1,000 steps to nowhere

Goddamn lonely love

2011-09-15T23:39:00.000-07:00

Nevermind.

the bottom

2011-05-10T10:41:00.000-07:00

This is it. I've hit the null point.

I'm a complete, utter wreck. I'm a drunk. I don't appreciate the people that love me, that care about my well being, that care enough to tell me that they are concerned. I have no ambition, can't pull myself out of a shitty work situation to find something better.

Everything that I do feels empty, hollow, fake. It's as though all I do is do things so I can tell other people about what I did. Nothing seems to have any meaning to me.

I'm a liar, a cheater, a fraud. I have hurt people that love me, people that have given me chance upon chance upon chance to prove that i might actually be a better person that i actually am.

I have nothing left. It's a very hard thing to come to understand that I really am as bad of a person as has been said in anger.

Priorities

2011-01-13T16:12:00.001-08:00

To do:

1. Sleep.
2. Regain my sanity
3. Focus on 1 and 2 for a while.

There is no answer

2011-01-13T13:21:00.000-08:00

Blood Meridians's Epilogue:

In the dawn there is a man progressing over the plain by means of holes which he is making in the ground. He uses an implement with two handles and he chucks it into the hole and he enkindles the stone in the hole with his steel hole by hole striking the fire out of the rock which God has put there. On the plain behind him are the wanderers in search of bones and those who do not search and they move haltingly in the light like mechanisms whose movements are monitored with escapement and pallet so that they appear restrained by a prudence or reflectiveness which has no inner reality and they cross in their progress one by one that track of holes that runs to the rim of the visible ground and which seems less the pursuit of some continuance than the verification of a principle, a validation of sequence and causality as if each round and perfect hole owed its existence to the one before it there on that prairie upon which are the bones and the gatherers of bones and those who do not gather. He strikes fire in the hole and draws out his steel. Then they all move on again.

In the end, it all means nothing anyway. The answer is that there is no answer.

a fighting chance

2011-01-09T02:03:00.000-08:00

I just feel absolutely gutted.

If you would just day you love me, and that you think we can do this, I would move mountains for you.

My love is there. It's here, right now, this palpable thing that you rejected, and that I want to give back to you. It doesn't belong to me; it's yours.

futility, or maybe not

2011-01-08T22:02:00.000-08:00

I don't care what anyone says...I'm going to fight this to the bitter end. I think I'm right, and I'd hate myself if I ever thought that I gave up before exhausting everything I had to give.

I love her. What else can I do? That's love, I guess. I'll put every single aspect of myself out there, and then I'll still keep trying. Because I love her, and I could never live with not giving more than I even knew I had to try and save this. It might kill me, might tear my soul out by the roots. At least I'll know that I did all I could, and then some.

For love.

Lost

2011-01-08T07:13:00.000-08:00

I wish I had a coffemaker right next to my bad. That way I could stay in bed all day today. There is nothing that sounds appealing to me, not riding or reading or walking or anything. I know I'm not going to sleep more either, but I wish I could. That would at least make the day go by quicker. That's all I want, for the day just to be over already.

This isn't me. What the hell has happened to me?

tragedy

2011-01-06T11:17:00.001-08:00

My life is collapsing around me.

Something I heard in a song...

2011-01-02T23:12:00.000-08:00

"Saints are just sinners who fell back down, and got back up."

Something I heard in a song today that just made me think, I guess. Or maybe made me feel a little better about life. I'm no saint, not by a long shot; can't imagine myself ever being one after some of the things that I have done. But I can at least get some encouragement out of that, and out of at least trying to do better than I've managed to do in the past. Is it cheesy? Hell yes it is. But it made me feel better for a while.

Funny thought I just had: I'm willing to bet today, january 2nd, is one of the highest traffic days for both creating new blogs, and for posting on long underutilized ones. New year's resolutions and what not. Might not be my motivation right now, but what the hell, i'll join the crowd anyway.

Off to drink sleepytime tea and start reading "the sea, the sea".

who knows

2010-09-01T14:16:00.000-07:00

One of these days I'm going to go through and blog all my old journaling entries. At least, the ones from March until now; they're all I have left.

Someday.

Now that would make for a good read.

Negativity

2010-08-31T14:04:00.000-07:00

I don't get it. Truly do not understand it.

I understand the grumbly negativity of complaining about other drivers, or when your bread is too soggy at Panera, or when the gelato place closed 5 minutes ago and it just took 15 minutes to walk there because you managed to miss the green light at every street. That's not base negativity, that's annoyance more than anything else. Little minor inconveniences, but not great catastrophes, nothing that will effect life in the grand scheme of things.

The negativity that I don't understand is the type that people allow themselves to be dragged down into, and seem to stay in by choice. It's the type that, when life sucks, they keep finding more things that suck. When they can't afford groceries, they also worry that the car might break down. You know, it might, but there's not a single thing that dwelling in it can change. No ones' fan belt has even held on until then next paycheck because they were thinking about it, knitting their brow lying in bed late at night. It all seems to spin into this death spiral of despair, and they seem to ignore every opportunity to pull themselves out.

Are there times that things in life are tough? Of course there are. But what is the point of of constantly dragging ones' self down once they are? When you're broke, go for a walk, ride your bike, read a book, go to the beach. None of that costs money, and gets your mind off all the other crap going on. If money is short...well,then it's short. You accept the fact that it's going to be a rice and beans, lots of reading month. You don't peruse travelocity for tickets to somewhere else, don't look up concerts or movies or exotic cuisine, because you're only going to frustrate yourself and feel worse. You go through your bookshelf and find the books you've been meaning to read since the beginning of the year, and you relish that you're now going to have time to read them. You pull out that copy of The Four Ingredient Cookbook, and you find a few to try that don't sound too bad. You have friends over for a beer, instead of going out, and you start working through some of those wine bottles rather than buying new ones. You go for walks, and realize how nice it really is to slow down and walk in the evening in the late summer.

You accept the stuff that's a bummer, and then leave it back there and move on with the good.

Malaise

2010-05-28T11:26:00.000-07:00

Nothing seems to be enough these days. There's no impact, no "wow", no moment of enlightenment.

It's something I've been guilty of my entire life - waiting indefinitely for that "wow" moment. I keep pushing myself into new pursuits, thinking that maybe at the end of a trail or the top of a mountain or the end of a book, I'll come to some great epiphany. I get these small epiphanies, these little moments of the beginning of inertia or the blossoming of an idea; they all seem to die an unceremonious death once the moment passes.

Monday night I was on the porch late at night, well after 11. Reading Alpinist, smoking a nice Montecristo that I'd swapped Mark an Oliva for, just enjoying the cool of the late spring evening and the smell of my front yards' orange blossoms. Maxime Turgeon had scribed an article of self-discovery and stripped down exploration, about cycling and climbing in the Alps, from end to end. I'd been wrestling with the idea of what to persue myself, what it was that I was going to lay out there to work toward. I drifted into the idea of circumambulating the country by bike, of pedaling away from my front door some morning and just going. Up the coast, along the highways of the western sierra, up through the cascades and the black expanses of the flood basalts of northeast California. Up through that forgotten corner, stopping in Bend to visit my sister, then up and across the Cascades, along the Olympic coast. Across the country, through that open country of Montana that I adored, where my heart felt at home. Across, across, across, all the way to the Atlantic seaboard. Down south, through slat marshes and sea grass, out along the flat expanse of Florida, out to the Keys, the warm flat waters of conch salad and bonefishing, of skiffs and faded blue fishing shirts. Back west through the south in the winter, through Texas and New Mexico and Arizona. The arizona that I've come to love more than home, the place where i let the ideas of my future wander to, of summers of dusty pine resin and thundering monsoons, winters of silent skiing and the smell if warm wood-fired stoves in pine cabins. Back across the always surprisingly steep mojave desert, the desert full of hidden beauty, a place magical only to those who take the time and ambition to seek it out. Back to the sea, back home.

Home. Is this home? Do I have a home, or rather, can I? Does the concept ultimately fail me? I look at those that have a "home", of those that want a home, a place to come back to and settle at, a place that they see as where they want to be, to spend their life. I have too many places, want to do too many things...I'm not sure how I could do that. Part of me wants that, desires that ability to settle down and be happy with one thing, one place. I just don't understand it though, and can't seem to make myself come to terms with it. My countenance fights it, fights the idea thinking of all that I might not see, do, be part of.

Bah.

Frustration

2010-05-18T09:14:00.000-07:00

I need to stop thinking, and start doing.

I guess there's no more succinct way to put it. Life is, if it's going to have any thing that i would consider interesting or unique or worthwhile doing in the first place, going to have some things that require risk.

Sacrifice, failure, loss, disappointment. All the things that seem to keep me from actually doing the things that I feel I need to be doing with my life. I can deal with them as they come, along with achievement, pride, accomplishment, and satiation; else, they will catch up with me at some point, in the lamentations of looking back at what I should have done, or at the very least tried.

It sounds so vastly clichéd, to say that I have nothing to prove to anyone but myself. It's just that I no longer care anymore if it's clichéd or not.

I've been stagnant far too much this spring. I know that drives this, but I'm going to let it be the engine of this drive to change...something.

happiness, most definitely not defined

2010-01-13T15:04:00.000-08:00

What is happiness?

Times are not happiness. They might be glimpses of happy situations, of glimpses of what we recognize as the ideal. Almost like we suddenly stumbled into what we imagine is someone else's life, their situation. Grasping onto that fleeting moment, and then slowly drifting into melancholy as it retreats into the distance. Melancholy and disillusion, continuous and only occasionally overshadowed by moments of fleeting happiness. The ephemeral nature of this happiness only adds to the depth of disillusion.

Happiness is....is not something that i can define for someone else. I know what makes me happy: adventure, discovery, camaraderie, love, accomplishment, contentment. That's not the same list for everyone, or anyone; it doesn't matter to me. It's what makes me happy.

I can't define someone else's happiness. I can try to augment it, add new facets to it, help them open new avenues to it that they may never have known existed within themselves. What makes me happy might not make them happy, and I might not understand just what it is that makes them happy. Or not happy, or somewhere in between. I can try, but all my trying might not work, might never make them happy because i'm chasing some avenue that i think will bring them happiness, and yet doesn't, and never will.

If i can't understand what brings them happiness...where do i fit in?

melancholy

2009-11-12T11:35:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it's been over a month. Guess everything in my head's just been staying there, or coming out in conversation or on paper than on here.

I'm sitting at work, alone again. I'm frustrated, a kind of sad frustration that wells up in me sometimes. In another time, I'd say that I was just a little melancholy, and that it'll pass in a while. That's probably the best description of that feeling - it's not a depression or a dissatisfaction, but more of a simple sadness of the experiences in life that are going on without me right now.

I spent the last half hour or so grazing though pictures of the north coast. There are few more beautiful locales in the world than the northern pacific coast, the fog and ragged points, lush primal forests and rolling hills weaving a beauty that takes on a dream-like quality. The slower feel to life, the perception of appreciation of one's surroundings.

Translating emotion into a common medium - i appreciate that, and in a way envy that. I keep looking for that canvas, the medium to convey what it is that i feel into something that i can share.

Life is amazingly good, this melancholy is just a day's thing. It's good for the soul sometimes, spurs change and introspection.

coming weather...

2009-10-09T13:04:00.000-07:00

Looks like it's going to be a perfect weekend up in Mammoth...clean, highs in the 50s, lows in the 20s. Perfect fall weather. Reading all the photographers' sites i can find, it sounds like the color's already peaked in the higher elevations, and the cold front that dropped snow a week ago really hit the aspens hard. Down low, under 8,000 feet it's either still green or just starting to go. Should be gorgeous.

Sure do wish I had a few more days to be there, though, since it sounds like there's a pretty good sized storm rolling in monday/tuesday. It's not supposed to be all that cold, and will probably take the last bit of snow hanging around from the previous storm with it. Sierra storms though, I just love 'em. Feeling the change in the winds, the high clouds and the moisture in the air the day before. Maybe sunday will be like that, if we're lucky.

A couple more hours, then on the road.

thursday malaise...

2009-10-08T15:39:00.000-07:00

Slow, quiet day here in the office. Pounding away here on the keys, drawing squiggly lines all over the screen in the name of AutoCAD. This job just seems so meaningless at times...making maps of buildings for a report that no ones going to look at, for buildings that are going to be demolished. Sigh.

All the talk lately of trips, of taking off for weeks, months at a time have me restless. I know some of it has to do with this being sick too, the feeling of not getting out, being confined, that slowing down i was talking about before. It's more than that though. It's the need to really get out for a time, and not a time insignificant, but a sizable chunk of time. It's that wanderlust, the pull of the 'out there', that seemingly unslakable thirst for experience. Experience...that's more of what it is. It's not a need to necessarily go far, but it does seem that after a while going far does become a necessity. An artificial necessity, but a construct that I have there none the less. I get jaded with what's all around me, and have to check myself sometimes. I forget the simply enjoyment of driving to somewhere like laguna and just walking along the cliffs and the beach all day, and instead spin myself up in to the idea that i need to get in the car at 5am and drive all the way to morro bay to do the same thing. And even then it's not the same thing, since I'm always thinking of the time i'll have to take to get home, of where to eat, of traffic. I forget sometimes just how good it can be down here. Especially now, with summer gone, dropping into the cooler fall and winter. Damp cold sand, cloudy afternoons, sweatshirts and coffee well into the late morning. I love this time of year, love the open and mostly empty coast, the damp, the fog. Summer's great, but fall and winter are some of my favorite times to be down there, albeit for different reasons than the summer.

That sort of rambled off track, but the whole idea is that I'm now really feeling the itch to get out. Sometimes I think the little weekend trips make it more difficult, other times i don't. I need those trips, the friday, saturday, sunday jaunts up to mammoth, to the wine country, out to joshua tree. I need that in my blood. Days are good, but my heart craves weeks, months.

It's not the first time i've talked about this. I just need to do something about it...

Off to Beachwood in Seal Beach for a MS Ride fundraiser, and a few good pints. Nice thing about having beer dork friends - when they throw an event, they know how to get the beer right. I know i'll be having Racer X, some beers from Moonlight, and who knows what else. All in the name of charity. Gotta love it...

sick, thinking...

2009-10-07T10:54:00.000-07:00

Being sick has me feeling...I'm not sure really. Introspective? No, that's not from being sick, that's just a normal condition. Contemplative? Restless? Maybe it's something akin to restlessness. It's this feeling that I get sometimes, those few times I allow myself to slow down. Hmm...maybe there's something to that...when I let myself slow down, I start feeling that I'm somehow not capitalizing on anything and everything possible at that moment.

I'm not good at slowing down. Not good at it at all. I don't like it, the feeling that comes the second or third day of not doing anything. There's this sticky stagnation that seems like it's trying to catch up with me, pull me into that space that most every one else occupies. It's like gravity working to pull me back, like climbing up the face of a sand dune. Taking steps quickly will get you to the top; taking them slowly keeps you sliding backward, until climbing the actual thing seems pointless and you justify stopping with the explanation to yourself that "who want's to climb some stupid sand dune anyway?". After a while, the ones at the bottom of the dune can't even justify starting up the dune anymore, and instead look at the ones up top as some oddity, wondering why they'd want to be there in the first place. Forgetting it used to be them up there, looking down and wondering, just as those up top still are, why so few people are coming up.

Anyway, i get annoyed with being sick. It's a funny thing, I think. I could care less about the physical illness, I'm more annoyed by the fact that it slows me down from riding, running, or just being out. I'll get out and walk when I can't run, hacking and sputtering the whole way, just because I can't stomach the idea of lying prostrate and reading another book. I'm a firm believer that, in the vast majority of cases, exercise does nothing but speed recovery, and that lethargy simply prolongs it. And even if not, at least it feels better to be out and enjoying the evening, the changing colors of the trees and the different feel of the air now that fall's coming.

Last night I, for the most part, pulled the lethargic thing...read, drank tea, read more, drank more tea, and finally went to bed early. I was trying to do all i could to get better quickly, as much as it killed me to just be sitting on the porch or inside, looking out. I think it worked though; I'm feeling, if not 100%, then closer to 75% today. And after work I'm going walking, at the least, though I'll probably ride to kick the remainder of this thing. And then cook, homemade chicken noodle soup. I may not be the only one sick with this now, and if not, it's kinda my fault...so i'll take care of the nursing back to health then. And if not, it's still going to be fun to make a homemade soup, all the chopping and simmering and smells and warming of the house now that the evenings are cooler. Mmm...

I absolutely cannot wait to get up to mammoth this weekend. I was going to write "for a variety of reason, all of them good,", but somehow good didn't seem the right descriptor. Somehow, I'm finding myself unable to come up with proper adjectives from time to time lately. I'm finding I can express feeling far more cohesively writing in situations, and actions, than in actual words. More metaphorically, i suppose, than literally. That's not exactly right...I guess it's that I'm more comfortable, when trying to covey emotion, using prose than effusive language. That's still not it on the nose, but it's somewhere along to figuring it out. Guess i'll just have to work on writing more to work though it.

winter, and daydreaming

2009-09-24T10:49:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-09-16T10:56:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-09-11T13:19:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-11T11:38:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-09T14:10:00.001-07:00

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?

more Theroux...

2008-10-17T13:25:00.000-07:00

I figured that Paul Theroux title from yesterday needed a little explaining...so I went to Taps for lunch again and did just that.

So I should probably explain that title from yesterday. I started reading Riding the Iron Rooster wednesday night. Evidently Theroux, back in 1986, decided to journey from England to China via rail. Why he did this remains somewhat of a mystery to me. Every railroad book of his that I have read thus far make rail travel sound uninviting, an exercise in patience, tolerance, and iron will. His descriptions make it sound as though he's doing this as a sort of warning, so that his readers don't make the same mistake as him by taking a trip. Theroux seems to have no wonder at the human condition, no fascination with human behaviour. Doubt, annoyance, and frustration
are his subjects de riguer, and his frequency at revisiting these same themes grows tiring. He travels and writes, but seems to enjoy neither. He complains of his American companions on the Trans-Siberian, draws out their flaws, and seemingly has no interest in their positives, their personalities. He admittedly is cold, offish, "the last to arrive and the first to leave" the dining car. His limited interaction seems to be only so as to paint depressing characitures of what he expects on the train: the outspoken ex-military gentlemen. the easily shocked evangelical middle-Americans, the quirky oddballs, the damaged young woman travelling alone - all the usual travelling stereotypes make the cut, and unflattering without fail. Theroux approaches these travellers with a haughty air - he is so experienced in this sort of travel, what could he possibly wind new or interesting from them? They are not fellow travellers but rather an annoyance, something to be tolerated and hopefully avoided, never embraced.

Theroux i think is best read in a train station in Bangkok waiting for an overnight train en route to somewhere else. Sitting on the upper level, trying to make sense of the ever changing timetable, with the not yet familiar peanut-spice and sewage scent of the city drifting through in the muggy heat, jet lagged and hungry, sipping a Chang to kill the time. He works well for commiseration during the inevitable days when travel is trying and frustrating, when cultural sensitivity has lost its lustre, and you need to just duck into a corner for a while and read someone who understands your pain. In that, he works very well. Otherwise, unfortunately, Theroux sees travel disappointingly different.

There is one other thing with Theroux that sticks in my craw: he wrote a fairly demeaning piece of criticism on Hemingway's Islands in the Stream. I deeply disagree with much of his criticism in that, and I'm going to re-read it again some time soon so I can weigh in on it as well.

Otherwise, this whole lunch and a beer at Taps and writing while I'm there thing is working out pretty good for me. Being there gets me away from the office so I can get some quality focused time in on my writing, and just being away from my desk for a little while is becoming a necessity for me.

Riding tomorrow, then down to San Diego on Sunday...should be a fun weekend.

Paul Theroux is a pessimist...

2008-10-16T13:35:00.001-07:00

Wrote this over at Taps:

Makes for a great warm up to the blog writing back in the office later: a pint of California Gold, a BLATT sandwich, and writing at the bar. Great escape from the slow morning of the office. Those break-room type lunches, where we all sit around and discuss something other than what's been playing on my mind for a few hours before heading back to our desks just seem so trivial. A whole lot of discussion about nothing. Somtimes I feel like I don't fit in with anyone outside of the university type academics.
As though those type of academics don't exist outside of a university setting, but instead are some sort of wierd genotype that exists only within a predetermined radius of academic environs. Delving into philosophic discussion aside from that radius is futile - no one is interested. Their views are ossified, rigid, reinforced by only what they choose to hear and never challenged. Entrenched in a narrow cleft, berift of the ability to meander and braid, to jump channels. Interesting analogy - witness the Mississippi, the Colorado; compare them to that prevalent body of thinking in this culture. I invite criticism of that. We are a nation of canyons, not deltas. Become so deeply entrenched that the surface can no longer be sighted from the deepened banks, and the ability to even slightly change course is lost, save for cataclysm. Even then, while oxbows and goosenecks can be plown through, destroyed, and lost, the only drastic change comes from the abandonment of a channel entirely. Jumping the bank into a new, quickly down-cutting material. Easily erodable, malleable, friable, pliant. Beds shifting under the newfound load, lost and reformed, redeposited inverted downstream, barely recognizable. Not lost in entirety, but irrevocably altered via upheval and cataclysm, not choice.

...so yeah, that was my lunchtime ramblings over a beer and a sandwich. I like the analogy in there though, the nation of canyons vs. deltas. I'm sure I can put that to use as an alliteration somewhere in the future.

the following tuesday...

2008-10-15T09:27:00.000-07:00

So I'm having a difficult time getting into the habit of this. The writing itself isn't the hard part...I think it's that I've gotten so used to writing physically that to type out my stream of consciousness seems somewhat disingenuous, as though there's something lost between the weight of the journal and paper versus the soft click of the keyboard. Plus I can sit on my porch and journal, while here i'm surrounded by steel grey carpeted cube walls, which do little to lend themselves towards reflection. I've still got the same music going though that I would have coming through the open windows at home. The Miles Davis Quintet, Winter In Europe 1967. Bag's Groove is up next. Bag's Groove is one of those albums that, from the first few notes, puts me somewhere far from wherever I might physically be and gets my mind out of it. It's the sort of music that i expect to hear coming out a window while i walk up the narrow staricases from the Embarcadero to Coit tower. Up through the little alleyway gardens and shadowed benches, little bamboo watercatchers and mossy tiles hidden in little corners that I never even knew existed. It's not the music for the top, looking out at the bay or the bridges, standing on top of the city. Nor is it the music for back down on Market or at the ferry building, too hectic and distracting and busy. Rather , it's the music for those little hidden spots, the quiet places you never knew existed and yet that some anonymous person in one of those windows with a cat in it tends to, reflects upon, and somehow has put a quiet energy into without ever knowing you'd share in it.

I switched albums once i started writing that. It's still as good as I ever thought it was. It's not Kind of Blue cool, not Birth of the Cool bop. Somewhere in between, eminently enjoyable.

No riding the bike last night - got shut down by the supposed wind we're having. Or not. I drove all the way to Blackstar Canyon to get a good climb in on the singlespeed after work. Parked about a mile from the gate like usual, since the likelihood of having your car broken into out there seems to be inversely proportional to its proximity to the gate. Got changed and all ready to ride, and was just heading out, when i ran into another rider who work at one of the local bike shops (and that I worked with at REI years ago). Seems the Firewatch people were turning riders around at the gate due to fire danger. The Forest Service ha issued a red flag warning, which doesn't technically shut down the forest, but they were turning people around all the same. After the fires we had last year I can see being concerned, but there's this overblown panic that goes around now when the slightest wind blows. Chino Hills was shut down due to fire danger, and the wind was barely even blowing out here. It seems that these fire-watchers are going off something other than common sense - if there was a wind warning earlier, but it's not blowing anymore, the fire danger has passed. To add insult to injury, they were still letting big construction trucks in for construction up the road. In their logic, bikes that have no possible way to start a fire can't go up, but large trucks heading to a construction site are ok. Sigh.

Prelude to a beer tasting...

2008-10-07T11:30:00.000-07:00

Sat down last night and read the ending of Garden of Eden again. Hemingway's last work. Whet I never realized was that there is. or was to be, a second part of this that never was published. It was unfinished when he killed himself, and came to Charles Scribner Jr in a paper bag, along with the mostly finished manuscript of Islands in the Stream, and most of A Moveable Feast. I can only imagine the gold mine he knew was in that bag, and being the first to delve into the final workings of that mind...

Anyway, Unibroue tasting tonight! If anything you'd have to love them just for the names of their beers:
La Fin du Monde (the end of the world)
Maudite (Damned - named after French-Canadien trappers who sold their souls to the devil to make it home in time for a party)
Trois Pistoles (named for a small town's cathedral in peril)
Eau Benite (holy water)
Quelque Chose (literally, Something - a beer that can be served chilled, warm, or mulled, and is delicious all 3 ways)
Sans Nom (no name)
Quatre-Centième Brassin Commémoratif (25th Anniversary Beer - what is the big new one tonight!)

...plus a bunch of Anniversary beers that age extremely well. I missed the last Unibroue night they put on, which was back in fall of 2001. That one had Paul Arnott, the head brewer, as guest speaker - this one we get their national rep, which is still fine by me. 7 years I've had to wait for this tasting. Most of the regularly available ones i've had multiple times, but the big draw tonight will be the 25th anniversary beer and the multiple years of previous anniversary beers that will be poured. Last time I had a vertical line-up of these anniversary beers it was 10, 11, 12, 14, and 15, and that was a year ago. Somehow they seem to jump around with the numbering of the years, since i think the entire 20's have been skipped to go straight to 25...i'll figure out why that is and write about it tomorrow, provided i remember.

No riding today, since i have the beer tasting. Yesterday made for a decent evening ride though, about 10 miles and still made it back before dark. Tomorrow's another slog up Blackstar Canyon, 8 miles of climbing a fire road. But it makes for a good training ride, which is what i need. 5 months to the day until Vision Quest. I'll take all the training i can get.

That's it for now...I'll probably have more after the beer tasting!

monday...

2008-10-06T14:07:00.000-07:00

I'm bored at work...really bored. Bored enough to start the blog that I'd been meaning to start for, oh, since I started to get bored at my last job. Actually 2 jobs ago I started once which immediately failed, since i quit the job and then had things to do.

See, geology has that ring to it where you'd think "ooh, he's a geologist. He must live a life of high adventure and rollicking good times, out there in the mountains for weeks at a time. How rustic...", and then swoon. Which does happen, and is the reason that most geologists won't tell you that it's a whole lot more time sitting behind a computer than you'd ever think. I never thought it when I was in school either. The mountain part still does happen, it's just when I'm not at work!

1000 words a day is probably pretty cheesy - i challenge anyone reading this to find a group larger than 10 that doesn't have any clue that Jack London came up with that idea. Surveying out in front of the wal-mart in Moreno Valley doesn't count - it has to be in a county with a literacy rate above 50%. I think Riverside County is somewhere around 42%, so it's out of the running. If they can name the piece it was from, even better. If they know that John Barleycorn is another piece and not "the guy who runs that ethanol company, right?", well, I'll be duly impressed and start using Cormac McCarthy quotes instead. And if the general populace ever get to the point of recognizing those, I'll move on to Thomas Pynchon. And I know I won't have to get past that, because once the general populace starts recognizing Thomas Pynchon, the apocalypse is nigh. Though with Stephen King being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, maybe it is already nigh. Or was, rather, in 2005. I guess we're in a post-apocalyptic world already, and never even knew it. Kinda figured it would be more bleak and ashy, and have less winking. You'd never figure that Sarah Palin, end-of-times-monger that she may be, would brighten up the post-apocalyptic visage by winking all the time. I'm beginning to think her winking might be a tick. I've lived in Alaska. Alaskans don't wink. Sometimes they blink, but when they do it's to un-stick their eyelashes that have frozen together because it's 60 below. They conserve energy for things like cutting wood, or building pipelines, or shooing off Russians.

I really could use more coffee at this point...and I'm going to change the music too. Sonny Rollins is a great sax player, and Saxophone Colossus an incredible album, but right now it's just wearing me out. I could blame it on an after-lunch food coma, had I eaten more than half a peanut-butter sandwich and a pumpkin muffin. But i digress. On to...Ridgetop Session, by the Woodsmen. The best band no one I know has ever heard of, out of Santa Cruz. I'll plug 'em, and I don't even know them, just dig the music. I don't think they're making music anymore, but you can download all their albums at thewoodsmen.net. Not thewoodsmen.com - that's some gospel music, which is decidedly different from the woodsmen that I'm listening to right now. Actually just opened another window to make sure i got the right website (the .net one), and they have another album (called Frisco Frisco) that I'm downloading right now...I'll write about it tomorrow I guess. Unless I keep writing long enough to get through it before i leave the office...but i hope I leave before then.

Today's another single-speed day out on the mountain bike after work. If you don't know what that is, think of how most every bike you see has gears that you can shift through. All those gears are there basically for one reason: to make it easier to go up hill. Now think of the same bike with one cog in the front instead of 3, and one cog in the back instead of 9, and you have a single-speed. Going single-speed basically means that one has to expend more energy going up hills. A whole lot more, sometimes. It's not the torture machine it sounds like, though before i had one i thought it was kinda masochistic too. Sometimes you inadvertently end up being masochistic. I'll see a hill and think "I wonder if I can make it up that...", and then go abuse my knees torquing up some hill that I wouldn't want to climb on my geared bike. I did that riding down at the San Clemente singletracks the other day...started out thinking I'd brought the wrong bike since a lot of the climbs out are really steep, and ended up glad i had brought it since it actually made the climbing more fun. I'm a closet masochist I think.

Anyway, tonight riding out at Chino Hills state park until it's dark, and tomorrow a quick loop at the Fullerton loop and then beer tasting! An entire night of beers from Unibroue, the incredible Canadian brewery out of Chambly that puts out phenomenol Belgian-style beers. But i'll save that for tomorrow.

cheers.