, folsom...
Come up swimmingly on taylor and california... cathedral...
San Francisco is my city. I turn on city driving mode...
i have never bothered to learn the layout of the city, a statement only partially true...
i like the excitement of not knowing where you are going, it helps you blend in, because no one in san francisco knows where they are going:
First Guy: Where are you going?
Second Guy: Up!
First Guy: Wow, me too!
And then down down down, first gear, fingers flying on the keyboard, lights, sky scrapers, the bay bridge whiz by...
One windshield wiper flicks the city rain to the side, one wiper just twitches...
Past the embarcadero, my heart knew where it was going the whole time, left on polk...
this is the scenic route, signified by a white bird on a medium size sign...
come to a stop at a red on francisco, taxis screech [?] by... pick up the fare...
we meet the 101 on lombard and take her for all she's worth, one of the busy streets, pulses with the rythmn the heartbeat of the great sinning city...
then a right, and on to the golden gate...
blogging in city traffic...
the last of lombard the bridge, the bay, the city behind, the ocean to the left, bridge all red, assured from my youth that the red is just painted over the gold to protect it...
and marin, on to home, the soul soars, the journey ends, and so does this entry.
otros monos
A Faithful Rebel
Auntie Trish
Bison Survival Blog
Bitterman
Clara
Crash Box
Curmudgeon Emeritus
Da Goddess
Dax Files
destiny saute
Ditch Doc
Dog Snot Diaries
Donde Estan Mis Amigos
Fast Boots
Gretta Gone Global
Immaterial Irrelevance
Jim - PRS
John Silveria
Little Lost Soldier Girl
Mlah
Neanderpundit
Neoteronous
No Nanny State
Not of this World
Pickled in Portland
Pocket Treasures
Rivrdog
Sephora
Straight White Guy
Texas Best Grok
Velociman
Kitty
Post-it Note Conclusions
S2
Commentary:
February 14, 2004, 3:54 pmSS
http://yourcomputergenius.com/eclecticgrafix/failedwriter/blogger/failed.html
I\'ve often wondered what that noise is too.