Beyond the Fence

Older daughter's fear of vaccum cleaners...

2008-06-11T00:02:00.002-04:00

It seems obvious--it makes a loud noise. But not so obvious--being afraid of the loud noise might make sense. But why be afraid of the thing that makes the loud noise?

Two attitudes to the world.

2007-11-05T23:50:00.000-05:00

Approach by eye. Goal: Seeing as much as possible; experiencing as much as possible. But this is passive in a sense, because the world acts on the eye, even if the eye moves in the world.

Approach by hand. Goal: Doing as much as possible. This is active, because you go into the world to do things to it.

The look

2007-10-15T12:54:00.000-04:00

Green and purple fluorescent on black.

My Credo

2007-07-20T18:15:00.000-04:00

I value pears over apples, owls over eagles, and tigers over lions.

What's needed

2007-07-20T18:14:00.000-04:00

What's needed is a birthday cake for my daughter, not a magical pastry baked by elves.

I've been

2007-07-11T22:33:00.000-04:00

looking through the dumpsters of the mind. I'm not sure what's in them, but I can tell you that they are arranged neatly in rows a columns, and that there isn't much around to see. And when I look out the window and see these trees, they're what's really here. Just a reminder.

Need

2007-06-25T14:04:00.001-04:00

is a verb.

I plan

2007-03-25T22:12:00.000-04:00

to discover some of the uses of Fish Sauce. I've now run across two recipes for salad dressings calling for:

fish sauce
lemon/lime juice
vinegar
soy sauce/salt
garlic

In

2007-03-25T22:10:00.000-04:00

a book by Henry Miller (Plexus?) was written, "Cultivate your own nonsense."

I'm trying.

Regard each

2007-03-21T23:01:00.000-04:00

eye separately, now consider each as something that might be unscrewed from the head. Not just the eye itself but the area around, roughly the size of the largest circle that could be drawn on the front pad of your hand. You would never know this region could be unscrewed; it would not hurt or disturb.

I have a sci fi novel called "Candy Man". Author's name is something King I think. The main character is a robot. If I recall, he is told that he will be rebuilt as a human. They could rebuild him as a robot (again) but it would cost too much. That has stuck with me for about 20 years now.

Exploring the inside

2007-03-21T23:00:00.000-04:00

of a giant drum. It is dark, and so far empty. But somewhere inside, surely, there is something.

Poltergeist

2007-03-18T23:04:00.000-04:00

My ideas are the ghosts that haunt your mind.

Note: This isn't adressed to anyone in particular, nor is anything meant by it, nor do I know which ideas are being referred to. And further, the author is not responsible for the ideas expressed here.

Actually...

2007-03-16T23:33:00.000-04:00

there are two sorts of light: solar and lunar. Solar light is emitted by the sun, and also by most lamps and lightbulbs, though in a weaker form. Solar light helps plants grow. Lunar light is emitted by the moon, ghostly lamps, and a few other things. Lunar light is connected to the fungal world.

This theory, though false, has phenomenological validity. It must have been proposed at some point with seriousness. Must have.

More later, about the real difference between solar and lunar shadows, and the reason I like the blue flames of gas stoves.

Editor Disease

2007-03-06T21:48:00.000-05:00

Seeing wasted words everywhere; finding ways to shorten papers authored by strangers and published years ago; deleting entire sentences from conversations as one utters or hears them.

An excess of brevity.

The Dip Engine.

2007-02-19T16:20:00.000-05:00

1. Choose base ingredient
2. Add mix of lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, hot peppers, pepper, salt, cilantro or parsley, and maybe some onion.
3. Blend it all up.

If your base ingredient is the Chickpea, you will end up with Hummus. If your base ingredient is the Tomato you will end up with Salsa (but go light on oil and heavy on peppery). And on and on. My next base ingredient is the artichoke heart.

Hamadrymania

2007-02-09T22:26:00.000-05:00

Kink Cobra and Sacred Babboon.

As it goes.

2007-01-30T22:50:00.000-05:00

As it goes, so should a path be followed. And then there really is no question, assuming one is following the path. But if questions persist? Then maybe these are questions of whether some other path should be followed, or whether any path should be followed at all, or other questions. That said, things remain as they are and no more is known, the answer not having been in response to any question.

And more on tea.

2007-01-30T15:08:00.000-05:00

Recently craving the tea of the fictional past.

We are reading Ulysses. That is, I am now on p. 12. We'll see where this goes.

Dedalus, Haines, and Mulligan have just drank some very strong tea. Now I want to try it also.

We tried so

2007-01-03T23:08:00.000-05:00

many varieties of tea. And still, black tea is best. The exotic fails. Same as when we wanted to buy strange meats (snake, alligator, etc) and the butcher told us to forget it and just get beef. "You can't beat it."

And you can't.

I can't

2007-01-03T23:05:00.000-05:00

get myself to write it, so here is the synopsis:

A market with neon signs marking the stalls (sort of based on the marked in Seattle). A person
(nondescript/average) visits, and then revisits and revists, etc., giving up more of regular life, until finally spending all of his days at the market (maybe sleeping there too), somehow transfixed by the neon signs. The addictive power of those particular neon signs.

Like a sock

2007-01-03T23:04:00.001-05:00

filled with coins.

If if if

2006-11-27T21:41:00.000-05:00

Then then then

Not content

2006-10-16T20:50:00.000-04:00

Not content to let nature take its course, we brought in all of the fallen leaves and ironed them individually.

I fed you

2006-10-13T23:09:00.000-04:00

I fed you oranges, but told you it was tiger meat.

Despire

2006-10-06T22:15:00.000-04:00

to have negative aspirations, i.e. despirations.

As in: wanting to slum.

Once upon a time

2006-09-05T23:40:00.000-04:00

a butterfly escaped from a storybook and entered the world. The real butterflies immediately noticed something was funny about it. It seemed too substantial to be a real butterfly, because of its traces of paper and ink. But it also seemed to only half-exist, having been created from the imagination of its book's author.

Although the real butterflies sensed something odd about the book butterfly, they were kind to it, treated it well, and helped it look after itself. The book buttefly needed the help, because lacking natural instincts it often needed to be told what to do. Despite the friendly reception from the real butterfly, the book butterfly desired to become real, and went about asking everyone how it could do so.

A toad suggested that it should just wait because the passing of time would render it real. But time passed and nothing happened. A bird suggested (while trying to eat the book butterfly) that the problem was that it had never been a caterpillar, nor even spent time in a coccon. "Perhaps", speculated the bird, "if you behaved as a caterpillar, and made slept in a cocoon, acquiring these experiences would make you real."

The book butterfly tried its hardest to emulate caterpillars. But they were unable to tell that it was not a real butterfly, found its behavior very odd, and most refbuffed it. So after a few days the book buttefly gave up, concluding that it would not be able to acquire the experiences of real butterflies.

Then one day, the book butterfly was flying by the base of a tree when it heard an new sound, the cry of a cicada. Cicadas are very wise, spending years meditating beneath the earth. The book butterfly presented its problem to the cicada. The cicada buzzed for several moments and then suggested that the book buttefly must find the author of its book. Perhaps if the author were to write more about it, perhaps writing that it were real, or writing about its days as a caterpillar, perhaps then it would be real.

The butterfly heeded the cicada's advice, and took years seeking out the author of its book. Eventually the author was found and the butterfly presented its case. The author was remarkably happy to fulfill the request, and the butterfly soon felt very real. But it was never sure about whether it was real and in the world, or merely back where it had started and in a book.

Lepidoptera

2006-09-05T22:57:00.000-04:00

Sometimes the prettiest caterpillars turn into the plainest little moths.

From:
"I like butterflies" by Gladys Conklin (Holiday House. New York, NY. 1960)

The wind...

2006-08-29T13:43:00.000-04:00

I could not understand anything he did. It made no sense, was all to no purpose. He was always reeling about, never staying in the same direction for more than a day or two. Years had passed, with endless pursuits begun, none finished.

"I don't know why I live this way" he said, "It can't be helped. I'm just carried about by the wind within."

Food comma

2006-08-09T22:48:00.000-04:00

It signals a momentary break between the eating of different foods in a meal, as when slightly pausing after biting into the potatoes after taking a bit or two of the meat.

Some irony

2006-08-01T10:53:00.000-04:00

about a group of people whose adventures in trying to see a performance are far more amazing than the adventures featured in the performance itself.

I find

2006-07-17T21:49:00.000-04:00

things changed.

But this morning I awoke from a dream of some complexity, but so dim that I could barely remember anything. Maybe, the whole dream was like that: Too dim to make out, but hinting of a greater complexity. If so, my dream was not complex, but I dreamt of complexity.

Why am I not

2006-07-14T23:04:00.000-04:00

a Norwegian sailor?

A bookish man.

2006-07-14T23:01:00.000-04:00

"BF94," he mutters in wonder, "that call number is new to me."

The snakecatcher

2006-06-19T20:40:00.000-04:00

had been hired to remove all snakes from the king's vast palace garden. He labored for hours, searching the garden for snakes, scooping every snake found with a net. By the end of the day over a hundered snakes had been dropped into the snakecatcher's basins, and the snakecatcher was certain that he had searched all areas of the garden, had found all the snakes.

But then he noticed a certain nook he had overlooked, just into some bushes near a tree. Perhaps another snake might wait there. He went under the tree and looked into the bushes. He saw an enormous purple snake, staring out, so that its face pointed towards the kings palace. The snake was much larger than any other snake in the garden, larger than any of the snakes known to grow in that country, larger than any snake the snakecatcher had ever seen. Not having moved, it spoke, "There will always be snakes". Oddly calm, the snakecatcher said and thought nothing, turned, and left the garden.

His final clinic

2006-06-19T08:26:00.000-04:00

had no real medicine. Neither did it have herbs, obsecure teas, or any exercises to be conducted. The doctor had concluded that most ailments can be treated through the application of water in its various states and temperatures: boiling, as steam, frozen into ice or snow, as a cold vapor, and so on.

Dialogue while walking to work

2006-05-25T22:28:00.000-04:00

Me to stranger: We seem to walk at the same pace.
Stranger to me: It's our eagerness to get where we're going.

The reawakening

2006-05-24T22:08:00.000-04:00

of the second mind, brings responses to things not here. A little jelly fish at ocean's bottom whispers.

When I was a child I actually imagined things. Now I just have thoughts, sometimes about things not here. A part of the mind withered.

We are

2006-05-24T22:05:00.000-04:00

always chasing after phantoms and visions. The prudent tell us to ignore the call of ghosts and dreams, to attend to the present.

My wife says:

2006-05-18T23:43:00.000-04:00

The oldest one is still alive. And he will be the last to die.

Headquartered

2006-05-13T07:01:00.000-04:00

in the fortress, I survey my domain.

So maybe

2006-05-03T21:54:00.000-04:00

you don't really believe in any particular religion, or maybe you do, but either way:

If you could choose which religion were TRUE, which would you choose?

The new simplistic

2006-04-17T22:44:00.000-04:00

psychology, invented to replace or add on to Freudian id, ego, supergo.

I present three gremlins of the psyche:

1. The Negato, who firmly says "no" to thoughts, ideas, opportunities, and so on. Maybe you should draw a picture? No, says the negato, and you don't draw it. Maybe you should go out tonight? No, says the negato, and you stay home.

2. The Affirmito, or Creato, or some better name, who is the one who comes up with all those ideas of what you just might do. If you always listen to him you'll be constantly active, and constantly doing new things. Perhaps there will be no direction to your actions, and maybe nothing will get finished, because each idea must be acted on, each opportunity taken.

3. The Schmego or Shmego, who doesn't really make this a nice trichotomy, but has to be included anyway. A sort of internal guardian angel, who sometimes has the solution, does the right thing, when nothing ought to work -- the thing-inside that brings the dead-drunk home safely.

The idea was

2006-04-08T18:08:00.000-04:00

that there was such a thing as a room of ultimate significance, though now it strikes me that a better name would be room of maximum resonance, but that's all a matter of naming.

About the room: It is a sort of final destination. Though you could leave, go elsewhere, and so on, the room would push some important aspect of experience to a maximum. Maybe that aspect of experience is significance, or maybe meditiveness, or maybe some feeling of resonance, but now I'm getting vague or iffy. Just combine a sense of calmness with deep significance, and that's the part of experience that the room is attuned to, or is so likely to bring you to.

Is that what I used to think the room was (or maybe there are several of them)? Or has the idea changed along the way. And maybe you can wonder, is it really a room? Couldn't it just be some other place, like maybe a field somewhere? But no, it is a room.

Do you know

2006-04-08T17:38:00.000-04:00

the true meaning of Kitchener?

It's elusive, but somewhere a bit on the outskirts of the city I began to feel it, the meaning of Kitchener coming on me like a sort of emotion that will somehow transform itself into knowledge. But all I'm left with now is the word "ramshackle" and that can't be all there is to it.

Shinjo, you

2006-04-03T21:44:00.000-04:00

say this blog reveals something about me... What?

This

2006-04-03T21:42:00.000-04:00

is written in a room that seems devoted to dark brown, for it collects all the dark brown things in the house. Tomorrow, we'll come home from somewhere and somehow in the room will have materialized a large pile of dark brown corduoroy pants.

Ummm, ya...

2006-04-02T00:23:00.000-05:00

...So how is your sense of totality? Cause, somehow it matters, even if you never stray far, that all that stuff is out there. That is, you may stay here, but that won't make everything else (and there is apparently so much everything else) go away. And even if you go far and wide, can you really take it all in? Maybe. I don't know. But even if not, surely we can have a sense of how big things might be.

Or maybe nothing matters too much but what is here around us right now.

Swamp mind

2006-04-02T00:08:00.000-05:00

sets in. Better swing about like the swamp man, and trundle back and forth to the true swamp ryhthm. Get to know the swamp. Swamp things. Swamp stride. Swamp thought? No! Swamp lack-of-thought.

Listen, you'll hear it.

I

2006-03-29T15:48:00.000-05:00

can't help remembering the William Blake quote: If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.

It spins around my head a bit, even though I'm not so interested in wisdow. And just because he said it, it might mean nothing, or mean something while being plain wrong. But still it spins around my head. Does it imply that we should seek folly? That prudence and good judgement are somehow not adviseable. That many of our good decisions are bad decisions?

So it means none of this. Barely suggests any of it. But something drives these skewed interpretations.

Suddenly last

2006-03-29T15:38:00.000-05:00

supper, was the title of a lesson in an advanced ESL book for Japanese learners of English, who pretty much already speak the language. This lesson was the true story about a group of people who were evicted from an apartment. On their last night there they had an eviction dinner party, and left the apartment for the last time towards the end of the party, with the party still going on.

Some guy I told all this to mentioned that the name "Suddenly last supper" was a nod to the title of a movie "Suddenly last summer". But there also seem to be other "Suddenly last supper" things out there.

Time to clear out

2006-03-13T14:16:00.000-05:00

the pickled head grime.

We called it

2006-03-10T16:42:00.000-05:00

space based aqua pop. It was music from outer space, only underwater. Listening to it freed you, loosened connections, opened possibility. Soon to be a necessity for creative ventures.

And the rest of the time its the baroque certainty of Bach.

Some guy

2006-03-09T12:07:00.000-05:00

at a party once told me that "Einstein on the Beach" by Phillip Glass was music from 50 years from now. This guy was somehow involved in the music industry, as a composer of movie music, or something like that. I went out and bought the CD, and haven't been able to listen to it at all, though some other music by Phillip Glass I like.

But the idea was the interesting part, the music of the future. Right now I've been listening endlessly to "Silent Shout" by The Knife, and half felt that it was from the future. As I listened to it the phrase music from the sterile world came to me, not as if it were music from a world where everyone was sterile, but from music from a place that is very modern, but also very under-populated.

The vast

2006-03-07T00:05:00.000-05:00

underground corridoors lie ahead. I know that there is a stairwell going a level further down, and there await special treats. I find it and go down.

This skeletal outline describes a dream, partially recurring, from when I was a child. It doesn't recurr as a dream anymore. But it does in memory, and it sort of even does in airports, because some have hired commerical artists to create these strange tunnels with odd lights and sounds to connect various terminals.

And for another time (or have I mentioned it already?): The Terminal Terminal.

There is the split

2006-03-06T13:29:00.000-05:00

between those who say that the actor is ultimately responsible for his deeds, and those who say he is not, because other factors matter and they matter more.

I can't seem to get as much work done as I'd like. There are no background factors. I see my limits. And yet, perhaps I shall change them.

"Has all

2006-02-28T11:31:00.000-05:00

the blood been drained out of me? " thought the kelp as it saw its reflection in the pool. "Why, I'm only green, now."

It's time

2006-02-24T12:45:00.000-05:00

to go to Moss Farms, and see how the moss is growing and how far it has spread -- seems to be out further now.

"Once," says the old farmer indicating the vast moss field, "these rocks were bare. But now you can't even see them for the moss." I'd never even known it was rocks under the moss. Hadn't really thought about that. He continues, "They said it wouldn't work, but it has, it has..." He's done talking for the day. Now its time to just stare out at the moss.

Muhshroom belts, moss fields, dingy canals? What is it that I'm asking for?

One wall

2006-02-23T16:31:00.000-05:00

of my office is entirely cork. Why did the builders stop there? Why not four cork walls? ...then I could have giant tacks to pin my books to the walls.

Do you think

2006-02-23T14:46:00.000-05:00

that "Satanic Impulse" would be a good name for a brand of coffee?

There is

2006-02-21T16:33:00.000-05:00

an inconsequential canal running through your city. The canal is narrow, but spacious enough for a small boat, and there is a walking path next to it. Very rarely you pass by it and you hardly notice it. Or if you do notice then it strikes you with a moment's oddness, and you wonder why you never noticed it before, but you wonder this (or overlook it) every time that you see it.

On the back of "Upwingers"

2006-02-18T23:20:00.000-05:00

a book by one Esfandiary, it says:

"I am Universal. I translive all over the planet. Learn via Unicom. Have many professions. Am involved with many people. Consider all children as mine also. Neither Right nor Left - I am Up."

This (the bold) reminds us of a song. Which one?

A day of borrowing...

2006-02-15T15:55:00.000-05:00

because I am not the painter of this, its "Sinbad the Sailor" by Paul Klee.

On re-looking at stuff by Klee lately I haven't liked much, but this one I still do.

Mystery

2006-02-15T15:44:00.000-05:00

First, this picture was not taken by me, but stolen from the vast reaches of the web.
Second, it's awesome.
Third,...

The past

2006-02-15T12:24:00.000-05:00

has become unscrewed from the present.

Today's

2006-02-09T23:09:00.000-05:00

question was: What is the single most important thing you can know about another person?

And I haven't a clue anymore. Somehow this question might have seemed important to me a few years ago (how many I'm not sure) but now it just feels faded, irrelevant, stale. Maybe new people just don't matter all that much anymore, and the people I already know, well I already know them. Or maybe new people matter plenty but not for any predictable reason or in any single way. Or maybe its just that I'm not 17 or 23 anymore, and haven't been for some time.

You might just keep going

2006-02-05T23:11:00.000-05:00

till one day you think, "I'm playing a losing game". And then its time to change ways.

Discrimination

2006-02-05T22:58:00.000-05:00

is the basis of taste.

Not so much

2006-02-02T11:39:00.000-05:00

movement. This is not a voyage on a boat. This is not trip of the bicycle, nor a long hike. It is sitting at the desk. Sitting, sitting, sitting. And now for a song:

Six little ducks that I once knew
Fat ones, skinny ones, fair ones, too
But the one little duck with the feather on his back
He led the others with a quack, quack, quack
Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack
He led the others with a quack, quack, quack
Down to the river they would go
Wibble, wobble, wibble, wobble, to and fro
But the one little duck with the feather on his back
He led the others with a quack, quack, quack
Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack
He led the others with a quack, quack, quack
Back from the river they would come
Wibble, wobble, wibble, wobble, ho, hum, hum
But the one little duck with the feather on his back
He led the others with a quack, quack, quack
Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack
He led the others with a quack, quack, quack.

For a more sophisticated version:

Six little ducks that I once knew
Sad ones, happy ones, some like you
But the one little duck with the feathers on his back
Waddled to his mama with a quack, quack, quack

Quack, quack, quack. Quack, quack, quack
Waddled to his mama with a quack, quack, quack

Five little ducks that I once knew
Silly ones, funny ones, some like you
But the one little duck with the feathers on his back
Waddled to the shore with a quack, quack, quack
Quack, quack, quack. Quack, quack, quack
Waddled to the shore with a quack, quack, quack

Four little ducks that I once knew
Jolly ones, bright ones, some like you
But the one little duck with the feathers on his back
Waddled through the water with a quack, quack, quack
Quack, quack, quack. Quack, quack, quack
Waddled through the water with a quack, quack, quack

Three little ducks that I once knew
Old ones, young ones, some like you
But the one little duck with the feathers on his back
Waddled up a hill with a quack, quack, quack
Quack, quack, quack. Quack, quack, quack
Waddled up a hill with a quack, quack, quack

Two little ducks that once knew
Play together, just like you
But the one little duck with the feathers on his back
Waddled by a frog with a quack, quack, quack
Quack, quack, quack. Quack, quack, quack
Waddled by a frog with a quack, quack, quack

One little duck that I once knew
A happy little duck. the same as you
This one little duck with the feathers on his back
Waddled to his family with a quack, quack. quack
Quack, quack, quack. Quack, quack, quack
Waddled to his family with a quack, quack, quack

The tale

2006-01-27T14:24:00.000-05:00

wherein a man leaves home, hoping to find his footprints.

After weeks on the road he declares, "I'ts unbelieveable! I've been travelling around, visiting old houses, places I used to spend time, former workplaces, the whole bit... And I haven't found my found them yet. Its as if I haven't left the slightest trace of myself."

You

2006-01-26T12:06:00.000-05:00

may have been too hungry to sleep. And perhaps you've been too tired to eat. But what if both happened at once: Can't fall asleep cause you're too hungry, but can't eat cause you're too tired. What then?

Reading fiction

2006-01-24T12:27:00.000-05:00

means being transported to other worlds. Does love of fiction imply...?

a) Adventurousness.
b) Proneness to daydreaming.
c) Tendency towards vicarious living.
d) Add your own option.

Scavenger hunt

2006-01-22T00:38:00.000-05:00

I am on a private scavenger hunt. The list of items to be obtained is internal, somehow incscribed in me, written in childhood and later. Fragments of songs remembered beg me to obtain a copy of the song; book titles barely remembered to be found, and maybe read; foods I've heard of but not eaten to be tasted.

Next item may be tea from tundra climate.

The goat

2006-01-19T22:59:00.000-05:00

walked down the road, eyes on either sides of his head.

"I represent alien perspectives," he says.

You peer at him with uncertainty, and think, "I always thought their was some sort of occult-goat connection, but now that he mentions it, goats really do have more of an alien, other-worldly look. It's a shame, though, that they are quadrapeds. It really diminishes their impact. A biped goat, now that would really be something... Perhaps that explain Pan, satyrs, and all that. Um, no... satyrs don't have goat faces."

And the goat? He's left.

I sense

2006-01-19T22:43:00.000-05:00

time passing now, and will turn around one of these days quite a bit older, and there isn't as much shock in it now, knowing that yes I really will be older. But everything else about it remains unknown, like what the exact circumstances will be like. And so, although there is some sense of inevitability (I will be older) there should be none at all, because I know nothing about what it will be like.

It has long

2006-01-08T17:45:00.000-05:00

been my ambition to go North of the North Pole -- that'll show them!

This place

2006-01-04T13:28:00.000-05:00

has a few underground tunnels connecting some of the buildings. I walked through them for a lunch stroll. If only they were deeper underground, somehow it would be even better.

The origins

2005-12-08T13:34:00.000-05:00

of Sushi are not what you think.

Somewhere in the world is a mountain range of mountains so icy and frozen that the eye cannot tell whether it sees ice or stone. In these mountains is an ice valley, which is home to an ice castle, which is home to the ice king. The valley is also home to an ice lake. The lake isn't exactly liquid, but it's not completely frozen either. No one knows how deep the ice lake is, or how the ice fish got there, or how they survive, or even what sorts of fish these diverse species are. These fish are the sole source of sustenance for the ice king. He eats nothing else, and perhaps he doesn't need to eat anything at all. Hardy travellers were once lucky enough to stay in the ice castle, and observed the king eating his raw ice fish (would the ice king think of cooking, or even tolerate it?). These travellers almost died of ecstacy when permitted to eat the ice sushi themselves. On returning to Japan they refused to eat anything but raw fish, and so sushi was born.

We hadn't

2005-11-22T23:06:00.000-05:00

meant to be nomads. It had looked like life was gearing towards settling down. A new move, a baby on the way, and so on. When the baby was born, we expected the usual late nights for a few months, with a routine to follow. We got the late nights at first, but the routine we settled into could never have been predicted.

We noticed that though she cried at home, she never did so when we were away from the house, no matter how noisy or strange the environment. As soon as we were somewhere new, she always calmed down, ready to fall asleep. We thought this was just a fluke, it would change with time. But it didn't. Instead, it became worse. She couldn't stand to be in the same place twice, and especially not the house. On weekends we spent time trying to find new places to visit, new places that were affordable, just so that she would be satisfied. Eventually we were spending more time in strange hotel rooms then at home, so we got rid of the apartment, and hit the road. I couldn't maintain my job with the hectic schedule, but the baby comes first, and so we were no longer tied to the area. And the further afield we went, the happier the baby became. We had arrived at the new routine, the routine of no routine.

Two merchants

2005-11-17T23:00:00.000-05:00

travelled together in foreign lands, both engaging in trade. Both kept journals of their travels, and wrote down what they found most noteworthy. One merchant, a fishtrader wrote of the differences between the lands -- differences in the people, their customs, foods, clothes, their homes, and differences in the landscapes, plants, animals, weather patterns, and so on. The other merchant noted how similar all the lands were to one another -- each had its people, with their customs, foods, clothes, homes, and each region had plants, animals, and changes in weather.

Which merchant made the deeper observations?

The unhaunted mind

2005-11-15T15:35:00.000-05:00

would make a good title of a book I think. But we could choose what it's about.

The book I've been reading "Riddley Walker" has been a letdown, despite a cult following, despite what I thought was a promising start. That doesn't mean that "The Unhaunted Mind" would be any better.

Oh, and while I'm writing: SCOPE ROMBARD.

Where is your harbor.

2005-11-11T18:52:00.000-05:00

Now how old are you?

Quick

2005-11-11T18:48:00.000-05:00

wit is not the truth. Nor is charm.

Achbar Echad

2005-11-04T17:33:00.000-05:00

The mice worship Achbar Echad, the #1 mouse. Achbar Echad lives in the #1 mousehole, eats #1 cheese, and so on. He is alone among mice and has no equal, because he is the #1 mouse. You and I, we don't know our #s, but we might be the #434,612,938 and #243,942,695 mice.

Achbar Echad is the #1 mouse, but is he the first mouse? Or is there a #0 mouse -- a mouse before mice? Does mousehood precede mice?

What

2005-11-03T21:46:00.000-05:00

could compel one to not go anywhere, just stay in the same place? There are things.

Thoughts today have shot past and through Boston a couple of times. That was a nice place. If anyone happens to read this, and also happens to be in Boston, say hi to the Charles river for me, and so on.

The drain

2005-10-25T22:38:00.000-04:00

speaks for itself, me I say "..." and watch my words get sucked down. So much gravity somewhere below it, pulling everything down. There goes half my wardrobe, a table, books, flecks of paint, down, down, even my thoughts.

Ghost wisp

2005-10-25T22:32:00.000-04:00

The clouds will not leave. They sit overhead waiting. "You have taken our chief; we will not leave until he is returned."

I don't know what they're talking about, but they won't believe it. "You have taken our chief."

If you can think what to do, please let me know. I haven't seen the sun in weeks now.

Ha ha ha

2005-10-17T13:19:00.000-04:00

he laughed, ha ha!

The Canadian Mushroom Belt

2005-10-06T20:56:00.000-04:00

extends over two thousand miles, stretching from Southern Ontario west to Alberta, ending just short of the Rockies. Across this area, a wide variety of mushrooms grow in abudndance. Residents are typically oblivious of the mushrooms, though in some communities youth play mushroom themed games such as PunchShroom, a variety of the game PunchBuggy (also known as SlugBug). A tourist industry devoted to seeing the mushroom belt is slowly growing, though these "shroomtrips" have so far been most popular with visitors from Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union.

It is the time

2005-10-05T23:33:00.000-04:00

when my eyelids come a drooping, and gravity tells me that I will belong to it even more for the next hours. It is getting to that time though its only 11:35 pm, still early really. But the days have been a bit long.

Typing seems as second nature, and I don't seem to really need to look at the keys, or to even think about where the letters are. Don't even need to think, much, about most of the words may be, but then I suppose the writing shows it.

I'm in a slight mood to keep on eating.

I think that memory and half memory has dominated the blog, partially because those things were there (the memories and half memories are in my mind, that is) but also because I wanted to avoid making this some chronicle of my current times. If not to write about the present, then there is always the past. The past and fantasy anyway.

But at this moment, there is no past, and not much of a present either (though much is going on, and life is far from empty). Not much of a present because basically, its all in my eyelids just now, and here they come a drooping.

Welcome to

2005-09-30T20:58:00.000-04:00

the land of bicycles. Never mind the coming snows, never mind that the temperatures will drop and drop down. Do not attend to any of that. You are in the land of bicycles.

Walk down the street at night, you'll see two bicyclists zipping towards you. They politely line up and move to your left, their right.

Head over to the supermarket, with wife and daughter. Silent as can be they keep coming from behind you, riders on bicycles. You only hear them when, again, they politely pass you. This time treading on grass.

You are in the land of the bicycles. How long, how long till you have one too?

Harvest Moon

2005-09-22T09:01:00.000-04:00

They had walked out to the grocery store to get a few snacks for the evening. Somehow it was dark by them time they ended up leaving the store. On their walk back she suddenly exclaimed "Oh, look!" and he looked and saw what she was pointing at. It was the moon hanging just above the trees, huge and orange, yet not quite full. Next night would probably be full moon. They decided they'd repeat their walk to catch the full harvest moon.

The next night they headed out at about the same time, walked towards the grocery store and then past it for a way. They looked back occasionally, but the moon wasn't there, wasn't rising in the expected spot. It wasn't anywhere else in the cloudless sky, and they still hadn't found it when they reached home.

"I know," she said, "lets go drive out into the country. Maybe we'll be able to see the moon out there."

He agreed so they got in the car, and drove out of town, on the same road leading past the grocery store. They took random turns onto smaller roads to try to get as far out into nothingness as possible. They looked up and around, but every time they failed to spy the moon.

They laughed about it and kept driving out further and further. As they grew tired they found themselves on a small rough empty road, surrounded by an empty barren field. They they drove on, becoming so tired that they hardly looked for the moon at all now, no longer looked at where they were going, and the small road had given way to a gravelly surface.

Suddenly they were driving up a steep hill, only rocks around them, the black sky somehow vivid. As they came up over the crest the view of the sky opened up, and they finally saw it in the night sky. [Not the moon, but something much larger, all green and blue. The earth itself.]

News item from the year 2053

2005-09-18T21:30:00.000-04:00

Scientist report that they have developed a new form of light. Whereas ordinary light consists of photons, the new light is made up of phentons. Humans are unable to distinguish phenton from photon light. However, phenton light accelerates plant growth. According to Dr. Mao Frieder of Caltech, bamboo exposed to phenton light grows one inch every two minutes, a growth rate visible to the human eye.

Blog Envy

2005-09-15T16:00:00.000-04:00

There is always room for new neuroses, new mental diseases.

The past

2005-09-15T11:57:00.000-04:00

gets swept away, but lingers nonetheless in memory.

Do you (whoever you are) imagine your distant future? Do you have visions, however fleeting, of places you might like to go? Perhaps a boat trip never taken yet, but maybe one day. A mostly abandoned carnival town somewhere, with a long wide main street?

Religion

2005-08-31T11:24:00.000-04:00

You'd never guess it from the way I write this blog, but I'd say that my true religion is 'Strunk & White'-ian.

Bergman

2005-08-31T08:07:00.000-04:00

In some of those older Ingmar Berman movies the movie begins at some beach house, though a scanadanavian beach house, and people are pushing a boat back in from the water. Well, that it probably just how one of his movies begin, but lots of them seem to have coastal scenes. That movie scene may be the inspiration for my vision of launching a canoe into Lake Huron.

Return of the Canadian

2005-08-29T06:41:00.000-04:00

Heading back now, and its years later. Everything is different, but it is still heading back.

Eating Eight by Lars Paul Linden

2005-08-27T13:32:00.000-04:00

I am reading "Eating Eight" by Lars Paul Linden. The book made its way to me.

It is a slim book. It is a sci fi story written by someone who cares about rock concerts, comic books, and maybe spray painting. I have mixed feelings about it, but it yields few hits on Google, and that alone made me decide to mention it here. But reading it seems to awaken something in me. Also, on Amazon some copy is selling for $187 or some absurd amount.

And now back to the house.

The dominant feeling

2005-08-26T13:51:00.000-04:00

What is the dominant feeling of childhood? or what was the dominant feeling of your childhood? Did some emotion occur more than others? Or was there some emotion that occured perhaps rarely, but now occurs much less or ever never?

I don't want to romanticize childhood, but I'm guessing that the feeling of wonder often dominates childhood. That feeling when you look at something, and it mystefies you, and you are somehow curious about it, and as if there is an explanation (not something technical) and knowing it matters or would be better.

Depth

2005-08-26T13:48:00.001-04:00

For a while at Boston College, towards the end, I asked everyone I knew to tell me what they thought depth is. Not the depth of physical things, such as lakes, and closets, but the depth of people or maybe music or books. It was a difficult question, and no one ever seemed really confident with their answer, confident that they knew.