Full Beaver Moon

(Moonrise over San Quentin Palace)

My mother-in-law (that's a strange phrase) came into town bearing gifts.  She had some things for me, for my birthday. A Nikon F-801, a Nikkor 50mm f1.4 lens, and a Nikkor 24-200mm f3.5 - 5.6 lens.  I have been shooting actual film all day, cellulose, silver-halide....  I will be a film snob in a matter of weeks.  I will be correcting Selavy soon on technique, among other things. You'll see...

I have always wanted some "in" to become a snob but I was far too lazy to pursue anything on my own. Now it has landed in my lap. The gods are favoring me again, if only for a flash. In the future when somebody hands me their digital camera I will hold it only by its strap, contemptuously, as if it is a baby's diaper that needs to be disposed of, handing it back to them with a nonplussed look of dismissal on my face, not commenting at all on what I think about it, not needing to.  Or merely stating, "Oh wow, that weighs  much less than it looks like it would. Does it also take light little pictures?"

I might even move back to New York and wear black sweaters.

I tried to escape my fate for a brief moment last night. On a 15 minute break from work I went out to the edge of the parking lot, which is bordered by marshland on the east. Between San Francisco Bay and San Rafael Bay I stood looking across San Quentin Prison to where the moon would rise.  I waited there with my camera and a rickety tripod, far too low in elevation to get a good picture. The moonrise would be blocked by many things, a power line and a dune covered with marsh grass most of all. 

At least I wasn't working, I thought.  Or, in the prison across the bay.  

An older gentleman walking by bemoaned the power lines. It startled me when he spoke.  I didn't hear him coming.  I was beginning to worry that I had been out there too long, that somebody would notice, that I would have to answer for something.  I would make an excuse, or lie.  I'm far too transparent when it comes to guilt.  

He apologized for having startled me.  I said that I was just a little bit nervous, trying to help break my brother out of prison, across the bay.  He didn't seem to think that was funny.  He walked on.  Fuck him, I thought.  No, not that.  He's probably a football coach at Penn State.  

I thought of yelling after him that, "Scott Peterson was framed!!!" or "Leonard Peltier...!!!"  or "Free Jerry Sandusky!!!"  Something, anything...

But I didn't.  I have softened in my retirement years. That twisted old carcass is probably sniffing some boy's underwear somewhere right now.  I might have to start carrying mace with me again soon.

No.  I just don't have anything else to say...  My good friend, Angie Varona, was talking to me the other day about various photo sites. She really likes them.  She says that they are really "artsy" and "neat."  She wants to model for a friend of mine but she's worried that she's getting too old for it.  I'll check with him and see what he says about it all.

No.

No.

No.

The new moon will be on Thanksgiving this year.  It tends to have odd coincidental significance for Rachel and myself.  It is all just a silly noticing of the coincidence, I know.  But it is comforting to have silly things to take note of.  I try to explain conjunction to her and she nods and smiles at me, kissing me when I take a break from talking, quieting my mind, if only for a moment.

.

Occupy My Tire Kingdom

On the way in to work today I was chatting with a friend about the Occupy movement.  He lives a few healthy blocks from Wall Street and he was telling me how he basically agrees with them: that there is vast income inequality that has been aided by the government, and that it is wrong, something should be done.  But they march by his apartment most nights around 3 or 4 in the morning, waking him up, and it's starting to really piss him off. 

After getting off the phone with him something occurred to me.  That, while there are clearly some bright and motivated people within this movement there are many that might as well be stand-in's for ossifying bong resin, electrified into action mainly by the paucity of bongo drums.   

I am deeply enlivened by the fact that people are raising questions and injecting some difference into the political conversation as we head towards pres. selection.  But, I have been tasked to predict their doom...  

My predictions will be very specific so as to be verified by many in the future.   

Mark my wurds:

They believe themselves capable of fashioning a better world, a world turning along idealistic terms that clearly suit their leanings of equitability, and subsequently rebirthing our world anew.

In doing so... when finally announcing their wishes... at least one, but perhaps many, of those very wishes will run counter to one (or more) founding principles of The Constitution.  

By doing so they will lose favor with many, though the media will love them almost to the last.  

The first to roundly denounce them might even be the TP's... but for mostly the wrong reasons.  Again, as thus far, they will miss the better point.

The most adequate denunciation will be from "The Left".... being experienced in this type of "distancing"...

Examine closely what they did to Salman Rushdie.


Occupy will cease to be a movement about speech, free or otherwise, at that point.  

It will freely become a media issue about them sort of "getting what they deserved".... 

Nobody will stand up for their "rights" any longer, and all will gladly accept whatever it takes to move them off the stage.  

No "Oscar/Academy" orchestra will usher them out either.  Unless you consider the closing jingle to the 6 and 11 o'clock news an orchestra, or an academy.

What helped me realize this was a consideration of the Tea Party's very narrow definition of a similar issue, and the left's hesitant fear to either address or scrutinize their very reductionary, though mostly online and farcical, canon of Constitution.

This same fear will come to life when suddenly, in the process of trying to subsume the Occupy's energy, the left will suddenly appear to be be repulsed at their actual ghastly wishes (never demands), which will turn out to run somewhat counter to concepts of individual liberty and freedom.  

Watch for a sudden resurgence of those concepts also... though not the TP's version of them.

The left will act as if they were always on board with those very tested terms.


Born To Wrung....::::

Far or near, dear paying friends and loved oner's, don't be misled by my varey scarey prophetic words.  I don't follow, and even much less subscribe, to the Tea Party's gonnorhic rhetoric, that's been duly tested, trued and tried. What I do detest is their misguided adherence to only barely certain Constitutional principles, and then they lay false claim on it all as their guiding motto, My word, and by their exclusively skewed definitions... You good folks needn't worry about such a scurrilous scandal. 

But, that aside...

I also recognize both the apposite and alternate impulse in the Occupy'ers daily buzzwords and apothegms.  

Perhaps we are all doomed here together.

It breaks my heart, truly and deeply.  The idea of a substantially left-leaning movement to naturally rise out of sudden discontent, oppression, and near-chaos, then to speak profound and lasting slogans that at the time sounded absurd, but then become and became revered doctrine....

I mean... that is exactly what this nation was founded on, wasn't it.

.

220+

(My weight 6 months ago)

I went for a bike ride yesterday, then again today.  It has been some time since I last rode.  It is easy to forget what fresh eyes it can give you, depending on how you ride, and what for.  

This morning I got a fresh set of eyes into my clogged heart.  I attempted to ride up Lovall Valley Road.  It is impossible to tell from that link exactly how difficult the uphill ride is.  But I promise you, that from where the squared-off roads stop, and the river-like road begins, it is far up into the hills, an unrelenting and unforgiving heart shock.  As I rode upwards in the lowest gear possible, up and around bend after bend, I felt a sausage link make its way from my left ventricle out into the aorta, then it dissolved into my blood stream and I got a very nice minced-pork-high from it. 

No, I kid.  But it was an eye-opener for me.  I have ballooned up to about 25 pounds above the weight that I am happiest at.  It shows.  I don't even know what I weigh now but it is up there, somewhere well above the numbers that keep me happy.

I saw a card that said, "If you are what you eat, then I want to eat a skinny person." 

Ok, that is my wisdom for you today.  

There is much else to do in this new world, China has just announced its nuclear ambitions.....

.

Turducken Delight

A one-day weekend that is now over, back to work I go. 

Thanksgiving is almost upon us.  I'm considering making a turducken this year.  But instead of the traditional layers of fowl meat, slow-cooked and rolled into deliciousness, I was thinking about using an American Eagle, Jackass Penguin, Riverine Rabbit and a Red-Bellied Amazon River Piranha.  I want this year to be really special.  There are so many animals on the endangered species list, I simply don't know which ones to eat first.  It will require some research. 

Where will I find the time?

I've long flirted with the idea of becoming a vegetarian.  Sometimes when I am eating chicken, from the bone, I get repulsed and am unable to finish. I am unable to even look at the poor disgusting beast that died for my pleasure.  Then it will take me hours before I can eat meat again. Usually a bacon cheeseburger with bleu cheese will bring me back into the fold.  It is strange, I am not squeamish at all but an apparently deep recognition of some wordless thing rushes to the surface and my sensibilities turn on me.  Perhaps it is future humans sending messages to my taste buds to help encourage me onwards and upwards. 

I wonder how long it will take before the Occupy movement turns on itself, wrapping up in the warmth of conspiracy theories about itself.  It occurred to me that  many of these people that are dissatisfied with the current situation are also the very ones who seem to be susceptible to the strangest of the conspiracy theories.  Suggesting that Monsanto or Halliburton is somehow behind the thing, and positing even vaguely supportive evidence, would be all that it might take. Not that I have interest in undoing their efforts, at all.  These are merely the type things I daydream about on my day off. 

Ok, back to the diamond mines..... where one day, if I really work hard, for my entire life, I might also arrive in the upper 1%.... Though who knows, by then they might have changed the entrance requirements, once again.

.

Another weekend in paradise

I awoke before sunrise, rushed out the door to work in the chilled darkness, my hair wild with sleep, my heart and limbs craving coffee.  As I drove south along Highway 12 the sun began giving evidence along the mountain line that separates Sonoma from Napa.  The internet reported that today would be rainy, that and cold.  The light seemed unusually rich in redness, the morning warning. I chatted with Selavy on the phone as he liberated the world from its other riches in his new role as an after-hours photo-pirate, a corporate corsair.  

He told me stories of wonderful woe and sadness, giving specific flavor to an otherwise unstoried sunrise.

I headed south and then west along the edge of San Pablo Bay, darting along East 37, glimpsing the sun out the window to the left, almost behind me now as it emerged, reflecting its deep reds across the vast waters and up above in the clouds.  Then I was up and heading over the bridge connecting Marin with Sonoma, looking down into the waters of the Petaluma River as the bridge gave scarlet, crimson and cardinal views... its red opinions.  

Selavy's purloining continued unabated, mixed with tales of unusual sorrow.  We chatted about the strangeness of the world, about its unexpected nature, the wretchedness and woe, the occasionally unending despair.  

Then we took some time to laugh about it all... about the upshot, the outcome, the results... the dejected pantomime of comedic life. 

I departed one highway for yet another, an even larger, faster one.  Gliding along the elevated loop that finally ends in an on-ramp the sun ceased being merely an horizon event.  The sunlight across the waters went from being a spectrum of mainly reds to many yellows.  It went from being an earth event to an openly celestial one, making its daily transition from considerable to absolute. 

Its first rays hitting my face directly as I completed the semi-circle and merged onto 101, heading south towards what I will be forced to call my day. 

.

Class of '86

(Lyman High School, a near-alumni)

Tonight is my 25th high school reunion.  I won't be going.  It is many miles away now.  I didn't know about it until I saw something on Facebook. I scrolled through the names of people who responded positively concerning it and I only recognized a couple of names.  Perhaps I only remembered those couple of names.  I couldn't tell.  I don't remember very much on my own from that time period.  When other people tell stories sometimes I will feign remembrance, sometimes the memory will come back to me, though rarely on my own.  My youth is becoming an increasingly barren place.

I dropped out of high school the year before graduation.  I couldn't take it any more.  I didn't care for high school at all, and they pretty much felt the same about me. The administration, I mean.  Among the other students I had a few friends, few that I remain in contact with.  There are some on Facebook but with most of them I have developed new friendships there that have little to do with our relationships then, or nothing at all.  To be honest I'm not even sure how well we knew each other then. As for Facebook it grants one the luxury of knowing everybody pretty much equally, give or take a few late-night drunken posts.  I wonder why anybody would still want to be my friend if they knew me then.  I was an emotionally hostile and mentally unstable loud-mouthed little shit.  Sometimes I still am. 

If I could go back and talk to my childhood self I would probably say, "Shut the fuck up you pompous little windbag" and then throttle myself into gasping tears.  No, I kid.  I have nothing to say to myself. I've broken off diplomatic ties with my past.  

I knew-it-all then, and I was right.

I do wonder what it would be like to go back and see some of the people that I knew then.  I wonder how it would feel, how they would act.  I wonder how I would act, what I would say.  Even long before I moved from Florida to NYC, approximately 12 years ago, I had separated myself from the group of people that I knew in high school.  I became deeply involved in electronic music and the culture of drugs that accompanied it, around 1988.  What they say is quite true about such things.  If you see somebody distancing themselves from their friends then they might have a drug problem. They also might be having the best time of their lives, if the drug turns out to be ecstasy.  It was.

Of course 25 years later I feel a little bit differently.  There is perhaps a decade mixed in there that I might have lived differently if I had known that it would take half of a lifetime before I finally emerged on the other side of that experience.  My entire adult life so far could be reduced down to two words: drugs and music.  There are worse words to define a life by, but it makes me uneasy to have lived so simply that I can recognize an immovable truth there.

It wasn't all hard work and misery, doing drugs.  I was fortunate enough to be traveling extensively and I got to see much of the world from a relatively young age.  It was an experience that I would never trade, though I would perhaps modify a bit of it if I could go back. I sound like I'm at the reunion already... bragging perhaps... justifying, sculpting the past  along unverifiable lines.... I would modify my life story in exactly the same way that I would re-tell the story to my old high-school friends.   That is maybe why I would want to go, to hear the subtle and significant changes to the truth. To hear me tell the lies, to see what wonders arise there, what new mysteries of self I might invent.  Which doctoral theses' I might mention...

Or, I would tell them that I am now a famous gypsy, living on an average-sized, privately owned island in the southern Pacific Ocean, practicing my psychic-ness powers.

I have asked an envoy to send my "hello's" to anybody there that might remember me.  I don't hold much hope for reply.  I'll admit that I was eager to get away from most of those people at the time.  I've never known why, really.  I felt that my life was destined for something else and they were psychically holding me back somehow.  Who knows, I just made that up also.  Though now I do enjoy conversing with some of them.  It gives me occasional insight into who I was then. When they remind me of some foolish thing that I had done, or many.  Some hideous memory or collection of experience that they have been giggling about ever since.  Stories that sound plausible enough, that reflect even who I am now, so I trust their verisimilitude. 

It would be fun to bring my pregnant wife to such a thing.  People really love a pregnant woman, they flock around and coo.  They would see that in truth I'm really one of them, just a late bloomer.  I got off to a somewhat hobbled start towards a family in my mid-forties.  In some people's eyes my wife's pregnancy redeems me, puts me on a better course for life, narrower and with a greater chance of success.  There is one thing that every person who has had a child tells me about the experience that scares the bejesus wits out of me.  They say, "It changes everything," often with an odd and extreme look in their eyes...  

But I don't want everything to change.  I want it to be just like high school, or Facebook, or captured in the picture below, just on the verge of departing childhood....

(pre-high school, a disaster eager to happen)

Article IV of The French Quarter

(A semi-amphibious predatory socialist)

A late-night trip to the emergency room last night.  Everything is fine, but it took the trip to verify.  A sudden unexpected scare, for sure.  So, very little sleep last night, and then work all day today....

My republican friend has kindly asked me not to refer to him as a Republican.  That's a laugh.  He argues that America is a republic, against much historical evidence for the term, yet he wants to be known by a name other than the one famously associated as the Grand Ol' Party.  Has there ever been a gayer name for a political party...? Grand 'Ol Party, that sounds like an all night hotel soiree in New Orleans on Halloween night, and the many days following.  Just out GOP'ing for the eve in The Quarter on Bourbon and St. Ann....

Very little escapes these people.  It is the nature of conservatism. They freed the slaves, you know.

It is important to remember when using the term Republican that the word is in no way synonymous with what a republic is.

A true republic answers directly to the people, and eschews hereditary leaders.  Neither of these two qualifiers exist here in any meaningful way. Our government most certainly does not directly answer to the people.  So, we are only a republic in name, just as we are a democracy only in name, having representatives vote in place for us.  

As for avoiding the sin of heredity... Well, just ask around, just don't let the CIA detect you.

The term "Republic" quite quizzically appears in Article IV of the Constitution. It has fed the many dying hopes of people everywhere across this great land that one day the government will actually live up to the terms it has defined for and shrouded itself both with and in.

I would choose not to wait, but my choices might be found to be heretical and foolhardy when the hammer strikes, dear comrades, and the sickle finally sweeps.

Read the above link carefully, your loving founding padres wanted dearly to avoid actual democracy.

Suck it, voters....

Anyway, he claims to be a "conservative" and a "libertarian" rather than a Red person....  I also claim these oddly named values, though in vastly and qualitatively different way.  I would like to conserve the very liberal ideas that birthed this nation, and the noble ideas upon which it has been robbed, but I also believe in some of the very left-leaning ideologies of the Libertarian party.  Also with that Libertarian party, as with the Republicans, there is a rainbowed spectrum of options, much to the far right's assumed dismay, and matched by the left's imagined horror.

So, we're all on board here with my republican friend, one big happy riverboat of Red states, gliding down the Mississippi somewhere past midnight...

He gladly cites The Federalist Papers, and their new KJV translation, as proof.  Reading these words I am struck with the sense of dread sea, rosetta

Ok, I give up, I've run out of time and can think of nothing to finish that last sentence.  I must trudge off to the factory, as Selavy famously says.  Somebody must fight for what is still good and honorable and still left in American society....

(Charon, waiting to pick up his passengers on the river Styx)

.

Nothing's blowing

The heavy winds came yesterday. On the drive across the river you could feel them coming, could sense them in the distance.  There were disorganized flocks of birds traversing the valley, pushed and pulled out of any semblance of order, other than being a flock; wild specks dashing the sky, somehow peppered together. 

The winds gently tugging even the car along the road; towards the other lane, then towards the center, then back. Sudden bursts against each side, offering invisible fight.

By the time that I got home last night, the leaves had oddly amassed in certain places, wild piles accumulated along the ground, having taken hold of my parking spot, occupying it.  Yellow leaves stripped from their trees, scattered here and there. The low and dark clouds making all things seem closer, and faster.  The skies above dashing elsewhere.

All night the wind chimes played their song, a rushed flurry of gentle notes echoing out into the dark, ringing their partial call, ending only in the silence of sleep.

Nothing sings as loss more than winds blown, or blowing

Little stirs leaves like loss; like losing, knowing

Nothing stings, nothing's gone, nothing showing

Nothing's blowing

.

Lost Days

I had planned on waking up early and mounting a rebuttal to my lone republican friend.  Upon awakening I changed my mind. I started to realize how pointless it all is.  He is a fan of Glenn Beck and he relayed to me that Beck was using Beatles' lyrics to criticize Yoko Ono's involvement in the Occupy movement in NYC.  After 4 emails back and forth I was still struggling to get the idea across that Yoko is Not John Lennon, creating a fallacy of logic.  So, I just gave up.   I will leave that for another time.  There is still much to point out, but I suspect it will all also be lost.

The television has already decided for us who will be on which side.  So be it.

Also, my friend was going in to get a pretty serious knee operation today. Last night I thought that this was perfect, that it would give him plenty of time to respond. But this morning the timing seems far less than perfect. 

More on politics later.

My wife and I watched "Less Than Zero" on Sunday.  I had remembered it being better than it was.  It was heavy-handed and dull in many parts, just like the 80's.  James Spader's role was great.  There are few actors, none that jump right to mind, that can play "smarmy" as well as him.  Somehow Peter Gallagher out-smarmied him in "Sex, Lies and Videotape" but it is one of the rare examples.  I still wonder how Spader didn't get the role of being Andie MacDowell's adulterous husband.  That film perhaps represents the other side of the 80's, the neurotic recovery, the beginning of the confessional 90's, only 2 short years of recovery after "Less Than Zero."  

How telling...

Well, I return to work today, having accomplished very little that I had hoped to; a lost weekend spent spinning in circles. I had made a list of some meager tasks, none of which got done.  I had suggested walking down to Sonoma square to watch the kids in their halloween costumes last night. Somehow that was too much to ask for also.


All things seem beyond my reach.  They speed by as if glimpsed through a car window, passing in the passing light.

Each day lost and gone forever.  Each new day approaching at even greater speeds, with its sound of the approaching vacuum, the strange pull that comes before the wave, the immense silence preceding the crest and then the passing... time held, blurred and stretching away from me as it gathers, as it arrives.

. 

... more later

The world here is still beginning its change.  Almost every plant is turning yellow or red.  Stray leaves are beginning to pepper the ground.  The trees are becoming more sparse, there is a crisp chill in the air, but ever so slightly.

I've tried to sit down and write 3 times this morning and 3 times I've been distracted by something and pulled away from my desk.  I'm beginning to get a glimpse into what my life will be like soon.  Everybody laughs and tells me to enjoy sleeping now because I won't get any once the baby is born.  That is a disturbing thought. I already don't sleep very well, my wife sleeps like a breathing statue.  

I get a little glimpse into what life will be like soon.

I give up, perhaps I will come back and try to write more later.

.

a ghost about ghosts

Nightmares. They are easy to forget when you have not had them for a while.  I have not had any since arriving in California. None that I can remember anyway.  Then there was last night, there were many.  A series of misadventures.  I was like a sleeping Amy Winehouse, just pulled back from the non-event horizon.  All manner of evils parading through my slumber, mocking me with their dark laughter.

It was a bad night, chasing obsessions, ending in paranoias.  Each person I assume must have a vortex that they are best to not wander near, that once they enter it, by will or by accident, then they are lost to all other impulses.  Without explanation they emerge on the other side grasping for meaning, knowing what happened, but unable to explain.... like trying to explain a dream.  You might be able to announce the nouns, it becomes increasingly difficult to express the verbs, impossible to paint the amorphous setting exactly as it was, the liquid inner transitional scenes lost to language.  It is the mind's mercury: fascinating to watch, poisonous to ingest.  Moving through sleep like many metallic snakes.

I am often puzzled by people who enjoy horror films. There are those who are genuinely frightened by them, yet they return to them time after time, for that pleasure.  Even the ones they have seen many times before, they return as if hypnotized.  It is difficult to understand what it is they see in them, what experience they could possibly be gaining.  

Can there be such a thing as artificial surprise.
Do we all return only to return, to re-experience the returning.

Or, is life only a ghost about ghosts.

.

... an expression of unity

No time to write today. I must rush out the door, then to work, then into SF for the night, then back to work tomorrow.  A friend is in town and I will be part of a rock star's entourage tonight.  I will be back tomorrow with brave tales, or perhaps the next day.

This has nothing at all to do with what I'll be doing tonight. But the mention of Rock and Roll made me think of it:

Robert Hunter, the lyricist for the Grateful Dead, wrote The Ten Commandments of Rock and Roll... Here they are... 


I had meant to only post the last one, as it was the only one that I ever really knew or had heard before, but I did a search and found the rest.  

Isn't the internet simply grand....

1. Suck up to the Top Cats.
2. Do not work to express independent opinions.

3. Do not work for the common interest - only factional interest.

4. If there's nothing to complain about dig up some old gripe.

5. Do not respect property and persons other than your own.

6. Make devastating judgements on persons and situations without adequate information.

7. Discourage and confound personal, technical or creative projects.

8. Single out absent persons for intense criticism.

9. Believe that anything or anyone you don't understand is trying to fuck with you.

10. Destroy yourself physically and morally and insist that all true brothers and sisters do likewise as an expression of unity.

.

Hood Mountain

Inspired by a birthday gift from a friend, a local hiking guide... Rachel, Barkley and myself took a light uphill march yesterday, a military frolic.  It was mandated, by corporal me, that dogs must be allowed on the trail.  No easy task, but we finally settled on a light trail about 30 minutes from home, Hood Mountain.  We never made the summit as we decided too late in the day to begin the hike, and perhaps bringing a small puppy on a 3 hour hike, without water, is irresponsible.  To mention nothing of the pregnant hiker in tow.

We discovered some beautiful vistas though, even without conquering the peak.  Perhaps that battle will be for another day.  

Within a few months I will be a naturalist, damning the many cities of my past, cursing their poisonous affect on nature, ambling freely naked among the many firs and pines, having sex with animals other than humans, making homes out of bark.  Who knows, maybe the ghost of Daryl Hannah's nymph spirit will fall in love with me.

Ok, enough.  I have to return to work today, where my dreams of nature will be squelched by the 35 minute drive inwards on Hwy 101, across the Petaluma river, down south choked along the urban funnel, where all inclinations towards nature have a slightly more esoteric than practical intent. It is a magical place in which all religious impulses are encapsulated in the simple concept of universal oneness, starting with Me... the early everlasting capital i of all, the center of i, Me, mine, NOW.

.

Xanadu

Yesterday, a friend (Lisa) gave me two books on hiking in the region.  They are both filled with useful information about the dangers, the history, the climate, the hikes.  I am eager to get started with them. One is exclusively for Sonoma County and the other is for the entire San Francisco area.  It seems unlikely that I will exhaust either of them quickly.  Flipping through them, there are many hikes in the area worth taking.  

The second book covers Napa and Sonoma, Marin, The East Bay, The Peninsula and The Southern Bay all the way down to Santa Cruz.  A very exciting region, one that I have often romanticized. I once drove down the coast southwards through Big Sur, camping along the way, continuing on to Hearst Castle for a day trip there to enjoy its confused collections.  Xanadu, according to Orson Welles' version of the story.

I am eager to get in the car and drive, perhaps later today, with camera, some water and a hiking book.  Yesterday I did only a small handful of the things that I had hoped to do. None after I started drinking wine, which was also on my list.  Today perhaps I will go to Sugarloaf and walk a bit.  Today is a "new moon," a day in the lunar cycle that often has significance for myself and Rachel.  We will see what secrets the day reveals.


I worry about hiking in this area though...

  

There are rattlesnakes in this region.  We were at Buena Vista winery about two months ago and two had recently come up from the river area, they were frightened away by one of the groundskeepers.  We were at the Kunde winery a few weeks ago and Rachel was walking a few steps ahead of me when she suddenly stepped aside with the dog, Barkley.  She drew my attention to the ground where there was a baby rattlesnake, the most dangerous kind. They have no control over how much poison they release so they are very dangerous, a bite from a baby rattlesnake is often fatal, most certainly so to a small dog.  The prospect of one biting a pregnant woman is too horrific to consider.  It's a good thing that he was on a leash. He has an insatiable puppy curiosity towards all things.

Indium Tin Oxide and the city across the bay

I spent a night in the city.  It was exhausting.  I drank too much, of course, then had to work the next day.  Perhaps all that I've said is true, that I am getting old.  I used to have boundless energy with which I could destroy my body and spirit. The spirit almost always bounced back, sometimes even with renewed vigor and enthusiasm for damage. Now I miss not being at home, sleeping in my own bed, awaking there in the morning.  My gypsy days are winding up;  would that be winding down?

I sat at my lunch yesterday and watched The World Series and drank two beers, wishing myself far away, at home, in bed, knowing that it would be hours before I would be there.  I don't normally drink beer on my lunch hour.  It never works out as well for me as I might hope.  But I needed something to give me the strength to go on, to carry myself forward.  My wife thinks that Albert Pujols has a funny name, especially when pronounced with the excited energy she possesses when doing so.  She says that it is not a real name, that it could not be, that it is from Saturday Night Live, like Turd Ferguson.  I assure her that it is not a comedy name, but a real one, that he is from the Dominican Republic, a great ball player.

She remains suspicious about it, and giggly.

Ever since I went to that bluegrass festival I've had some dust on the image sensor of my camera.  It can be easily seen in the picture above, as can the evil city across the bay, the one with the many problems.   I searched the internet for image sensor cleaning suggestions and options, all sensibilities pointed towards this rather expensive system, or so I thought. The system could be ordered from Calumet photography with a credit card.  So that's what I did.  When it all arrived I sat down with an instruction manual for my camera and read through the section on how to go about raising the mirror so that I could have access to the sensor, how and why to be very careful, etc., etc.  

I read through the directions twice, wanting to be sure of the procedure.  Then I committed to the act and cleaned the dust off.  All was perfect.  I reclined on the victory couch and continued to read on from what I had thought was the end of the cleaning section.  On the very last page of the section there was a warning box, advising no one to use methanol in their cleaning solutions as the image sensor is of the indium tin oxide outer-coating variety and apparently will be damaged by methanol.  I'm sure you've guessed by now.... I was fucked.  I hadn't done enough research, or bought the right products,  or read the instructions all the way till the very end.  All was lost, $1200 for the body alone.  

I jumped up and ran to the computer, to see if anything could be done.  I found nothing except warnings about doing such a thing, and why not to.  I was terrified.  After a few minutes of that I went to the Calumet website, where they sell the stuff, and there was a statement there saying that the solution was safe for tin-oxide type sensors. No further explanation, just a claim that it is safe.  I started thinking about quantities of liquid, ratios, flammables... trying to remember anything at all from science class, how to pronounce "aluminum" and that Brits claim they isolated it so they decide on its pronunciation, neither of which are true... they perhaps are confused over what an element is and what an alloy is, a mixture containing two or more elements, by definition, etc.  

I was miffed. Indium Tin Oxide.....

Oh, indium tin oxide, where did we go wrong....?

  

I know nothing, and what I thought I knew was only a danger to my camera. 

Damn it all to hell, Pujols....

   

.

Pics from a speeding car....

The valley has begun to change.  Within just a few days the golden-brown floors of the many fields found here have turned a new crisp green, in a strange late spring.  The beginning of fall can only be caught in the occasional yellowing grape leaf, peppered among the awaiting rows of viridescence.  

In hardly a handful of weeks each leaf will become its own flower in the explosion of autumn.  The reds and yellows sending their sudden colors into the heavens, into the earth.  Leaving the gnarled, waved vines to the winter; fading pages covering the ground, in unbound and undone folios.

.

Two aging idealists....

Here is my friend's response.  The numbers after each paragraph are mine so that I can make individual responses to some of his statements, the rest is his.

Just as Sean is challenged by my logic, I too am challenged by his. Substitute a right leaning view everywhere he writes left and in many ways I feel as he does. Yet I know this man’s heart and I know he has always been contrary. He dared to go where I would not and I played it safe in many ways.  Yet I consider him one of my best friends. He has influenced my taste in music, my outlook on life and in many ways I wish we could go back and spend more time in our 30s together. His friendship has always meant something to me. How many can really say they have friends since 2^nd grade? I don’t let my own philosophy detract from wanting to build bridges with my lifelong friends. It is just not worth the price. With that said here is my response to Sean’s (1)

I am that friend Sean writes of and I hope some of my thoughts hone Sean like diamonds hone steel. (lol).  I read through the comments about me here and I first must put a resume of sorts out there. I hold a degree in biology and masters degree in environmental planning. I spent 13 years as environmental planner both in the public and private sector  in Florida and policy analysis was part of my job. Unlike perhaps a few here while I am not attorney, I was required to take Constitution and Land Use Law in FSU’s College of Law to earn my degree. I also took environmental law as well. So when it comes to policy analysis I tend to think I am qualified to give an opinion or two.  When it comes to the Constitution I have read it and I understand it. I know, I know it is like something a 10 year old would say. (2)

My world view of the recent events have been shaped by a education, lifetime of events and experiences least of which are two things. A few years back I left my profession and bought a business. I now make chocolate and women’s dreams come true. I also have invested in a few vacation rental cabins in the Smoky Mountains. I once worked for the man and now I am the man. I employ people and I own a sub-s corporation. I understand now more than ever the costs of government as I pay those costs out of my bank account monthly and quarterly. I see the negative impact of fiscal decisions of  the government directly in my life and I now appreciate more than ever the Bill of Rights and the rights of the individual to own property. I understand how my time and labor are traded for dollars. I use my body and mind to generate wealth and that wealth is my property.  The Constitution protects my right to property from unlawful seizure from the Government and the founders new liberty is manifested through private property rights of all forms.  It is why we have private property mentioned specifically in the Preamble.  I am not entitled to anybody’s else’s property from Bill Gates to Sean’s. I do not demonize millionaires if they have  lawfully obtained their wealth. It is the fruit of their labor.  It is their personal property. (3)

I actually agree with Sean the collusion of government and business has led the way here in terms of the economic situation and I was a practicing professional city planner when Congress (Republican) and Democratic President pushed the Community Reinvestment Act of 1996. This ACT led the way for the housing bubble and financial collapse in 2007. It directed banks to lend money to those they would otherwise not normally lend money too.  Our government forced banks to open their wallets and removed all risks from banks in otherwise high risk loans. It was a boon to affordable housing planners, but it put banks on the track to do bad loans. As a biologist I see how the government violated the natural laws inherit in greed and the desire to obtain wealth in removing risk from a private capital source. They did what any living creature would do and that is to maximize their rewards in such an environment. Risks are like predators in the wild, like when a gazelle goes to the water hole but there are no lions around anywhere.  The gazelle will gorge itself, I know I would. Most folks reading this would too. Think about…get rid of speeding tickets on the interstate highway, how many would travel the posted speed limit?  Remember there is greed for money and greed for power. Government is not immune to either here. The government is THE CATALYST here for the economic and housing meltdown. (4)

Our Constitution clearly lays out the design of the Republic, yes we are a republic and not a true Democracy, that the Federal Government is limited in power. It is designed to be limited in power and it clearly states that the Feds have 18 enumerated powers with the rest of the unspoken, unwritten powers given to the states via the 10^th Amendment.  So if the states want universal health care they can. If the states want to enact land use laws, they can.  If the state wants to regulate marriage gay straight what ever they can. None of these are the roles of the Federal Government. When the Federal Government engages in roles it is clearly not designed to,  we then get what we have today like crony capitalism.  The tax code is designed to invite corporate lobbyist to protect their interests from the tyranny of the tax code.  Meanwhile the citizens get left holding the bill to the tune of $16 trillion dollars national debt. We have a citizenry where 47% demand services from the government at the expense  to the 53% footing the bill. We are heading fast toward bankruptcy. (5)

I am not a tea party member and I clearly blame our problems today on the national Republican party. It is the Republican party who lost their way. We are a little r republic and they over time bought into the false hopes of the Progressive Movement from the early 20^th Century. They overtime bought into the idea of making us more like Europe which is facing financial collapse today. They sold the Constitution out to build their power base and they did not stand and fight or even articulate what our Federal Government is supposed to be or do as outlined in the Constitution. They offered no real alternative in palpable way. So by default and over time the Progressive socialist agenda crept in.  I am now at a point and see the problem and the problem is we strayed from original vision for the limited Federal Government. (6)

Perhaps one of the biggest influences on my life are the days I became a father. My second child, Kyle, contracted group b strep during labor and 18 days later he had group b strep meningitis. It destroyed Kyle’s occipital lobe. He is cortically blind, has epilepsy, cerebral palsy and is mentally retarded.  Kyle is an awesome 13 year old boy. I gave up my career for him. I took a risk by taking a second mortgage out on a cabin and bought my business. I took these risks so I could call the shots and be there for my kids.  Kyle has taught me what life is really about and that is relationships. It is about a connection of the heart and soul in this world. (7)

Kyle has perhaps sharpened for right or wrong my view of folks who complain. A great many of the Occupy crowd while practicing civil disobedience all have potential.  Many if not all can walk, talk, go to school, have a dream, get married, streak down the road, do stupid things and so forth. They have the POTENTIAL to do anything in this world especially because they live in United States.   They have it all and they don’t see it. Some of me feels sorry for them and some of me has a real disdain too as they are wasting moments in life. Sure they are acting to change the world, but the world many  seem to want to change to is one of socialism or even Marxism.  Many were never alive during the cold war or see the real down side of a communist based economy.  America is awesome and it is still the land of opportunity because we are free and we have the liberty to succeed and the liberty to fail.  They have a sense of entitlement.  Many say they went to college and there are no jobs and they were guaranteed a job. Really?   I spent 2 years working a night job as a janitor. I had a master’s degree and worked 2 jobs. I did what had to be done. (8)

Folks need to understand life is not fair. It is not guaranteed and nothing is given to us. There are prices to be paid for behaviors of all kinds and there are rewards for behaviors and actions of all kinds and it is not the government’s role to make it fair. The role of the government is to ensure liberty to either succeed or fail and nothing more.  It is there to make sure the football field of basic rights are level but its purpose is not to guarantee a win for any given team on the field.  Nobody needs to tell me how bad things happen to good people. Can anyone here tell me what my son did wrong to deserve his lot in life?    He will never be able to protest anything anywhere. He will never drive a car or ride a bike. He will never marry. He will never do the things like write a blog or debate the validity of the Constitution.  If not but for the Grace of God go I. It is my responsibility to care for him now and insure he has what he needs as an adult and not anybody else’s. (9)

I watch my son struggle to walk. I see folks complaining that they have no job yet have 2 good feet. I watch my son struggle to say words. I see others use their words to spread hate and anger. I watch my son trust everyone and I see a country where politics creates distrust on all sides. I am raising a human being who truly can’t while I see people on the left in particular who are complaining because they won’t.   I have a child who blames nobody for his circumstance and I see others blaming everyone else for theirs.   In the end I see liberty as the answer and others see the solution is more government.  I see compassion coming from one’s heart and through charity.  Other’s see compassion as taking the property of some by the threat of jail and giving it to others who did nothing to earn it or perhaps even deserve it. (10)

In the end this idealist throws his hat in the ring on the side of limited government and liberty.  I see my friend who will soon be a dad perhaps change some of his views the moment he holds his child for the first time. I see hope being born soon in his family and if it is a girl, I see perhaps a weird form of karma coming back to him  so he better watch out (lol)….. (11)

-- 

Bob Williams
Welcome to Smoky Mountain Time!
Mountain Bear Cabins
www.mountainbearcabins.com

Sean's responses:

(1) - Boring

(2) - Boring

(3) - Boring, though Bobby did catch his mistake before we went to press. The Preamble does not mention property.  I assume that he was confusing the Preamble with the Declaration of Independence, though I'm not sure. Property and health were among Locke's original assertions, Jefferson added "the pursuit of Happiness" to his famous list of unalienable rights.

(4) - Boring again, though with one rebuttal:  Bobby sees the CRI as the catalyst to all that is evil in the financial world. I see it much more as being the 1999 Graham-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, the last and most finally damaging repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.  Bobby seems to pursue his vision of a perfect nation in a hands-off approach to federal government.  I see the results of deregulation and unrestrained speculative investing as being the core of the problem and the CRI as being merely tangential. 

(5) - We are not truly in a republic, the words republic and republican are not synonymous. Our government is not controlled by the people but rather the opposite is true.   We are in a representational democracy, based largely on the liberal ideas of John Locke.  Do not let the word liberal mislead you here either.  John Locke would hardly recognize the use of the word liberal as it is applied to today's standards of the concept. We agree on the iniquity of the tax code, but we perhaps disagree on what should be done about it.  The wealth has already been shoveled away disproportionately and the government was an accomplice in the act.  This was not just good old-fashioned industrialists making an honest living for their families, this was collusion in defrauding a nation and enslaving its citizens in tax indebtedness to the crime, dear comrades.....

(6) - The "Progressive socialist agenda" "crept in" through democracy. People voted representatives into office that would advance the ideas that they embrace. If states were able to govern themselves then we might still have slavery. The thing that makes The Constitution so powerful is its adaptability.  I'm not entirely sure that the nation would be better off with such a limited role of the federal government.  So much of what makes us what we are in the world today came about by the development of that strong federal government guiding a nation through a civil war and then two world wars. We emerged out of the 20th century as a world leader because of our federal government, not in spite of it.   

(7-10) - Kyle's position is unfortunate, to be certain, but the circumstances of his birth should affect our thoughts on society in perhaps the opposite way than how Bobby has asserted. This example reveals a disingenuous position on Bob's part and if we are to follow his reasoning through to its logical conclusion then its weakness is revealed.  "It's not the government's role to make it fair."  Were he truly to believe that each person is responsible only for themselves then he would argue for the removal of any and all societal modifications for the disabled.  I find it difficult to believe that he would argue for such a thing. Of what use is the government's forcing an establishment to build a ramp so that all can enter a state building in his brave new republic?

It is here where the lie of the right often reveals itself most fully.  They wish to be the sole arbiters of where the line will be drawn between civility and welfare. There are those on the left who would argue for the flattening of all benefits and enjoyments in life, taxing the rich out of existence and distributing their wealth evenly.  There are others, even among us, who have long argued for the opposite form of society, in which all government aid to assist the disabled, or anybody else, is entirely removed.  Most of us would not wish to live in either of those two states.  It is easy to see why the first is preferable to some, much more difficult to understand the second. Though I suppose that is what makes me a liberal, the leaning towards a more evenly distributed pattern of wealth, a society based upon both civility and the welfare of its citizens through education and well-maintianed assistance programs.

It is the cost of unnecessary war that I mostly object to.  If one looks carefully at the reality of those costs then it is difficult to understand why so many of the right are not more "up in arms" about it.

I only use his example because he offered it.  I have nothing but empathy for the very difficult position that he and his family are in with his son, Kyle.  I trust that Bobby knows this.  He named his son Kyle because of a song by Bruce Springsteen that we both loved, "Reason to Believe."  It is perhaps through Kyle's struggle that I hope one day Bobby will in fact shift his views a little bit back towards the left.  Should not a society offer some meager assistance, through education and perhaps aid in the raising of children, when they are born disadvantaged?  Bobby seems to see all people as being born equal, and being given the same chances, though his own example reveals that such a thing is simply not true.  Not all are born equal and we are often blind to the struggles of others, though rarely do we concede blindness in our judgement of those same struggles.  It seems to me that most people want their societies to be a better place to live, they disagree greatly at how to accomplish such a thing.  I simply can not believe that what is truly destroying our society is the attempt to help and educate those who need it most.   

That being said, public education needs to either be improved or abandoned.  

(11) - The concept of karma as you've used it here seems somewhat inconsistent with your determined views of cosmic constitutional connections.  Karma is universally misunderstood and misrepresented, there is no support for it in the sciences.  You should be ashamed....  If not now, then perhaps you will be in a future life...

I have enjoyed arguing with Bobby for 35 years, off and on.  I have watched his shuffle to the right from an early age.  I don't pretend to understand it but I concede that he makes some good points, though often as mired in constitutional idealism in the same way that I am plagued by societal idealism, sometimes even socialist idealism.  Most of all I am disappointed that he believes that his government does not have a greater role and responsibility in protecting its citizens more fully, that the natural laws of commerce are all that are needed to return his republic to grandeur, and that genuine equality has already been achieved, and there is nothing more to struggle for in that regard.  

I agree with him that it is the government's responsibility to protect the property of its citizens, but what is to be done when they are the ones involved in the systematic misappropriation of it? There is simply far too much evidence to support that many of America's citizens are regularly cheated out of their property by government and big-buisness alike through taxes and anti-consumer legislation.  The laws have been skewed in favor of the few for far too long, a flattening of the playing field is precisely what is needed, in his view of the republic he would have you believe that we are already there.