Birthday over.
Thirty-three, I believe. Aside: title already taken. Commentary: owell.
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This is a “second keyboard” sort of post.
This is a “two keyboard” sort of life.
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There was a morning in southern California at ABC-CLIO, after I started riding a bicycle to work, when I sat against a concrete cylinder on the grounds and wrote about sailboats in a harbor and the changing of seasons. This is essentially my only fond memory of the region or the epoch.
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Miserable periods of life are notable for two things: 1) poignancy, 2) sensuality. The sun, the pavement, the sun, the pavement, the meaning of it all, the day after day, the lie of it all, the ecstasy.
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I bought two small $2.99 plants at Home Depot, both ivies (one medium light, one low-light) because I believed that they would help to wick away stress and promote tranquility in material-visual phenomenological being. So far so good.
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Car needs a new blower and a new seal around sunroof. In a day or two it will pass 221,000 miles, all on original engine. At some point it will have to be replaced, I presume, though the thought of a “public transit life” always hovers about the edges of a New York individual biography.
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Two fans in my laptop and both are getting older/slower/louder/less effective. Yes, I’ve used canned air. I’ve even had the damned unit totally into pieces replacing hingeset, MiniPCI cards, and the like. Dust removal = temporary fix, but eventually this will die.
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Eventually everything will die.
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The USB RAID-1 I have sitting here has a pulsating blue LED when it’s in powersave/sleep mode. I remember when blue LEDs were invented. It is only a few years ago. Japanese guy, like all worthwhile inventions.
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The Kindle is officially a tremendous waste of money and at the same time also the most worthwhile thing I’ve purchased in years. It was instrumental in helping me to pass my graduate exam with honors and has been a critical factor in the acceleration of my nonfiction and fiction reading as of late. Hooray, Kindle. Bigger brain, me.
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“Love” comes in all shapes, sizes, and sensibilities. I have “love” for many of my friends. If only that meant that I could actually do something for them, the purpose of love’s relative diversity would be much more apparent.
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The tires will burst soon. Cities are hard on tires.
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Meanwhile, bicycle season is approaching again. Good thing, too. I remember when I could ride my bike to work. Funny, that. Everything was perfect in many ways and it was the least happy period in my life so far.
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I’m officially learning many languages as of this month: German (re-learning/perfecting), Polish (how can you not speak it if your wife does), Chinese (goddammit, the family speaks it why haven’t I yet) and Arabic (why not?) are on dock. Others later, in no particular sequence, certainly not as correlated to either need or utility.
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New York Subways are a kind of wombcoon that foster anti-ennui in the soul. The indescribable sense of “being on the subway” cannot be conveyed to or shared with anyone who has never actually experienced it.
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Were I “on the subway” right now, all of this would be twice as important yet half as critical.
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My neck is sore lately.
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I remember having a soapstone African figure of the sort that is all too common. I bargained for it at a fair with a person whose accent was such that I almost couldn’t understand it. To my shame, the figure is long lost, my thoughts about the figure are rare, and they are heavily oriented toward the figure itself rather than toward its origin.
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I don’t think I crossed the Midway more than once or twice in Chicago. I miss Chicago, even as I love New York.
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There is more than enough culpability to go around. Those who are most willing to condemn are least willing to accept or evaluate it.
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In general, the consensus about parking lots is that they are not particularly inspiring. The parking lots of national forest campgrounds, national park trails, and national monuments, however, are of a uniquely different caliber: they make one feel not only alive but also primordial, expansive, natal, and explosive.
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There is no such thing as a soul.