winter, and daydreaming

I was reading the Dharma Bums for a while yesterday afternoon...so now, naturally, i'm feeling the urge to simply pack up a rucksack with some clothes, a few books, a journal, and a bottle of wine and get out on the road.  It's pretty much par for the course for me, reading Keourac like that.  Every time I do, there's this feeling that I'm missing so much by being here, passing days in an office thinking about doing rather that actually out being.  It's a frustration at the structure and pace of "modern life", which itself is really just an artificial construct that we use to justify going about life in ways counter to how we'd choose to.

I was just thinking "as though we'd be given that choice anyway", and then got frustrated at myself at thinking that.  It's such a cop-out, the idea that we can't opt out.  Maybe not at any given point; bills, things like that might get in the way.  But it can be done.  It should be done.

Just the other night I was talking about this recurring idea that I've had, something I've been bouncing around in my mind for a long time.  I want to rent a summer cabin for the winter, one of those little places that you have to hike back into in the Sierras that are all boarded up and secured by this time of year.  Take it and spend the winter there, just me, my books, my gear, a bunch of food and firewood and good music.  Watch the fall progress to winter.  Stand outside as the first tentative snowflakes fall in late October, barely making it to the ground before subliminating.  Watch the drifts gather on the lee side of the cabin, shovel the deck, thaw the pipes.  Feel the cabin shake to its foundation as the sodden winter storms come roaring in from the Pacific, over the passes to dump feet upon feet of snow, with their strong, joyous winds that bend and snap even the greatest of pines.  Feel that soft silence of winter night, a lush, full silence after the tempest passes.  Be there again for the sharp, frigid, utterly crisp clear nights, stars brilliant pinpoints in a sky so black that it feels fathomless, making the earth and me seems so insignificant.  All of that, and all that i'll never conceive of until i'm there...that's what I want.  Be it alone, or not.  I need my time alone, cherish and welcome and enjoy it; i don't think i'll ever understand how some people are uncomfortable alone.  That said, there is something to be said by the company of others, to have someone to share an experience like what I'm talking about with.  I think you'd both have to be on the same page with the idea of time together, time apart.  If both could appreciate that, knowing intuitively when to pull together but understand the need for time apart...well, it does seem a nigh impossibility to find that kind of pairing that works like that.  But if it could, what an incomparable added facet to what would be an amazing experience alone.  There's time for experience alone, in it's most raw and unfettered state.  And yet, to share that experience, to see how that experience affects someone other that one's self, can be equally fascinating.  If not, in some cases, more so.

Anyway, enough daydreaming about that for now.  My Stone/Maui Brewing/Ken Schmidt Collaboration beer should be chilling in the cooler at Vendome right now.  Macadamia Nut/Coconut/Kona Coffee Porter.  Seriously, I have no idea how that could be anything short of amazing.  Can't wait to try it, either tonight or tomorrow, and not alone; that's definitely a beer for sharing!

Autour du Rocher...

It's a slow, quiet morning here in the office...just me, my coffee, an old jimmy buffett album, and my keyboard.  Too many days away from this, time to get back in the groove.

Getting out in the water last night left me wanting it more, all over again.  It's that feeling I got at one point over the summer, when i found that my climbing was effectively done for the next 2 months.  The ocean's always been an ephemeral thing to me; our relationship has waxed and waned so many times over the years.  I've gone from full immersion into climbing, then riding, back into climbing, and then in the beginning of this year striking a sort of balance between the two.  Getting back into the water didn't happen until last summer, at least as a more than occasional type thing.  It took having my summer entirely to myself this year to get back in tune with the ocean, to be back out in the water whenever I could.  Body surfing became something that was more than just being at the beach, more than simply flailing around in the surf.  I've become more comfortable in the water again, which has taken nearly ten years.  There are still moments in bigger surf when I'll get freaked out, swimming far outside and waiting for the largest of the set to pass.  It frustrates me when I catch myself doing this, and i'll consciously make myself stay inside and simply duck dive white water just to soothe that part of my brain that's far too active sometimes.  Once I do, i'm usually good for a while, or at least until i get myself sucked over the falls and balled up.  Then it's all over again.  The thing is, it's so worth it to me to keep fighting that discomfort, that latent fear because there's something that's just so enjoyable about being out there in the water.  I can feel it being worn away, little by little; that progress makes all the times i manage to freak myself out all the more worthwhile.  I quite honestly can't wait to get back out and surf again, the more that I think about it.

Watched The Cove last night, and was both summarily depressed by the fact that anything like this sort of wanton killing actually happens, and encouraged by the fact that the actions of the individuals that made the film had a concrete effect on changing that.  The whole models of what used to work as protest have broken down; this is a tangible piece of what modern protest is, and it is encouraging.  There's quite a lot i'm ruminating over from this film...this won't be the last I write on it.

Missed my run this morning.  Damn.  Shifting the whole schedule by a day, which means tomorrow morning I get to run 5 miles, after riding 16 (or maybe 22 if I head up to Sierra Peak) tonight.  Sweet.

my brain just swelled up...

My brain's not done yet today I guess...

This here, I feel like, is the start of something. I'm not sure what yet, but I'm starting in motion some sort of process that's going to allow me to develop my....self, I guess. I've always gotten this feeling that there's something else i need to be doing, something creative, something artistic. I think I've found so much interest in the scientific end of the world that somewhere the creative end of my cord got frayed. I keep pulling at strand and getting pieces, but there's more of it out there. It's an odd feeling sometimes, thinking that I have this well of something, but I don't know quite how to access it yet. It's there, though I don't have a firm definition of what exactly 'it' is, or what it'll do. It's an eye for the way light and figures interact, a way to covey that into words, an interpretation of those ideas into some other tangible form. There will be times that I'll be thinking, considering, writing out straight from my mind without a filter that I'll feel it flexing itself, pushing me. It becomes a palpable swelling in my body, a deep flowing in my ind. A sort of deep...not calm, but almost certainty will settle over me, and I'll just go. It's where the stories that develop the best come from, the ones that ring truest and most honest. They are honest, and driven by something that's at the same time ephemeral. I can't always go to that well, but when I can, I know something special is happening. I don't know If there's other ways for me to tap into those waters, to harness the energy and flow that make those moments. There are times i feel as though i have some sort of dulled blade, and occasionally it's sharpened without my knowing until i draw it across the cloth and the cut is incredibly fine and true. A clouded window, a parting of cloud to reveal the horizon. Something difficult to name, harder to grasp. It's at the same time inspiring and frustrating - i want it to be there all the time, at my disposal. I don't want to have just occasions when i can dip into that well. I guess that comes full circle to the whole point of this writing exercise. To familiarize myself with something of mine that's languished for years, hunting down all the frayed ends of that cord, reweaving it into something accessible when and where i want it.

Phew. That was a mouthful.

Ok, back to work.

back into practice

And away we go...

So it's a kinda blah Friday. Lab results in, reports going out, coffee brewing, fluorescent lights humming away. Nothing really interesting, so to speak, just another one of those days that kinda while the time away while I'm waiting to move on to something else. Of course, that something else is heading out for a ride later, and then off to the Bruery for a pint or three, and then off to the airport. 9:20 arrival, which means if I actually leave from Fullerton at sometime around 9:15 or so i should be able to pull up to the curb just as they're walking out from baggage claim. Or that's the intent anyway...

I need pictures on my walls. I REALLY need pictures on my walls. As it is, I've got a sort of eastern-bloc grey carpeting on the walls in front of me. Why in god's name anyone would think that grey carpeting doesn't contribute to the gradual deadening of creativity, veracity, and general joy in life is beyond me. Grey carpeted cubicle walls. Sigh. So yes, I need pictures. Bright, vibrant, energetic pictures; mountains, big surf, rivers. Pictures to lose myself in during the afternoons that my creativity's been tamped down. I need windows to stare out, just to let my subconscious wander. It's almost tough for me to work on this in the office - I feel like being inside here puts a damper on my writing. Probably why i started doing my writing at Taps before. Sitting there at the bar, away from harsh fluorescent light, buzzing phones and annoying office sounds I could truly let myself flow. That is a habit I'll be slipping back into really quickly. Seems somewhat ironic though, sitting down at the bar and journalling, and then coming back and typing it into my blog. Isn't that what blogs were supposed to supplant in the first place? The best thing of reigniting that habit? The lunchtime pint.

Speaking of annoying office sounds...(rant on)I'm about to strangle our air quality guy. In the past week I've been subjected to everything from unbelievably long, basso profundo belches, to hairball-like hacking, to nose clearing episodes that I'm positive took grey matter along with the green. It's absolutely disgusting, not to mention entirely unprofessional. The fact that he's old and eccentric is no excuse. Ugh.(rant off)

I've got more ideas whinging around in my head right now, writing pieces, stuff like that. Maybe I'll work on some and post them up on here later. Until then, I'm off for more coffee, and a good set of earplugs.

One last thing - I love having a hammock. Best thing ever.

revival...for now

So this didn't really just go dark and dead, lost in the ether like one of those lost website addresses that you find scribbled down on the back of a receipt from 2003 and try to revisit, only to find it's now hawking some sort of kenyan money scheme. I am, in fact, not a Kenyan prince needing assistance to wire 7.5 million dollars to the United States, willing to offer you 500,000 dollars for your assistance in accepting my wired money. In fact, I just got tired of typing, and started journaling again. Now, I'm back to doing this. It may last, it may not, but at least for the moment, there is a flicker of life back in this little corner of the internet.

I realize that before, I made a great effort to discuss all that I was reading, and to weigh in at least somewhat critically about it. We'll see if I can keep that up. There's so much to try and catch up that I've read in the last year...more McCarthy, Bowles, Borges, Marquez, Bolano, Lowry, Nabakov...
I'm going to have to look over my shelves tonight just to come up with a list of the books that I've gone through in what's been a short, yet at times excruciatingly long year. Right now it is yet again a combination of books I'm wading through: The Tree of Man by Patrick White, The Sunset Limited by McCarthy, and a re-reading of The Control of Nature by John McPhee. The last seemed rather pertinent, give the vast likelihood that the exact area that he wrote about on the late 1980's (the areas of Altadena, sierra Madre, and Glendale) are staring down a loaded barrel of landslides this winter following the fires of the last 2 weeks. White is reading slowly, if nothing more that for his style; almost somewhere between the humanness of Steinbeck and the stoicism of McCarthy. Maybe I'll get into Bowles tomorrow.

Anyway, I'm going to try and force myself into making this a habit (again). I need to hone my writing...which I suppose is the whole point here, isn't it?