Back on the lake shore

Winter comes to California too. The sky is grey, we bundle, we spend a bit more time indoors. I'm at Pete's Coffee (and Pumpkin Spice Latte) on Lakeshore Ave, perhaps the most humanly diverse street in Oakland and contender nationwide. The diversity isn't just in the faces, but also the exchanges. No dialog catches me off guard, no matter how disparate the accents. No embrace looks out of place; there are a lot of friends on this street.

Even my nemesis, the traffic, seems harmonious here, though it steals 6 lanes and provides barely a weekday bus.

My thoughts are on Wendell Berry's Human Economy versus the Great Economy. A second read of the chapter is clarifying the concept, though my head still spins to sleep while reading it because it conjures the thickness of thoughts familiar to bedtime.

French is on my mind too, and German, old affections and new ones. I want to live simply in a world where it's easier to be extravagent. I fantasize about a train trip to Yosemite, or Colorado, or winter in Québec City.

Today's a study day. The New Year brings new distractions, so I'd better savor the penultimate day of down time.

The trip home

After three and one half months, and nearly as long without writing here, I am crossing from Nebraska to Wyoming. Never did I stop to think of this state boundary; having never been east of Wyoming, or even much east of Yellowstone on its northwest corner, I never give much thought to the vertical strip from the Dakotas down to Texas. I have been to Texas, so I must partially retract my prior statement. Texas, like the East Coast, is an entity unto itself and shouldn't be confused with eastward migrations across toward the Midwest.


When I began my flight this morning I slept for a spell and then readressed my first Wendell Berry book, Home Economics. Having fallen asleep on several occasions starting this book during the school semester, I was determined to be alert for the first chapter today. Already the book has been a transformative experience. Berry describes a plane trip to Ireland as follows: "For me, air travel always has about it an insistent feeling of unreality. I feel that I am where I do not belong, with a totally arbitrary assemblage of other people who do not belong there either...the insistence in the voices of captain and crew that this experience is perfectly ordinary only intensifies the suggestion of unreality" (Berry, 1987, p22).

I know that I don't belong here, but I can't speak for the rest of the travelers who feel right at home with a touch screen at their reach that gives them TV, movies, games, and even the ability to order food from their seat (I got the coffee.) Few if anyone marvels at the snow-blanketed Rockies. Like me they simply check the flight map for progress, not situation.

Reading Wendell on this ride will likely start a life-long odyssey for me, where I bring together culture and nature in the urban and rural setting. Sightseeing with Ellen two days ago, we spoke with a Romanian woman in the North End of Boston and a homeward Greek professor of entomology taking sabatical from his home institution at my alma mater, UC Davis. We spoke to him over dinner at the oyster bar of the famous oyster house near Quincy Market--where I had my first raw oysters, amazingly. We spoke to the woman on the blustery streets as she led us to Paul Revere's home. These were not iPhone experiences but cultural ones that Ellen brought to being with politeness and curiosity. I learned this same lesson from Ross on my Alps trip, and I must admit that it's hard to remember such a good habit.

"But, we carried on anyway"

And then Mr. Ben carries on:

"So, sure, I could just close my eyes. Yeah, sure, trace and memorize." -- You Don't Know Me (Ben Folds featuring Regina Spektor)

Ever since I saw Regina Spektor in concert this song passes through my windpipes daily. She didn't actually sing it in her concert--he does in his--but it was hearing her live that locked it in.

I wander around town and putter around my house singing the same lines over and over again. If you know me you've heard me do it, and requested a refrain. The lines must correlate with something going on in my life, so when I sing the chorus "You don't know me no more" in call and response between Ben and Regina (I change pitches for Regina) I'm never sure if I'm declaring the fact to someone else or myself.

Being in a grad school program in a new city with all new people is plainly about forgetting a bit of my old self and getting to know someone new. Escaping a demon or two along the way isn't a bad idea either. Toward the end of my Microsoft reign in Seattle, when I resigned to my manager, I said to him, "I don't like who I am". That was 2002, and for a long time I have liked who I am. I devolved a bit at the end of the California stint but now here in Somerville I find myself liking who I am again. I don't know if it's walking home from a movie down the pedestrian path on a brisk autumn evening, or making a jackass of myself in the company of 20-something-year-old students at a county fair. Maybe it's sitting at a table at a town's Octoberfest trying to tell people about an intersection redevelopment project that we're doing, where they've driven through the intersection for 50 years and I two times. Could it simply be all these crazy little new things swimming around in my own evolutionary stew that might somehow sometime soon spawn a new slime dripping, hairy, unrecognizable version of me, or perhaps create that missing link between what I am and what I should be?

There are now four plants in my room. I think I have room for about four more. Are the plants timing something of which I'm yet unwitting? What magic will transpire when I set #8 down, or when I host my next dinner party for 40, what happens when I start talking to people who aren't in my graduate program? There's a smell of opportunity here; it smells cold and leafy, and the dimension that matters is divided by a clock. Éparpiller -- spread, scatter, prosper.

Here's an abridged list of my personal todo list:

Investigate gym alternatives
Talk to a prof
Buy clothes -- 2 pants, 2 long sleeve, 3 tees
Check out sports, music, singing, dance
French and Spanish
Greenway, rails to trails, creek restoration
http://www.assnforpublictransportation.org/
Investigate UN Global Studio
Livable Streets Alliance
Think more about cross-training your brain

I left out mundane things, such as paying bills, and this omits my huge list of work todo items. The above mainly represent activity which I'd like to initiate. Some are simply urban planning groups that I want to check out, and I won't discuss that here. The ones that are worth talking about are Talk to a prof, Check out sports, music, singing, dance, French and Spanish, and Think more about cross-training your brain.

Talk to prof
I speak up in my classes, but I'm yet to sit down with a prof since class started. We have a dozen professors for 100-odd grad students and no undergrads, so there's no reason not to take advantage of them.

Check out sports, music, singing, dance
The music, singing, and dance are a preoccupying force. I need to get better at playing music and singing, and I need to once and for all learn how to dance. Luckily one of my housemates teaches dance and has bee teaching our house and upstairs neighbors salsa. I'm hoping the individual attention will finally help me turn over the new leaf. Music and singing are a bit more complicated. I know I want to improve my vocal harmonizing and get better at playing pop on piano and guitar. But I don't know how to do any of them but with CDs or books. That's not a social activity but might at some point allow me to get into some more organized music situations.

French and Spanish
I might as well add German to this. Maintaining and learning foreign languages while in grad school is trying. I don't have the resources to study anymore, what with the grad school homework brain leech.

Think more about cross-training your brain
And now we come to the whole purpose of this post. How do I cross-train my brain? I think about this occasionally and it arose yesterday when I found myself writing a journal entry for my Sustainability class and chose to write about a French Symposium that took with a colloquium on Sustainability. It gave me the opportunity to transcribe a bit of the published program from French to English. It got me thinking, how do I combine my obligatory work with the personal stuff listed above?

It seems logical to start treating my various activities as a web of objectives and outcomes. Let's try some Omnigraffle charting:


Hmm. Is this useful? Probably not, but it gives you idea of what I mean by cross-training. I think it's good to be aware of opportunities to combine objectives into one activity.

Reading my life away

I read, I read. Past or present, it's spelled the same and means the same thing for me. Every hour of daylight I have is an hour for pouring over poorly scanned articles for which I paid 25¢ a page at the copy store monopolist. The first week my goal was to finish all my work and take the weekend off; that resulted in about six hours of weekend work. This weekend, with the help of a cold and my California-origin storage unit arriving, I was easily working every daylight hour. Some of that went to scraping paint off the floor in preparation for my furniture. Two hours were lost this evening in a failed attempt to get my couch through the two front doors that happen to be ninety degrees adjacent and progressively smaller (yes we took the doors off the hinges of those two doors plus that of the upstairs neighbors.) One joyful hour was spent reuniting with my guitar, one of the few items that was not damaged or denied entrance to the house. I now have nothing but eight hours of my grad school job and another 4 hours or so of homework to complete by Tuesday, and by Tuesday there will be another 10 hours of reading to do, and probably some writing and a test to study for. It's not hard, it's numbingly fascinating. I like the readings, but it leaves me no time to even read the newspaper or a good novel.

I'm also being forced to turn down a camping trip this weekend, partly because I'm committed to a bike ride but mostly because I can't spend a weekend away and keep up with the work. I guess that's what grad school is all about. It's funny, I'd be disappointed if it was easy but I'm also disappointed that it's such a time suck. I hope it gets to the point where it's more intense but less time consuming because my brain has developed the ability to compress to a higher PSI.

I also wonder if I really want to become more of an intellectual. Aren't I just ostracizing myself from more conversations and finding myself attracted to increasingly witty and snooty people? Or will I still be able to keep dumbing it down for the masses?

I know I'm frustrated right now because I'm morphing into someone slightly different. My classes are developing my reasoning abilities, the city is exposing me to its culture and physical elements, and my housemates to fashion, parties, and next-generation reality TV (skipping that.) Right now I can't put cogent thoughts together, either in class or outwith. What I get at the end of these two years, besides being older and uglier, will be an intellectual achievement that suits my demeanor, and hopefully a social life that cloaks said suit.

I wish I had a picture of the couch jammed between three doors with five stupefied neighbors crushing plaster and splintering door frames. The poor couch now sits covered on the front porch awaiting its fate. I will certainly miss it. Craigslist feels so impersonal.

new town social angst

I don't know how I often manage to not do something and then thoroughly regret it the next morning. Case in point, I went to a Red Sox game last night and we got through one out before the rain picked up and the tarp went on the field. My aunt informed me that they commonly wait for an hour or two before calling the game so that they can make a fortune at the concessions. We waited through a dry spell and then another system moved in. By 9pm it was time to give up and head out. Now, at this point I had the option of going down to Jamaica Plain to see a cousin of mine sing at a show starting at 10pm. There was also some sort of party held by someone in my department back in Somerville. My intentions were fixed on going to the show until one moment of doubt when I realized I didn't know what T stop to go to and I started to wonder how late I could stay out and catch the T back. Thus I made a hasty decision to head home and go to the party instead. Moments after making this decision and heading home, my iPhone revealed to me that the show was very easy to get to, whereas the location of the party was nowhere to be found in my email. I ended up at home with some ice cream and a book, the evening wasted. And I say wasted because I fell asleep in 10 minutes, not to say a book or ice cream are wasteful.

This morning as I eat bad pancakes in my messy house, I am filled with regret for not doing the obvious, easy socializing that I should have done by going to the show. Now I face a very rainy day, which is awesome to me, with nothing worth thinking about other than half a room to paint, a bathroom to clean, untolds reems of paper to read through for homework, and the unavoidable feeling that I'm falling into the same traps I always do.

Missing socializing opportunities is a big deal to me. I spent my life up until my early twenties being shy and uncourious about people and things with which I was unfamiliar. When I was 23 I made a resolve to do never skip a socializing opportunity, and at 25 I learned to value the richness of available experiences and the effort required to realize them. 7 short years later I am still sensitive of my past apathy, and I dread the lapses that occasionally occur.

Being around 50 to 100 new people in grad school has taught me some good tricks about getting to know people. Number one is to hang around after every lecture to see if other lingerers form circles of chatter. I used to always leave school and class as fast as possible for no particular reason. Number two is push your way into circles of people at events and make introductions as needed. There's nothing worse than standing outside a circle and pretending to participate in the conversation. Number three: I'll tell you as soon I learn it.

I don't lack self-confidence as much as I lack perspective and peace of mind. Right now I'm hopped up on coffee and I haven't exercised in a week. Of course I'm going to be restless. I should go take a nice walk in the rain, and I will do a charity bike ride tomorrow. But then there's all that reading and painting. What is a single, 32-year-old grad student to do?

___________________ space for older version of myself to insert answer, or "don't worry".

In the beginning

I've lapsed on my blogging lately just when I moved to Somerville to start grad school. I should have all kinds of things to write about, but at the moment everything is so natal that it's hard to analyze any of it. I can say that there are very nice people in my program and the professors are cordial and casual. My roommates are more than I could ever ask for on the social scale. They've had three barbecues in three weeks. I'm fantasizing about all the great road trips I have to take; I've already gone to New York for a day. And my calendar is packed with class, homework, and social outings. Nothing is wrong except that I can't get my student Id because the university's computers say I'm an employee and not a graduate student (I work for a professor in my department.) The weather has been wonderful and now fall is sweeping in.

My tasks are all related to momentum--keeping up with the work, the socializing, and the exploring. I have to ignore my shortcomings and demons for now and assume that my better qualities are those that are on display. I have big challenges ahead, like completing my first writing assignment and inviting new friends on outings and to parties at our house. I also have to finish painting my room from blue to lemoncello, which takes about four coats of paint.

I don't have much of anyone for comfort right now except for three sweet but skittish cats. I'm looking forward to having some close friends sometime soon. It's sort of nice that I've spent so much time alone in my past because I'm perfectly comfortable with it here, and it pushes me to socialize at every opportunity, which I had hoped would happen.

I don't know if these two years are a destination or an intermediate step to something yet more foreign to come. If I didn't feel the pressure of the clock it wouldn't matter. I guess it can't matter in any case unless I decide that I'm in charge of my future. My aunt once told me that if I don't make decisions in my life that someone else would make them for me. I think I'm taking the reigns now, but I'm timid about steering.

So as to not end in metaphor, I will say that I recommend big changes to everyone whenever they have the chance. I guess it's one of the debatable benefits of being solitaire, or free of a self-run business or what have you. I've also thought a lot about this idea of saving up to go to school every ten years. It's too bad more people don't do that; I can't imagine mingling with 20-somehtings when I'm forty. I may have to do that linguistics masters in the privacy of my fire-lit den.

So long from east coast daylight time. The blue is going away, the kitties are not.

Red eyes and bad scones

For some reason "cafes with good pastry" isn't something that's easily queryable. My first pastry treat in Somerville tasted like a wet bisquick concoction. Maybe the bagels are better. No matter, I've thus far arrived in Boston at 5:10AM and made it to my new home for a non-sleeping nap. Red-eye flights seem to always arrive early, giving you more opportunity to be awake at a time when no human should. I recently discovered that the nearest ATM that I can use without a fee is in Hartford, Connecticut (hint to Wells Fargo online ATM locator, that's not nearby.)

My next task is to find a grocery store that is similar to Whole Foods but in walking distance. I don't have any university activities today so I'm not sure what I'll do other than work on a laptop like I did everyday at home back in my old life. Tomorrow there's a general grad school orientation and Thursday is the climactic urban planning orientation when we meet our advisors, each other, and decide on a few classes to take.

I already have visions of running off somewhere for the upcoming three day weekend. Doing that alone would be in bad form, so I'm hoping to make some close friends before the weekend. If that doesn't work out I can stay home and play with the cats, two of three seem friendly. Or I might invest my efforts in new activity groups via Meetup.com. Worst case I'll stand in Davis Square and get confused by the converging six roads and angry drivers. I'm a little cranky; I haven't slept
in a day or so.

I was very well-comed to my new home by a dressed bed and a good book.

Better humors

Today has been nice. Monday has a weird way of disappearing Sunday melancholy, which, according to the dictionary, is another word for the humor black bile, which aptly describes my state of mind yesterday. Tonight I find myself sitting in a writing group called "Shut Up and Write" with a couple friends and strangers. It begs that I write while in fairly good spirits, a useful pursuit that I tend to neglect. I was thinking yesterday as I spewed bile how unfortanate it would be for new readers to come across my blog with me at my worst.

Today is Monday. Next week at this time I'll be crawling into a linened air mattress in my new home, new city, and new state. It's not as dramatic as it sounds. I was born to wander the world and repositioning my home base seems minor. The schooling is more significant.

I don't want any of my friends who read this to think that I leave blithely. It's more that I leave because the next step of my life cannot be here. I want things to go well for me wherever I am, so I don't consider leaving a success. Idealy I would leave with someone; I know I have lots to gain from learning to establish myself in a foreign place, but I would have been happy to forfeit that.

I think someday I will come back to live in a better Bay Area, maybe one where I have the power to make change. Or it may be that love or strife brings me back here; both already have. But I'd better not come back the guy I am now. I'll take the happy side, but the vanity. Insecurity, and imaturity won't fly back.

Social Safety Net

On occasions such as today, when I feel all alone in the world, it would be nice to be able to rely on some kind of social safety net. I think for men it's particularly hard to seek out one's friends for this kind of buffer. I know I feel a lot of guilt and embarrassment when I have to admit that I need company. I want my friends to think of me as strong and independent so that I don't become a burden to them. Interestingly, I do like to play the self pity card a little, since most of my friends are happily paired off, but I have to do it humorously. I know there's nothing that they can do to straighten out my social life other than offer a temporary respite. It's especially difficult because I am about to desert everyone here and they have to be thinking about replacing me with someone else for company.

When I move to Boston I may be able to get a little security from my graduate school. If there are enough people whose company I enjoy then I may be a bit better off than I am here, where I've learned to rely on a handful of people who are in much better social situations than me, namely through marriage or personality attributes.

I'm mainly writing today to play the self-pity card with myself, or you the reader if you exist. There are these Sundays when no more books can be read, no more walks taken, and all I can do is wait for sunset and throw on a Netflix movie. My life shouldn't have to be this way, but my past catches up with me now and again. It's funny how aging really does panic me. There's a ceiling approaching that is forty years old. It's eight years away but I dread the thought of reaching that point and still living in the rooms of houses with other single souls, or worse having resigned to live in a little apartment by myself. For women the forty-year-old mark can be a biological point of defeat, but I think it must affect some men like me similarly, who see it as the deadline for having the type of life we think we are supposed to have. Of course it's easier if you aren't interested in children, but for me it's the loss of the opportunity for young love that is so precious between a couple. There's plenty of time to be old together; I don't want to start old with someone. So wish me eight years of good luck, or a better outlook on life.

Proposed Changes

In moving to Boston and graduate school I have hoped for certain changes in the way that life feels. On a superficial level, I'm looking forward to seasons and a place where the wilds of nature are always encroaching on civilization, whether it be storms or greenery. Inwardly, I yearn to pull off an end to lonliness or at least find myself so stimulated by the culture that any isolation feels part of a process. Here in California my lonliness is stagnant. No one of any significance has penetrated my life here for nearly two years. In fact my one-week tour in the Alps was more socially lubricating than anything I have felt here. I long for a day when I feel acompanied at the start and ends of my days--when physical contact can be reciprocal.

I trust that Boston will provide me many good distractions and reward me a few lifetime friendships. I think months of studying urban planning will refresh my conscience, which has soured from useless endeavors and continual periods of hope and defeat.

Music evades me right now. Dance is not existant. Romance is imaginary. Food and sleep are my only nurishments, except when I chance to travel or converse in foreign tongues. I'm betting on being rescued by academia and one of thirteen original colonies.

Blogin' the interpersonal

I usually keep to me versus me when I discuss the mayhem going about in my head. Lately I've had enough interpersonal agitation that I want to try to hit that pressure valve and hiss away a little compressed air.

I have never thought of myself as good at debating, conflict resolution, or negotiating. I don't have much experience at it, and I consider myself more of a hot-head then a thoughtful interlocutor when I occasionally jump in the ring. I've had a few widely differing frustrations with people lately, but in each case it has to do with their habits or actions that vex me beyond endurance (as Aunt Alice used to say of Uncle Matt :) Interestingly, in each case it has nothing to do with me, I'm not being abused in any way other than suffering the guilt of inaction. What is my obligation to that person and myself? I've always admired those that come out and say what they need to say, but only if they pick the right battles. I know I have to find a way to defend what I believe is right and find the best ways to purvey my opinions. Hell, I'm going into urban planning, it's professionally as vital as personally.

My history with confrontation is the belief that I should stay quiet in the name of tolerance, or out of the fear that I might be wrong, or that morality is simply too subjective to lay claim to any part of it. As I get older and watch my complaisance bite me in the ass one too many times, I realize that I have to confront, debate, and negotiate. Loving people means they pain you, and I'm learning to mull over problems without them neither ulcerating my stomach nor slipping to the back burner. I want to say what I need to say to help my friends or at least to assuage my conscience. I never want to belittle anyone and let my hot-head taint my arguments. It seems that emotions walk a fine line and they have to be heeled.

Contrarily, I get pretty hot-headed when someone confronts me. I'm defensive, denying, and ungracious. Nobody does it very often, but then again I don't have too many close friends, and I don't put out the welcome mat. I always wonder how much my close friends mull me over. As my blog attests, I'm full of uncertainty and missteps. Why don't they confront me more often? Does everyone think I'm sure-footed and trudging up to my neck in goodness? Or do I surround myself with people so similar to me that my faults are too close to theirs to recognize. I mean, seriously, I've sat in front of computer full-time making stupid programs for dot-com companies for ten years. That feels morally wrong on so many levels that it seems unforgivable. I've wasted time, talent, and my twenties. I think I've had one friend who really challenged me to change that. What else? I do nothing in my free time for anyone other than myself and the people I love. Criticize me! I speak cynically, I complain, I show no interest in half the people I meet. I'm a prick! Why doesn't anyone call me on it? I...need to discover meditation, soon.

One day I will work with animals, that's what I'm gonna do--Steven Page, Barenaked Ladies

Or ex-Barenaked Lady, clothed and coked out. If I wrote that song maybe she'd go something like this:

One day I will build a small town, or maybe even two, and I'd put in there a pie shop, that maybe sold one of you.

Pie can be sold and consumed, but you cannot, if we maintain decent morals. I worry that I don't spend enough time finding the stuff that can't be bought. Even this grad school stuff--I bought my way in. I don't know what that means. Do I only interact with those that did the same? Are they all going to be whitish middle class Americans with whom I bond naturally, or will I find people and things wholly unrelated to what I purchased.

I wonder a lot what my days will entail. Will I be bored, lonely, overworked, and underslept? I truly fear those four essential life elements in this upcoming life. The last hasn't crossed paths with me since university #1. My love of moderation might need to stand down for extreme lifestyle adjustment.

Hot times call for stoicism

I complain a lot about hot weather because it displeases me as much as all the people here who complain about the weather in the winter. The ambiguity of that sentence is intentional. The hot days seem to cause things to fall, whether it's a violet pedal onto my book, several walnuts from the backyard tree (suspect squirrel) or the crappy grapefruit that look really good until you cut one open and experience a pH imbalance of plus and minus 7 simultaneously.


Note: Walnuts are apparently inedible until dried. Squirrel must have toaster oven.

Because every day can't be spent in the company of loved ones, I started my day at the coffee shop with my surrogate beloved, croissant and café au lait, and there I studied a little German. I have a whole blog about learning German that I don't maintain well, but I will remark here how fun it is to learn new words in German because they are so easy to remember. Who could forget that dunkel means dark and Himmel means sky? Wait I better verify that...yes, phew. With fun words like that it doesn't even sting to read the immense grammatical sections about the word order of supporting clauses (you actually put the finite verb at the end of a supporting clause rather than second in the sentence as in the main clause, fancy that!) After coffee I made a pit stop at home and then set off across the street to the freeway park (see the urban planning blog) and walked along the Temescal Creek path, which suspiciously has a creek running next to it that was in wetter seasons just a grassy ditch. Either someone turned a hose on upstream or they daylighted the creek--kudos in either case. I raced around the Sunday farmer's market in the DMV parking lot, skipping yummy crêpes and baked pretzels in favor of the basic fruits, vegetables, and tubers that help me shun Trader Joe's packaged produce. Then it was home again for some reading and brief piano instruction, followed by another coffee shop jaunt to try to finish my Spanish language novel, which must be an autobiography, because the story has no flow and isn't interesting.

I don't wonder about my own autobiography being interesting (again ambiguous,) but I do question whether it flows well or not. Let's see... grew up shy kid in the suburbs with underdeveloped social skills but good analytical reasoning. Played piano, soccer, swam, hockey. Went to a boring university one-and-a-half hours from home, got software job during .dot com boom, company was bought by Microsoft so went to Seattle. Learned painful lessons, quit job and traveled, learned a few happy lessons, came home, grew up some more, attempted to escape to Montréal, failed proudly, came home, and now prepares for grad school in Boston. Put a few touchy-feely moments in there and you have a windy waterslide that may burn your lower back.

After coffee house number two I returned home to find myself lightly bored, over-heated, and missing humanity. I sat down and wrote here so that I might get more company out of myself. My essay today is to say something about a hot Sunday afternoon that feels pretty melancholy to me. Maybe if I were at a barbecue with a beer and Reggae music then I would feel o.k. Maybe if I knew where my next emotional meal was coming from I would hop in for a cold shower then nap away 'til sunset. For me heat is hopeless, in California it means dead plants, overanxious recreation that puts more people on the road with A/C instead of in the shade where they belong. I dream, quite literally, of rain at night, or of the guy that kidnapped me and made me draw sketches of all my shoes, the undersides of them. No kidding, I really dreamt that I was being held by someone forcing me to do that last night. And my shoes all look pretty similar from below, so I didn't quite know how to differentiate them. Luckily my parents showed up and we snuck off together and called the authorities. There was a question of whether or not I could go back and retrieve my laptops. Now the day is old, I'm wide awake, stuck in the heat, and there's nowhere left to go.
grapefruit jail

last windup in California

Having returned from one last vacation I have the feeling of winding up the family grandfather clock for one last go of it in California before I emigrate to the island of Academia in Boston. I have about three weeks to get in all the thrills of being back home (for the last seven years) and do all those things I never got around to. I'll be showing off the home state to my cousin and her husband who are visiting for the first time in a week or so. On the agenda is a quick trip to Yosemite, so that I may visit it for the first time as well, and break one of my more ridiculous virginities. I've pretended in the past that having missed Yosemite thus far but having gone to more remote places says something about my personality. The truth is my family was supposed to go visit about twenty years ago but the dishwasher broke, so it's just dumb luck.

The other things I want to do this month have nothing to do with California, except for maybe one last backpacking trip. I had the idea of taking Amtrak up to Mount Shasta for a weekend of wandering around and camping on the lower flanks of the mountain. Maybe next weekend. Mostly I keep thinking about reading, and picking the piano back up, and really learning some more German.

I wonder if I should be lonely, about to uproot myself from the warren and try to join several new communities that will intersect for me in Somerville, MA. I'm abruptly surprised by a dearth of loneliness in my life right now. For an emotion that has been so prevalent in my adult life it ought not to have slipped away without me noticing. Certainly I have no romantic relationship, no emanicipation by way of new friendships, and no new social activities. It is the anticipation of a move, admittedly an escape, that keeps me calm right now. My aneremophobia, or lack of fear of solitude, doesn't comfort me because the pain solitude inflicts is usually what gets me out of the house and into a new adventure. But maybe this time, finally, it's some good old fashioned planning that is going to land me in a place that's good for me.

I've proved reticent when I think about losing the close contact to the friends and family I have here. When I'm in Boston I don't feel far away though. Between texts and cell phones and six-hour cheap nonstop flights, I'm really the villager that moves over a town and visits on his mule every few months. With a notable exception or two, I don't feel that much of a need for physical proximately with my life in California. I mostly expell thought bubbles that try to figure out why I stayed here this year, and whether Boston will be the right match. It's a self-centered approach, and I fear that as I get older and accumulate years of unanswered bachelorhood that I'll harden into a quixotic academic with little tolerance for anything but the heaviest and unhealthiest of romantic and railroad related crushes. Or, like that whence derives quixotic, I'll be busy chasing windmills and tidal generators.

If life is one of vast opportunity, of which mine seems capable, then I am surely wasting my time here in California. If, on the other hand, we are robots of environmental molding, I should be happy that I'll be making one big move after seven years of conservative programming.


Mental note: learn how to use drawing program.

O Saskatoons

You can't compare many things to a purple berry, but a few days on the farm in Southern Alberta comes close. First there's that slightly tart and wild flavor offered by the brisk air and tree-skirted Rockies, whose distinct peaks have more in common with a mouthful of well-worn chompers than a saw blade. Then there's the thrill of having the lovely violeting patches cached everywhere without the threat of thorns or hostile plants; that is the essence of the people I associate with there--genuine goodness all around without the fear of a faux pas invoking harsh defenses. Lastly there is the saskatoon pie, represented in Alberta by the presence of, well, saskatoon pie, with ice cream, preceded by breakfasts of pancakes and weak coffee, lunches of buns with diced ham, and dinners of roast beef, elk stake, salmon or very occasionally my grandma's pierogis, imitated with care but never quite matching the secret touch that she had for the dough.




Alberta is about a family that embodies calm and knows how to leave the wrist watches and cell phones on their bedside tables. It almost makes you beg to be asked a personal question, until you realize you didn't come there to talk about yourself or anyone else. You are there to enjoy ad hoc reunions, reminisce, meet the new toddlers, and admire the volatile weather patterns. You expect to be a little bored, to overeat, and underexcercise, but maybe you'll go climb Turtle mountain this year, or hike to the cabin to join a weener roast in progress.

Alberta is an annual summer respite for me. I like it when my life has changed a lot from year to year, and when I can emit my new qualities and maintain those that are expected of me. I like when I occasionally have the priviledge of showing it all to someone new, or and old friend whose heard the legends of the place.

Alberta is far from completeness for me. I need much more before I could settle there and be content. I doubt I ever will. It is something that I keep in a part of my brain. It's one of my defining characteristics. I think it calms me and reminds me of what a place is worth.

Triangular circumnavigation

Location: Cambridge, MA.
Objective: Find home.
Miscellaneous: Calm sniffles with Sudafed.

Yes, it's that time again--when I fly across the country for a two-day trip to find housing in preparation for graduate school. Now I never have flown across the country for a two-day trip nor attended graduate school, but everything becomes déjà-vuey by the end of the second day when you're hopped up on antihistamines. Contrary to my cute little B&B location I'm actually attending school in Somerville (or is it Medford?) at Tufts and living ten minutes away. And oops, there goes the surprise. In the course of eight meetings yesterday I found a place and roommates that I really liked and casually committed myself to a year of their company. What's worse is that the guy of the male/female pair wasn't even there, but traveling in Boulder, CO. And don't worry they are not a pair in any way (yet) but anonymous strangers. I won't ever make the "hi we're a couple looking to fill a room" Craigslist mistake again.

Today I mailed the deposit and cancelled five housing meetings, which is the best feeling in the world when you don't even want to get out of bed at 11AM. I spent most of the day doing a work-sleep rotation and stumbled outside a couple times to find Mexican food. My bedside table looks like a recently-departed pop star's minus the syringes (hidden behind the lamp.)



Tomorrow morning I jet off to Calgary via Montréal to repose on the front porch of the family farm for a short spell. I should mention that I'll be offline so my posting schedule will remain irregular. Maybe I should mention that I have no readers too, but then you'd be miffed.

As the pro-drowsy formula kicks in I bid you all goodnight from my three-person sachel-tied red ruffly curtained room and I'll pray for more humble accomidations on the farm. Think attic with ghost of bat.

organize orange orang-utan

I struggled back to the office today to see what it felt like after 4 weeks of voyage to come back to two jobs, one which may have ended and the other which may not have started. Predictably I spent much of the day evading the clockable hours and tended to more mundane housekeeping, looking for Boston lodging for the fall and filling out medical forms for the university. Way to come back home a changed man--I'll never accomplish personal transformation before a computer screen.

As week-long Alps-related neck pain encroached upon my afternoon I desired a comfy couch and a pile of books. The heat and a couple aspirin put me into a doze but some good reading transpired afterward. The things I really want to do that take a bit more than passive attention, such as working my way through a new pop piano instruction book and sprechin' a little deutch, seem still off limits. But writing is not, and I realize I really have to start writing every day, just in case I have a grandson in 50 years who lives in a bubble and thinks my world was interesting.

Dear grandson, I promise that I'll make the world better for you and all your fellow humans and critter friends of the world, and other planets if such discoveries should be made soon. But I'm not writing to promise you a better world, just to give you a little perspective on a world very different then yours. Hence (yes I know you'll no longer have this word in your dictionary) but hence I will try to be a bit more concrete in my writing from now on so you don't have the abrasive feeling of experiencing bad abstract art, but instead a good funny tale from your old-timer granddad. Oh and here's a picture of me writing this at age 32. Yes, we didn't have 24-hour 3-D personal video recording in my time, just these crazy ear pieces for hearing external music sources.
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My uncle has been writing to his grandson, sending his diary entry and my grandmother's for the corresponding day in 1950. There was an acute dearth of pictures, but great descriptions of every day life on the farm.

Homing in on confusion

I arrived here from Boston via Paris and Geneva from Chamonix, the tourist mecca under Mont Blanc in the Alps. Here is home, but home feels like such a bad word these days. My trip lasted three-and-a-half weeks, beginning in my future home in Boston for Sarah and Oren's wedding (cousin and cousin-in-law and all around wonderful companions.) I played tourist there when I should have been shopping for my future neighborhood, but who can resist a T ride down to Quincy to learn all about the Adams? Next Air France took me to Barcelona with a courtesy dinner and two breakfasts, unheard of in American airspace. I wandered the city until my Barcelonian friend Elena came home and rescued me from bad tourist restaurants and gave me an insider's tour complete with local cheese and meats and a three-course patio lunch in here little beach town of Premia for just 10€. Next it was train time. I breezed out of Spain along the Mediteranean at 80+ mph to Montpellier, a lovely walkable town with nightlife 'til dawn and streetcars and paving stones instead of cars and asphalt. Then I jumped on a TGV to Lyon and a couple mountain trains to Chamonix.

I had no idea what lay in store for me when I began my 12 day trekking tour around Mont Blanc. I was gifted 14 other hikers and two guides, many of whom became my best friends for the duration. My roommate Ross was a one-of-kind intrepid New Yorker (New Jersey, I know Ross) who is spending the Summer conquering Europe and striking up conversation with every old man, beautiful woman, fortunate cute dog, and everyone in between. Language barriers for him are opportunities, and his camera and humor are his tools for priceless moments and a hilarious travel blog, http://rossgoround.blogspot.com/. His outlook on travel is truly inspirational and I wish him the best in Croatia and nations beyond.

The Alps trek can only be called spectacular. The views and flowers are meekly portrayed in my photos, which I'll link to here when I'm off my iPhone and back at the big keys. If there were ever a case where every penny I spent was worth it, it was this trip (and the Lasik surgery I had in '01.) Despite the stiff neck from hiking that still plagues me a week later, I wish nothing more than to be back on those gorgeous alpine passes again.









I wanted to return home and write something humorous, but this weekend I'm really in a daze trying to figure out what it is I'm doing at home. I know I have to get ready for grad school this fall, and that means planning, studying, and making some money, but I have no idea why I have to do any of that from here. Other than some expensive rent to pay I really have nothing keeping me here. My friends and family shouldn't be offended; they've seen enough of me lately and know what's best for me. I've worked for years at making this a place I like to be. I can play that game for another 6 weeks or I can fold and buy some more plane tickets.

At this point any good listener would ask me, what's really going on here? Do I feel like I'm missing out on something, do I fear my immediate and long-term future, or do I just wish my days could be as pleasant and carefree as the mindless, serene trekking of last week? I was so free of stress last week--I didn't wander around with a tight jaw; company was a given and not a luxury; I barely saw a computer and didn't have to worry about being the solitary beta male that seems to dominate my home life. The crystal ball says that I will now resume my daily trudges to the office and gym. I will waste away my evenings with a walk around the ugly neighborhood that is nicer than anything else around the city because this city is so fundamentally ugly. I won't maintain my spirit of meeting new people and talking ro strangers that Ross inspired so simplistically.

We all have our balls and chains, but what should we do when there is a rare opportunity to break free of them all, or at least check them at the airport counter? Maybe all I really need to do is stick my head up straight, stiff neck notwithstanding, smile, and keeping walking down the street with that beat-up Spanish novel that survived Europe as my makeshift dossier. I could lie down in my housemate's new hammock and read that book, or learn some German, or watch the rest of Eddie Izzard's all-French performance on YouTube. I can keep eating the pumkin bread with garlic yogurt that I bought from the Afghan guy at the farmer's market yesterday. Maybe life isn't so bad if I can keep making big plans and stay patient. I dunno.

Una idioma perdida

Sorry if you don't read the Spanish, but if you're dedicated enough to be here, you probably do have a grasp of it.

Odio decirlo, pero como siempre hice un buen rato que no hablé ni escribí en castellano. Viajaré en España por la primera vez en tres semanas. Aunque voy a pasar solo unos días en Barcelona prefiero lograr un nivel decente de una idioma que no es ingles. Supongo que me frustrará no hablar catalán, pero no puedo evitarlo. Lo importante es que utilice lo que conozca.

Tengo que limpiar el polvo de las casetas del curso avanzado del Foreign Service Institute. No se donde encontrar una grabadora pero parece que hay un curso semejante al mío en el Internet: http://www.fsi-language-courses.com/Spanish.aspx. Lo voy a examinar.

¡Hoy es el 2 de junio y hace lluvia! Dicen que va a llover un poco mañana y mucho el día siguiente. Y ahora predicen relámpagos y trueno viernes. Me hace recordar la tormenta de junio en 1995 en el día que me gradué de la escuela secundaria. Nunca se espera la lluvia aquí entre los meses de junio y agosto. ¡Que suerte!

Quiero escribir mas en español antes de mi viajé et ojala que siga el costumbré después.

let's talk musicanship

If were Ben Folds I'd be endlessly entertained by the ability to play my own songs and anything else I wanted to play. This shouldn't be construed as the start of a fantasy posting; it is rather a segway into how I can improve as a musician. I'm not trying to be a professional or even a live performer. I would like to be someone who gets better at playing the type of music I love so that when I belt out a tune at a party I am satisfied with my twenty five years of playing the piano.

Without analyzing my skills, let's just say that I'm a level 2 musician, somewhere beyond a beginner, and I want to improve over the years by a level above 2. 2 is the answer to everything, by the way. I recently spent two years learning jazz piano with a private instructor. I probably learned a lot from it, but I have difficulty applying the acquired skills to improve playing, which is what I do the most. I should be composing music and making arrangements of songs I want to play, since that's what we worked on it the lessons. But I don't do either of those things. Thus the taught type of playing didn't match what I do now, and also the genre didn't match what I do. I'm not a jazzer, I'm a pop "artist." We did work on pop a bit towards the end but it was exclusively arranging pop pieces. I need two things, I need to get better at improv and I need to find motivation to arrange and compose.

I can get help from either instructional material or a teacher. Perhaps I can find a hybrid, such as online videos of instructors that you pay to watch. These exist for guitar and for piano. They tend to be targeted to beginners, but I'll keep my eyes open for a suitable one.

The problem with being me

If I could describe to you the currents in my mind, you would probably nod with agreement. You might relate it your own currents that pulse within, swimming around your head and occasionally dipping into other organs when it's too big for your brain to contain. To describe how I feel, I start at the zero, zero, zero coordinate in my brain. The pulse goes out to my forehead and then down to my nose. It splits from there to the two sides of my jaw that stay stiff all day because they clench whenever I feel stress. Thence it shoots out a ahead of me and performs daring lunges and meager ascents all the live-long day. It drags the rest of me along with it until I get tired and fall behind. Then it patiently trots back and awaits my rejuvenation.

If I could reign in that current I would tether it to many ropes and then force it to spread in all directions in front of me, so that I might follow whatever bit of it I pleased, grabbing another reign and pulling myself left and right, like the feeling you get when you use a motor boat's velocity to accelerate you over the wake while water skiing. That terrific pull diagonally-forward leads you to a new point of braced anticipation. Though my course is inevitably set by external factors, I would like to create more the illusion of a spectrum of activity rather than the line that is reality.

It's hard for any of us to be errant, but it beats following that boring old rising and falling pulse that composes the daily rhythm which I've thus described. I need to find a way to live paragraph two. I sometimes feel it then loose it. Maybe I need to meditate, maybe I need to dance. All I know is that the minor adjustments aren't doing it for me. I'm thirty-two and I all too often feel like the sixteen-year-old who still sits in his room alone and wishes a friend would call.

Song improvisation

I'm great at singing pop songs. I know the lyrics to a couple hundred, and it's quite often that I make it all the way to the bridge before floundering on a the last verse. When I shift my hands on the piano over into improv mode, I flounder immediately. I realize just now the reason. I don't know what it is that I'm listening for. When I play pop tunes I'm trying to recreate the way my brain hears the song. Would it be possible for my brain to come up with something it wants to hear and then mimic that on the piano? Some improvists must perform from that motive; when I try to tinker around and make a noise that my brain likes I inevitably repeat the same lick to try to make my brain remember it.

I was going to use the first paragraph to segway into something more interesting, but my written improv apparently fails me the same we as the musical when my brain hasn't decided what it wishes to put to pen. Maybe I'll go diary for a paragraph or two, copying that which my brain has already observed and processed, and reproduce it in an entertaining manner.

This past weekend was my 32nd birthday. I have to say it was one of the best birthdays I've had. First off a Saturday birthday is great because it can be legitimately celebrated from Friday afternoon through Sunday, especially when that Sunday is Easter and that means that the nice restaurant on the corner has an unusual number of empty tables. The surprisingly wonderful thing about the weekend was that I got to see most of the people in my current life in several settings and altering quantities and intimacies. From hot tubs to crowded concert halls to fancy upstairs dining, it was really a varied petting zoo.

I don't worry much these days about the future. I figure as long as I'm not in prison or defending the rear flank in some crazy combat mission that I'm in pretty good shape. I suppose disease could bring me down in a hurry, but otherwise things will be just fine for me for a while. I'm especially excited about a little bit of camping momentum that started with some kayak camping a week ago and continues with some bike camping this week's end. I'm declaring a bi-monthly camping trip that migrates further and further north, following the last green grass that dies away so soon around home.

Hold me, I'm changing

When I think of change I think of Albin de la Simone's lyrics "tu vois, j'ai changé, j'ai changé, j'ai changé, ne t'inquiete pas (You see, I've changed, ..., don't worry)" followed by some dreamy Yiddish-sounding fiddling or vocals, depepending on the version (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRIXcCT_jEk.) Tonight as I approach ten o'clock with scarcely experienced energy levels, I feel the metamorphosis of a change. It feels a little like adaptation or maybe devolving, and I'm happy to have noticed it. The abstract: I think a kind series of events is extracting the last of my twenties out of a previously sealed orafice.

I just got my last lick of ice cream before I had to rescue it to the freezer in semi-fondu form. Now time for the chocolate, whose melt-time still pales to that of glass but beats the ice cream soundly on a cool evening. The ice cream is in fact vanilla soy paired with mango sorbet, which is one of TJ's few foods worth buying more than once. My first bite of chocolate reminded me of eating some just a moment before. I haven't had any since last night, though, so I either lost a day between bites or I snuck a bite upon retrieval from the cupboard when my mind was still on the ice cream.

Avoiding the topic of change, you see, is tempting because change is as difficult to describe as it is to force. But to get to the body of my thesis, I'll say that I feel more grounded in a world that looks to get out of the culture I live in. Counter-culture maybe then. Nah, that sounds too rebellious. I feel like someone who walks through traffic everyday and can't wait to climb a hill with my concertina and a backpack and sing to the wind, and finally then burrow into my sleeping bag and listen for predators. Maybe this is just another hippy in the meadow vision. I like the idea of grabbing a handbook and learning how to forage for food in my ecosystem, and then being able to write poems about taking the modern out of the man. Maybe it isn't a unique moment of naturalistic yearning, but it's my moment, and this time it's packing heat. My past jaunts with nature have been jovial but hands-off. I think that's why I tell people I like winter weather. It's me asking for nature to throw something real my way and I'll manage, thank you very much. I'm not trying to express any desire to starve, freeze, or become carnage out in the wild buff, in fact I'd rather be as comfortable as possible. All I want is to apply my sensory organs to something natural for that will leave some lasting memories.

I have a couple nature weekends on the mental calendar, one involving a boat and the other the bike. I think I need to add a third trip that has only one provision: me. It's time for me to do a little camping by myself for a night and see what happens. Just me and a trusty three-course meal to keep me warm inside. I'll hike in a couple miles and settle down somewhere serene where I can read my iphone by the light of the gas stove fire as I digest cheesecake smores (107K hits on google for that original idea.) When my iphone expires I'll cross my legs and lie still and listen. In the morning I'll leave any lingering doubts about my twenties in a little hole with the folding trowel.

Spring time flustering

I have to write something here tonight since I just wrote in my other two blogs, and I want to accomplish the triple crown, or triple play, or hat trick...trifecta perhaps. I also wanted a chance to use whereof, a word whereof I know little but noticed in some writing this morning and decided it needed a normal sprinkling with the other slightly arcane or formal words that I promote. Is there a word for someone who uses or tries to reintroduce arcane words into English? Of course there must be.

On to more pressing topics--events that occur outwith my noggin--the coming of spring. She has certainly sprung; my Where's Waldo? or Harry Potter wool yellow/maroon striped scarf went into hibernation at the ice rink and my Cubavera, the Cuban take on Guayabera, with its short sleeves and flowery flaming patterns now grace my boney shoulders. Anyone who knows me has heard my predliction for winter, at least here in California, where rain and cool weather make the hills green and everthing beautiful. Summer means dead grass and predictible boring weather, "Fog clearing in the morning with temperatures reaching the mid seventies." My problem with the warmer half of the year is the pressure that it brings, not atmospheric but social. Warm weather doesn't exactly say "go flop down on the couch and finish that ebook on your iphone." It pushes me to get myself outside and somehow simultaneously exercise, absorb nature, socialize with strangers, and possibly curse at drivers who don't understand their inferiority to all creatures that operate under their own power. With some good preparation, I can accomplish some socializing and recreating, but not necessarily at 5pm after work when I haven't planned anything. So I have to wander the neighborhood feeling that I'm missing out and unprepared, while glasses clink on the bar patios and spandexed bikers race through traffic (chacun à son gout.)

I know there's something good about having high social, intellectual, and emotional expectations of myself. And I know that feeling frustrated socially is a great impetus for drawing a new lot and progressing through a world full of opportunity. Thus when I do get a little peeved on a day like this, it's because it's too nice to sit and read, too nice to go to the gym, and the activities worthy of the day are out of reach for me. I accept the perturbance as something I've felt time and time before, and vow to have the calendar filled in the future, or find some more friends that I won't be afraid to call for spur of the moment play time.

It's good and dark now and I've exhausted my brain and tickled my emotions with a bit of blogging. I have a feeling my legs still want to run over a hill but they'll have to wait for game 1 of Oakland Ice Center Adult Hockey Silver B playoffs tomorrow evening (very free admission.) In the meantime I will do a rain dance to my scarf and we'll pray together for a little more wet and cold before the lush green grasses gild, just for procrastination's sake.

Mr. Burns anitquations

I discovered sound boards the other day online, which are a convenient listing of favorite quotes from a film or show by one or various characters. You click a link and get the audio. Yesterday evening while becoming a host for a deer tick in the woods (and I was afraid of the cougars,) I decided that I really must have access to all of Mr. Burns dated sayings. Alas I couldn't come up with the right Google query to recover a collection of such goodies. I asked a work friend who is a trained linguist and search engine guru. He suggested I find a quote by Mr. Burns and then rummage around the contexts in which it shows up on the web. I quickly came across a great archetype: "Damnation!" That failed me though, as did further furrowing along the same lines. I'll have to try again tomorrow, but it's comforting to know that I will have few peers if I manage to track down a list and learn some old time language.

I often write when I read great writing, and Tom Robbins always puts me in the mood. He also makes me wonder how much his characters inspire people of the world to try to be someone extraordinary. His characters often relish life, and are usually bigger than it. They explore the arcane, question the law, and generally have a pretty good time. Psychedelics and pedophilia aside, there are positive gleanings to be had from the books, and I wonder how many people drop their day job and tramp off the woods, or Istanbul, when a reading and stagnate life circumstances collide. I suppose it's time to formulate another tricky Google gaggle of quoted words and newspeak and look for anecdotes.

Tired, but 16 hours aren't up

I decided earlier in the day that I should schedule something for every day of March, which begins in a couple hours. Simultaneously my housemate came to a similar conclusion due to her recently increased availability. She asked me for advice on things to do and I, who had perused Meetup.com for two hours earlier in the day, was full of ideas. Meetup didn't really give me many ideas, save for a couple board game clubs (do I like board games that much?) and a couple more hiking clubs (I've joined about 5 and attended 1 group twice.) Nevertheless, néanmois, de repente (no that's suddenly, it's -- sin embargo o no obstante), German uh trotzdem (thanks wordreference), nevertheless it's good to be able to help out another erring soul who is trying to figure out the best things to do with themselves.

I've been thinking about activity a lot lately. I no longer worry wasting my life away. I'm highly interested in a tensome of things (why don't we have a common word for tens, is a dozen really more practical? Where's dizaine in English?) But I do have to worry a lot about maximizing time, balancing activities, and yet learn to do these things instinctively so my life is enjoyable and not mechanical. Maybe Amazon can help me find How to Schedule Life Implicitly. For those of us who have spent the vast majority of our lives as a singularity, unbound from the fairer sex (which apparently isn't always women, as I assumed,) we tend to be hyper-aware of the two extremes in scheduling life. Alone, we attempt to fill every moment with useful activities whose goal is to end our lonliness and unite us with someone. In the brief moments in our lives when we are in a relationship, our scheduling goals change to spending as much time as possible with our mate and then doing very little with the rest of the day. If the relationship survives for a while, we slowly learn to refill our personal time with useful activity. If the relationship is comfortable we probably reach some nice balance between time together and well-used time apart. I've never gotten there, but I know couples who have. It seems nice.

Getting back to the present, my housemate and I have tentatively agreed on helping each other keep busy this coming March. I'm skeptical of this, because we've never spent a minute outside the house together, except to move some furniture once. As for my second housemate, I have never spent a minute off the property with her in four solid months. That's sort of crazy if you think about it. I have two housemates whom I've never experienced in any way outside of my home. We have had one housewarming party, which was the best portal into their extra-domicile lives I ever got. Speaking of which, I'm scheduling a spring equinox party for March 20th. I've never been invited to one, but it seems like the redominance of sunlight is worthy of celebration, especially since spring is by far the nicest season in Northern California, what with the green hills, interesting weather, longer days, and not too overbearing warmth.

Now that it's 10:45PM I can safetly shut my computer and my eyes. My alarm is set for 6:45AM which means I've completed 16 useful waking hours of the day. I know I should be out partying and getting into crazy narcotics on a Saturday night. But let's say that I'm doing a little reading, writing, singing, playing, web authoring, German studying, and weight lifting as an investment for better times, when I can waste it all groveling to that special someone.

It's business time

You could say that this flight home ends the first business trip of my life, save perhaps the wine and dine trip put on by Microsoft when I was a ripe 23. This week life felt a little more complete. I spoke all week with academics in my desired field of study. I blended into three wintry cities and entered the buildings of six universities. I was operating by myself and for myself. I road three planes, three trains, and three subway systems. I felt longings for intellect, kinship, newness, and to dedicate myself to someone without neglecting my ego.

I keep thinking about language acquisition, but I can't stay on the subject long enough to hit on anything good. My French was crippled in Montreal by my unbalanced practice of reading books but not practicing colloquial utterances. I'll talk about that in my Ich kann blog.

I like being more complete, because I avoid reverting to the emptiness of years past, and it increments. I think that's what hurts so much about a breakup (relevant utterance: elle m'a plaqué.) A breakup is a decrement in completeness. It may open the way for something more fulfilling, yet the hollow of the meantime scrapes at your organs like hunger in the belly.

I took one photo on this trip. With snow like this, how can you not.