The known and unknown

A friend has chosen to end their life on Sunday. They have cancer. The state they live in allows death with dignity. They cannot leave the hospital currently. Their oxygen needs are beyond what the portable tanks can supply. There is nothing more to be said about it, for now. It has all come as quite a shock, and reminder. 

North Carolina has no dignity, though of course plenty of death. There is a resolution (H410) being lobbied for at the moment. I'm thinking of myself now, if you can't tell. It might have to be suicide the old-fashioned way, if things come to that. I've given up California residency, and it takes a year to re-establish. There just might not be enough time, when the time comes. Perhaps I can challenge Death to a chess match on the beach. 

Of course I'm thinking of myself, that's what death is for. I have a friend that could hardly stand to discuss our mutual friend's condition. It took them less than two sentences to shift the conversation towards themselves when confronted with the information. I'd say, despicable, but I'm no better. This blog proves it. It is useless except as a resource of evidence against me. Since returning here I have tried to write more anonymously, as CS does, but the cat is already out of the bag, as they say. If you prefer your idioms to reference livestock fraud. 

So, here I am again, stepping bravely once more into the known. 

Your love, thanks, and adoration is what feeds my soul. 

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I've said that

I have no new images. I've already said that. 

I could write about the books I'm finishing up, three of them. That might not be very interesting, except perhaps for the Houellebecq. I've read all of his books now except the latest one. There really is no need. He's not a great writer in the normal sense - that his books tell unique stories well. In that regard he is rather limited. The settings are always different, but they seem the same. The main character often has a different name, but they are presented to be some form of the writer. That is an assumption, though. I know very little about him as a person. He advances a similar position in most of his books on social and political issues - that liberal ideals are often deeply flawed, to the point of absurdity. Yet every so often he surprises me with some insight dragged up from the chthonic.  

That's all I have today, but I've said that, too. 

Beware the tides of August

(digital, trying to look like film)

One of the boy's friends is arriving tonight. A first time lone cross-country traveler coming from California. Tomorrow, myself and the boys go on a day-adventure. Then to a football game in the evening that Raquel the mom arranged. She's a very good mom. I probably tell her that too much. I like to oversell some ideas. Keeps everybody off their toes. Love is lost lulling. 

Both boys are of course much older now than they appear in these pics. Soon they will be "young men" though there are still a few months left for them to be boys. I will but them some fireworks and lighters, show them where the bridge crosses the interstate and let the exuberance of inexperience deal with the future. 

(Ilford HP5+ - looking like film)

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And yet

If there is a trick to living then I have yet to figure it out, or to have completely done so. I seem to have done some things correctly, or right - there is adequate money, the things I desire have surrounded me, several hobbies, variable talents, a wife, a son, a dog, a family in Canada. And yet. 

There must be many tricks to life and living, the set of which changes in perpetuity. I will occasionally be forced to overhear people tout and wheez their virtuous lifestyles, how it presumably staves off the feelings of being old, but then minutes later they will also catalog their infirmities, ad infinitum. It is the Sisyphean vacillation of virtue and suffering that they perennially insist impressing upon others. They confuse manners with morals, and consistently over-value their own. I have spent my life trying to escape the virtues of others. It's a nearly universal bore, my escape efforts. Any room can become a panic room if you've shattered every nerve in your body.  

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"I am big, it's the pictures that got small."

I know what tremendous fans of pet pics some readers are. They can't seem to get enough, some of them. 

Fiends rarely understand the pleasures of others, the simple joys most of all. It is the less than sympathetic nature of fiendishness. Happiness in others arise as cruelties meant for them. 

What can anyone oh ever do?

Speaking of cruelties - my home studio is nearing completion. It is as if I have taken on another career, one that costs rather than pays, always preparing to prepare. What you see below are the processors. There are synthesizers also, devices of all kinds, large and small, guitar pedals that few would have believed possible. Never enough, there's never enough. My demented mantra, the source of some dissatisfaction. 

N+1 - the hope of eternally recurring redundancy. The fiendish pleasures of obtaining and duplicating. 

Speaking of, tonight Raquel and I go to see Sunset Boulevard. 

A noir. 

".... it's the pictures that got small."

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Doing Nothing and Learning Little

(filled with lights, lost bells)

There is little to say today. The sun is setting behind the house. The last of the light flittering in the leaves of the trees.

I spent most of the day on piddling concerns, playing with audio and recording gear. Doing nothing and learning little. I did how ever watch Tarkovsky's Solaris. That is at least something. It is always something to watch his films - pensive, poetic, meditative. All of that. Don't worry too much about me, I didn't engage in very much intellectualism. Almost none. I also watched several episodes of South Park. Etc.

Tomorrow I start adjusting to my new role at work - meetings with engineers, onboarding, reviewing the roadmap. I already know all of them and have a good relationship with most of them. I of course hope they feel the same. That makes things a bit easier, most of the time. 

At sunrise tomorrow  I'll go for a bike ride, maybe 15 miles or more. Our new city has hills everywhere and in all directions. It excites my heart and lungs to climb and coast, over and over until my legs abandon me. We moved here a year ago this month. Time still flies of course, but it seems to fly further and further from me and in all directions. 

Save me, save me, save me from this squeeze.....

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A Life Aquatic (gypsies and joblessness)

Some good news at work. I'll be taking over a team in Krakow, Poland. Taking over... what a phrase. I'm not invading Poland, don't worry. No panzers will be obliterating the border. It should all be very peaceful. I'll just be the Product Manager for another team. This will mean a new job title and a raise. It's a portion of the product and a team to which I am already familiar. The transition should be relatively easy. I'll be returning to Krakow, at some point, I would assume. I went there a few times many years ago when I was a minor rock star - worse: a DJ. 

I've had at least two kinds of adult life so far - an entrepreneurial one and a more formal one, restless joblessness and now a career, running with the gypsies and then this job, in that order. There was that third type of life - childhood. I was neither entrepreneurial nor motivated by any of the tradeoffs that now seem to prompt my days. Ah, what I would not give to be once again ripened with legends anew, etc.

My heart of silk

is filled with lights,

with lost bells,

with lilies and bees.

I will go very far,

farther than those hills,

farther than the seas,

close to the stars,

to beg Christ the Lord

to give back the soul I had

of old, when I was a child,

ripened with legends,

with a feathered cap

and a wooden sword.

- Lorca

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