either that or i've resigned myself to its knowledge. but since it felt like a revelation i feel comfortable claiming the figuring.

here's the thing: more & more (& _more_) as the days pass for years, i am assailed (yes, assailed) by these overwhelming (meaning, feeling wave on wave moving above me as i slip further from the surface, that sort of overwhelm) anyway. feelings of deja-vu is what i am meaning, and they are quite strong would be what i am adding to that meaning. & here i am living in midtown ventura where the average age of everything is alarmingly close to mine, meaning something around any & every corner may at any time might trigger this / catch me / send me spinning back some twenty or forty years, & this happens more & more & more these days (have i mentioned that?) anyway.

i figured it out. it was in the fragrant shadows of my genuine 40-or-so-year old tiled shower one morning with the early light bursting through the rippled window glass when it hit me. these things which assail me, these vivid spells when my senses echo a perfect facsimile, an identical copy in memory of the exact same everything (except which century) ... and this used to feel just like loss, but what was i thinking feeling that? it's not anything even near the melancholy maudlin thing it (used to seem to be) .. it is almost exactly the opposite of that in fact.

it is a message, a comfort, a continuity flowing through the all of me, not just the matter perched here in this timespace but my whole history laid out in shimmering disarray before & behind & around me, perfect clarity: it is and shall always be this way, this life with these moments with their over & over again (as it was in the beginning it is now & ever shall be world without end amen) amen. though the body that has these sensations & the psyche that sets them in perspective have changed and i mean completely & they continue to, & this has all been a bit disconcerting at least it was until i figured it out.

& with that, & a glass of white wine & some cozy old jeans on i am going to go out into the last of today's sunbreezy ocean air that feels exactly like any number of other afternoons & it will not be a wan wistful thing at all, it will in fact be transcendent if i may be a bit overindulgent in describing it.

... when i pause during my beach walking to take pictures of odd things. i, however, look funny right back at them, i mean, i'm only taking the pictures, someone else made the pictures takeable. you know?

and so the mac came to us (because it was in danger of being used to hold doors open) with a monitor, some cables, a tower containing a small hard drive and ... a processor and some memory. that's it. no mouse. no keyboard. no wireless card and no way to get a plug from a router to the network plug in the computer. no internet. computer - keyboard - internet = ... well, = doorstop, basically.

 

so it sat there. all it could do was play chess. so it played a lot of chess, and we turned on that speaking voice feature and it bugged us night and day telling us every. little. stupid. thing it was thinking. like a person, only not as annoying.

 

and the boy wanted the computer on the internet. he wanted the computer to do ... something, and without the internet, computers don't do much for little kids. especially macs, which have only the one game. chess. whatever happened to freakin' solitaire? i ask you. oh and have i mentioned -- macs hate me? so there was that.

 

enter the mac geek from work. "you can put any wireless card in it" he said, "and it will either work, or it won't work, one or the other. but you won't have to mess with drivers!" wow, what a great feature -- it may or may not work and if it doesn't, there's not a chance i can make it work, how ... nice. but it was moot, any point i may have had there, because -- wireless cards cost money. and either work, or don't, and then you've got to take them back, and ... but first you have to buy them, and they cost money. so.

 

finally. month later. "you could probably share your laptop internet connection", he mentions, "and if your computer shares it right, it will just work" (you know, or not work, one or the other, no ifs, ands, or buts).

 

loooooong story short -- we now have a mac (still no keyboard, but a mouse at least) connected to a PC via a cat 5 crossover cable and the PC is connected via USB to a wireless phone (my sweet sweet dash, oh, i love that lil' telephone)  that's connected to the internet. and the mac, is on the internet.

 

and yeah, it just ... worked.

back in the day, i would have been babbling about my damn telephone (and my blog friends would have put up with me) but here? there is really no one but me, so why bother (well unless i'm bubbling over & cannot help it) and that is what i am.

 

bubbling.

 

having just now plugged the dash into the dv9000 and watching win mobile 6 bond with vista 64 ultimate and connect me to the interweb with no effort whatsoever on my part aside from finding the 'internet connection sharing' thingy in the dash's menu. and they connected us at what turns out to be damn near DSL speed. which i now think of as somewhat on the slow side, but still.

 

bubbling.

 

and you know what? it is such a symbiotic relationship. the telephone, with its everywhere internet and its thirst for power when running all manner of networky radio devices, plugged into the gentle current of the usb 2.0, getting charged, giving connectedness. oh god i love this stuff.

and if we die tragically, chances are a heartbreaking makeshift memorial will be lovingly assembled in our name(s).  the La Conchita memorial, in honor of those who lost their lives, families, homes in the terrible storm of '05 that sent a mountain of mud sliding down through the tiny beachside community, is pictured below, along with the Tim Barry (or Berry) memorial, I am not entirely sure the details but he may have been a homeless man, perhaps also a surfer, whatever he was he was well-loved and/or fondly thought of by many, and I think maybe he liked baseball.

 

on down the sand from these shrines for people i never met, lies the remains of the sea lion i met just once.  as i approach, the seagulls eye me warily (they seem to be lined up waiting for a turn? or whatever other protocols are dictated by the pecking order, and there is definitely a pecking order). they retreat to a safe distance as i take today's pictures, there has been much activity since yesterday, but red flesh still glistens in the nooks & crannies. i wonder about the distance they keep -- nice of them but you know if they insisted upon staying it would be ridiculously easy to keep me away, they outnumber and outbeak me many times over. 

 

i take my pictures and i take my leave, noting the jogger approaching from the north -- how weird is it, what i'm doing? i wonder, and struggle against caring what the answer is. i do what i do, think what you will.

i met the sea lion one morning, maybe my second day walking the beach. unusual, since this is not a big sea lion hangout, this beach. friends had spotted the same fella (or gal) in about the same place several times.  he seemed a bit lost, or perhaps a bit hurt, because he let me pretty darn close without any real alarm. could've gotten closer but didn't want to impose (i stress out enough mammals in the course of any one day, but only the ones who deserve it, which this one did not). i took a quick picture with the camphone and walked off smiling, marine wildlife will do that to ya.

 

a couple weeks later, there was this scene at the water's edge, seagulls battling for position upon some highly desirable prize. approaching, i saw bones, and first impression was, whoa, a sea monster? because pinniped bones have that vibe about them, i can tell you, after standing there a good half minute or so soaking in the site before me, and realizing with a certain sickening certainty that this was the docile sea lion, or what was left of him -- skin gone, bones (with organs still stuck to them) shining in the morning sun. spent the next hour or so struggling to refrain from vomiting. took longer than that to realize i was fascinated, and another whole day after that, to remember the camphone.

 

so this morning i took pictures. as i will tomorrow, and the day after, and so on. and so it goes, and so it goes. in the unlikely event anyone ever reads this, and happens to have a tendency to feel whoopsy upon seeing decaying things, i do apologize for two out of three of the pictures below. i myself had these very tendencies, at least i did two days ago, but i resized and uploaded them while eating a big bowl of mac & cheese so i guess i'm a little less easily queasy these days, which is fine.