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.