The last day of February starts with hail falling through the streaming sunlight. Somewhere close it is bright and sunny. Small chunks of ice leap and somersault off the hood of my car like olympic gymnasts come two years too early. They dive and die into fleeting flows along the sides of the road. It's always like this, the days of sunshine banding together and the stormy ones, thick as thieves. They last long enough to make you think they'll never end, just long enough to break you for a moment.
It's long, but I think worth the read, especially if you're twenty or thirty something and you have job but you don't know where you're going in life.
Tribal Workers by Thomas Barlow
A man comes to a crossroads and all the roads weigh equally in his mind. He thinks, "Ah, so many choices, is there anyone more fortunate than me?" At that moment all roads are available to him and he is the master of his own destiny. So he sits and contemplates his good fortune. A day passes and then another. Soon it has been a week and soon a month. His feet grow into roots and his arms stretch into branches; his body becomes a long slender trunk. The sun there is strong and the rains are frequent. He grows tall and from the tops of his branches he can see all the places he could have been. One day another traveler comes by and sits beneath his shady boughs. After an hour of quiet contemplation the traveler chooses path. The man-tree thinks to himself, "What a fool, to have given up this freedom to choose."
My left hand is cold. I moved the mouse over a few years ago now. I remember the day my wrists started to fail me. We were at the gym and I was trying to show her my boldering moves -- a slight twinge -- and now I'm more careful. That was the last time she came to climb.
Way leads on to way. And this is about Ishmael again: "Take charge of your future! Control your destiny!" I'm so scared of what happens next. I think, if I can just control this one thing, then these other bad things won't happen. But that's just it. You try to nail all the variables down and all you find is more variables. You find out that you can never control enough in your life. And eventually you eliminate all the chance in life. You think, "There's always a price."
I once had the thought that it would be a sad thing to die without a scar. What were these bodies for but to be used? And I would be proud to point and say, "There's an interesting story about that." My hands are cold and my wrist hums with a now familiar hurt. I smile and think, "I'm getting old." I smile about the small chances I've taken.
You'd think that my thoughts would get stuck. They might build like water against a levy, a reservoir contained by a dam. They don't. Thoughts flow through and if I don't catch them and record them in these little snapshots, they're gone forever. Lately it's been all olympics and finances. For months now I've been telling people that I've been too busy and that I needed to clean up my finances, shred some documents, create and stay on a budget ... do my taxes. Well, lately I've been busy doing that. And once I start in on the taxes I'll be even busier.
I have a co-worker who doesn't seem to have many cares. He seems almost transitory here, despite having worked here about a year longer than I have. I learned recently that he doesn't do much by the way of savings. In a way I envy him. Sometimes they call money, flow. Like my thoughts, money gets stuck behind a wall of future considerations. Lately, it seems my flow has been stagnant.
These last few olympic events don't concern me much. I tuned in to watch the women's figure skating, but I didn't care much. The scores seem random and the skating seems abrupt and choppy. But I suppose my thoughts have been no better. And I wonder why you, yes you, bother to tune in.
When I woke up Wednesday morning it was a few degrees above freezing. My flight left New York at 6:25am and I arrived in Oakland at 1:20pm. I stopped in Boston and made an unscheduled stop in Denver on my way into work (ran out of gas). Luckily I only stayed for three hours after which I went to the gym. I wasn't all that tired since I took several naps during the day. Still, sleep came easy.
Today, when I woke up, it was colder. Colder here in the Bay Area than in New York. A thin coat of frost covered the cars in my neighbor's driveways. I hadn't turned on the heat in the house overnight. I thought that would have been silly since I'd just come from the worst blizzard New York had seen in almost sixty years. It must have been 32 or below last night. During the Blizzard of 2006, it never got below 34. My house has crappy insulation.
Tomorrow when I get up, it will already be Friday. Many of my coworkers will have taken the day off to get an extra day on the slopes. I'll try my best to get caught up on a few things; you wouldn't believe how much piles up when you get into work two days late. Friday night is my quietest night of the week. I might keep it that way, stay at home and watch the Olympics. When someone asks you what event you'd want to participate in, never answer ice dancing, even your girlfriend will start to wonder.
We all make certain sacrifices - we all take certain risks - for what we love. C___ and I spent an early valentine's dinner at Danube, a very chic restaurant in lower Tribeca. Dinner itself was excellent despite the fact my stomach decided to start a rebellion in the middle of the meal. I thought I might appease the native gods by going to bed early. Unfortunately, I ended up paying for my excess with more than money that night. It should suffice to say that I didn't get much sleep that night, something that would be remedied by the following night's circumstance.
The next day, weak and weary, we went about our business in a newly fallen winter wonderland. We braved the still falling snow to visit with a few friends. Our last stop of the day took us to visit a couple I had not seen in over a year. At the door, their tibetan spaniel, Skye, came running out to greet us. I can only remember one animal that I have ever had any significant allergy to, and that was a rabbit. I was a bit disturbed to find myself itchy and scratching while sitting there. After their four-month old baby started fussing we left and by the time we got home I was covered in hives. Luckily, C____ has an ample supply of benedryl and I ended up sleeping my way through most of Sunday night and Monday morning.
Monday came and the City had unburied itself from the Blizzard of 2006. Flights had begun leaving from JFK the night before and it seemed as if I would be back to the warmer weather of the west coast soon enough. I found out not thirty minutes before I was to leave for the airport that my flight (and as far as I can tell only my flight) was canceled. There won't be another seat available until Wednesday morning. I originally came here to celebrate Valentine's Day early. Now I will be here all the way through.
And so it goes.
The eeriest thing is that I see no one driving down third avenue, below this window and beyond the small perch of snow that has accumulated over night. And then, when we go outside, I can see no farther than a city block in either direction as the snow continues to fall with alabaster alacrity. This city, familiar to me in it's constantly frenetic form, surprises me, strikingly serene. I imagine that it is decades younger, and horses for the carriages are still in their stables, stamping and snoring, a waiting the start of the day. This despite the snow shells of cars lining the streets and occasional sound of a motorized snow plow.
I stubbed my toe and ended up banging the inside of my left knee on my right heel as I attempted to walk up the stairs early this morning. Later, I managed to forget where I put my security badge a couple of minute after I put it there. Then I dropped same said badge as I was trying to open a door. I'm turning thirty this year and it shows.
I had forgotten all about the Gillette Fusion Razor and its radical innovation of 5, yes 5 blades, which was debuted in a Super Bowl commercial. I can't help but laugh when ever I hear about this. It always reminds me of that South Park episode where a mad scientist (a parody of Marlon Brando's role in The Island of Dr. Moreau) engineers a group of 4 assed creatures and at the end of the episode unveils his greatest creation, "The 5 assed monkey!"
The 2006 Winter Olympics start tomorrow. When I was a kid I used to spend hours watching the Olympics. I used to love to watching figure skating, but after awhile I disagreed so much with the judges' scoring that I couldn't stand it anymore. Maybe this year I'll spare some time and watch a couple of the events for old times' sake.
I've forgotten my mantra: write, write! I deleted two paragraphs for every one that you see here. There was a sentence there that just got deleted. Why shouldn't I let you see? Why should I be writing for anyone else but me? I do though. I'd like to think that every one of us is a little bit exhibitionist. I'd like to think that I'm not alone there.
I suppose the problem is that I'm searching for a point. Every word a step in the right direction. I'd like to think every entry is meaningful, but it doesn't have to be. Life grows in the slow moving waters away from the rushing river. Even now, I don't know where I'm going with this but gravity pulls me down.
I'll take you less than a minute to read this; I took me almost ten to write. I'm sure I'll look back and say, that wasn't my best work. But today I'll grant these thoughts clemency from the editing ax. Today I'll give myself a break and maybe something more than thinking will get done.
On the way in I listened to a speech by Paul Stamets about how he discovered that oyster mushrooms could be used to remediate dioxins and polyaromatic hydrocarbons (both very toxic substances). He spoke of how those same mushrooms went on to decompose and attract insects, which then attracted birds, which carried seeds of plants. He talked of how these mushrooms turned a pile of toxic debris into a lush garden. I thought of Nausicaa and her struggle to make people listen to the planet. I thought about how she discovered, beneath a forest of toxic spores and deadly insects, clear water and clean sand, purified by the trees above. We've been trying to engineer microorganisms to fix the problems we've created, all the while worried that these organisms would get out of control.
Lately, because of Ishmael I've been thinking about the difference between evolution and engineering (or if you will intelligent/incompetent design). I've been thinking about what it means to control our destiny ... and what it costs us. "Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values." So said Golda Meir in Munich. Have we lost too much in trying to ensure our own security? Have we gone to far trying to control our destiny? Every so often we have to stop and look beyond what is necessary. "It's not enough to survive. One has to be worthy of surviving." - Battlestar Galactica
Super Bowl XL sucked. It sucked because of one man, Bill Leavy. If you didn't watch the game, don't bother reading the box scores or the drive logs ... it doesn't tell the story. It doesn't tell the story of spectacularly horrible calls. Calls so bad that if you watched, you know the official's true colors today were black and gold. All that money ... utterly wasted. I would have been praying for more commercial breaks if there had been any good commercials. Well, there was one. Anyway, I'm thoroughly disgusted by the complete waste of a day. Hopefully this will remind me never, ever to watch NFL football again. I really don't care which team has enough money to pay to be crowned a champion.
It's all about first impressions and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito just made a great one with liberals. The very people who tried to keep him out of office are probably wondering, "WTF, man? WTF?" To be fair, many of the people who voted him in are probably thinking the same thing. Who knows, perhaps the man they nicknamed Scalito will ended up being the rightful heir of the swing vote. I just goes to show, it doesn't always turn out the way you think.
Lately, I've been trying to find some literary grace and falling pretty much flat on my face. The words start to blur and I wonder if I really ever had a knack for this. I'm fond of telling C____, "I wish I could sing." She answers, "Well? You can sing." (Actually, I think she says something along the lines of, "I wish you could sing to." But in my mind I like the think the other.) The point of all this rambling is that I don't know if it really matter if you can do, what ever it is you desire to do, well. Just that you enjoy doing it. And besides, it's not only the supremely talented that make it ... after all, just look at Stephen King.
My desk at work reminds me of my room in the house I grew up in. I remember that I was always too busy to pick the clothes up off the floor. My mom would come in and yell at me and tell me to clean up my room. One time I found a cricket in a rather large pile of laundry. My desk at work looks something like that if you replace the clothes with documents from multi-million dollar projects. Even after all these years, some things never change.
I've been looking for a new stereo for my car. In a sense, the vandals (I'd call them thieves if they had stolen anything of real value) did me a favor. My defaced stereo was a little stubborn at time, often refusing to change stations or accept CDs. I'm looking for something that has future compatibility for an iPod.
I'm driving into work in a light rain and heavy fog. There are thousands of droplets scattered across my windshield. All these thoughts get mixed in and layered on. Will the choices I make today be right? Does it matter if am good at what I do? Does any of this ever change? Will I be compatible with my future? The wiper sweeps across leaving a river of running droplet thoughts that drains into the graying morning.