the smell of peaches is a memory.  not sure of what, exactly, maybe mornings some forty years or so ago, sunlight stripes across the breakfast table (plastic lace tablecloth, so practical) oh i love me some peaches.

 

i also love my new (to me) powerbook G4. it is supposed to be the house computer but as i sit gazing in wonderment at its beauty, i honestly do not want anyone else touching it. mine.

 

mine.

so this morning the controller asks to speak with me in her office. then i have to sit & wait minutes, intestines clenched, reviewing every gesture & facial expression i'd seen this morning for some clue as to my future (but all the while feeling pretty damn secure for a person in that position, after all, i've survived whole companies falling apart around me since being here, other people may go, but i stay).  so then she comes in and she says, so we're going to change some things around ... let some people go ...

 

and would i mind answering the phones and 'doing whatever they need me to do'? 'of course', i reply, 'whatever you need me to do, i'm there'.  because you know what? i am. i am always here. like, every day, an hour or more before the rest of everyone gets here.  i do not email in sick, i do not catch headaches or food poisoning on friday afternoons (though there are those who do), i just show up, day after day, and do what i'm asked. 

 

so i'm not an underpaid computer programmer, i'm an overpaid secretary. who also programs the website, but hey. other people will be going, but i am staying.

it wasn't the best of xmases because i was kind of counting on this, and i waited till the last minute to start up with the wheedling and bugging, but it was worth it. it is an RKS Jr., a prototype (not even a serial number).  it's a 3/4 size body with Duncan pickups and a 5 way switch. it's an extremely unusual and atypical RKS; out of the fewer than 2,000 that the company made during its life, there was only one of these. and now, it belongs to kurtwood.

 

 

so i went & cracked open the Thing i Could Not Face, the loss(es).  and resurrected the least dead amongst them, the "poems" if you'd call them that. olizard.com is where they live on (if not in infamy, then at least in space).  don't go there, it'll only hurt your eyes.  but it is a start.  next in line for life, the lyrics site & maybe the gallery thingy.  the blog, ah, the blog, well, unfortunately the database is approximately ten times the size allowed in PHPMyAdmin uploads, so i've gotta hack it to pieces in order to put it back together. 

 

baby steps, baby.

it is a damn good thing, dare i say even a fucking good thing, that i am more or less all by my lonesome self here.  back in the day there would be however-many people watching me make a fool out of myself -- oh wait. that's exactly what they were doing, if i remember correctly. but they were always so nice about it, & this is what led me to this unfortunate habit of babbling in public. which is actually a little bit embarrassing. i mean what if someone should someone happen upon this place i leave links to here & there around the interweb, and see me talking to myself for no apparent reason and being thoroughly pathetic in the process?

 

it's kind of like a whiny diary i leave laying around the house, hoping no one reads but disappointed that no one does. also i am a little ashamed i'm using this windows live thing when i have the capability, the urls, the hosting space, and the archives (some assembly required) -- i have real blogs, i really do -- i'm only a few dozen hours or days of struggling to remember what i was thinking when i built the things in the first place, to rebuild them, make them better than new.

 

if only i felt it was worth it. why the hell do i do this?  

i have. i really have.

 

(again).  & as usual, it is a tremendous relief.  or a terrible loss.  

 

perhaps a terrible relief? yes. that's exactly what it is.   

   

the punkins were all carved. it is what happens when you leave a small handful of creative types alone without adult supervision on three days of a sunny summery fall week, with all the important folk off at an important conference, and everyone had been working insane fourteen hour days for days right before that.  in other words, i confess it was more fun than work ought to be.  oh wednesday and thursday were worky enough, but by noon friday we were ordering pizza and going for beer. and then deciding it wasn't enough, a twelve pack, and going for more.  and then there was a field trip to the roof (for everyone but me, wearing a dress and too damn polite to show anyone my ass, there are just some things no one should have to see) and then some folks stepped outside to smoke and much pool playing ensued.

you know if i wasn't in a trailer in oregon hooked up to the interweb on an Edge-enabled (read: non-broadband type wireless data plan), and if i hadn't driven 1,250 miles in the last three days & spent several hours today scampering around various scenic mountain trails & whatnot,  i would so be putting my websites back together. right this very minute, i would. seriously. but as it stands, this is just not the time for that.

 

i've got half a mind to do it anyway.  

so
giving all the love you have
never be afraid
to show your heart
so
giving all the love you have
there is a special reason
a special reason
…
in the big dream
we are heroes
we are dreamers
of the big dream
someone told me
there are brothers
live forever
in the big sky
just hear your voice
in all the songs of the earth
nothing can come between us
you're a brother of mine
sing out you sisters
all the dreams of the world
nothing can come between us
be the travelers of time
…
see the desert
we have walked the path
of all the known religions
in the big dream
we are brothers, we are sisters
of the big dream
just hear your voice
sing all the songs of the earth
nothing can come between us
you're a brother of mine
sing out you sisters
all the dreams of the world
nothing can come between us
took me by surprise
it opened up my eyes
i can't believe we're ready to
run another
run another
run another
fourth dimension dream
always the way it seems
i can't believe we're ready to
see the world for what it really is
in the full moon
…
took me by surprise
it opened up my eyes
i can't believe we're ready to
run another
run another
run another
fourth dimension dream
always the way it seems
just hear the voice
in all the songs of the earth
nothing can come between us
you're a brother of mine
we hold our hands together
be the sunshine
nothing can come between us
you're a sister of time
just hear the voice
in all the songs of the earth
nothing can come between us
nothing can come between us
nothing can come between us
so
giving all the love you have
never be afraid to show your heart
so
giving all the love you have
there is a special reason
to come true
so
giving all the love you have
never be afraid to show your heart
so
giving all the love you have
there is a special reason
there is a special reason
this time
long lost brother of mine
seeing my life for the first time
long lost brother of mine
living my life in the big dream
long lost brother of mine
walking away from illusion
long lost brother of mine
seeing my life for the first time
long lost brother of mine
seeing me fly like an eagle
long lost brother of mine
watching me walk in the full moon
long lost brother of mine
seeing my life for the first time
long lost brother of mine
walking this dream everlasting
so it's there
putting one into one special reason
so it's there
putting one
into one
one another.
sure can.
sure can.
sure can.
this is a further dimension
coming at us for the very first time
it's the second attention
realizing it all of the time
re-defining this long lost passion
for the living we're in
this will be the first of many
i’ll be telling you
long lost brother of mine
walking the dream evolution
long lost brother of mine
singing the sisters of freedom
long lost brother of mine
seeing the fathers of wisdom
long lost brother of mine
seeing my life for the first time
so it's there, putting one into one special reason
yes it's there, but to want it to want one another
so it's there, putting one into one special reason
yes it's there, you can see what you want to see
long lost brother of mine
long lost brother of mine
long lost brother of mine
long lost brother of mine
long lost brother of mine

ENOUGH ABOUT THE MOTHERFUCKING IPHONE. I AM NOT KIDDING. STOP IT.

 

that is all.

jimmy kimmel needs to stay the hell out of my dreams. i'm serious. not tonight jimmy. not tonight.

for a time i spent my self just touring my ... i was thinking microcosm, but realized i was not precisely sure what that meant so i wikipedia'd it ...

Macrocosm and microcosm is an ancient Greek schema of seeing the same patterns reproduced in all levels of the cosmos. It may have begun with Democritus in the 5th century B.C. or with Pythagoras and is a philosophical conception that runs through Socrates, and Plato and through to the Renaissance. With Pythagoras, the discovery of the golden ratio and its philosophical conception called the Golden mean, the Greeks saw that this golden ratio is repeated in all parts of the ordered universe both large and small. The Greeks were very concerned with a rational explanation of everything and saw this repetition of the golden mean as a pattern that was reproduced throughout reality. It is a product of the ancient Greek mentality of seeing reality as a whole and noticing patterns that are repeated throughout all the levels of reality. In short, it is the recognition that the same traits appear in entities of many different sizes, from one man to the entire human population. Macrocosm/microcosm is a Greek compound of μακρο- "Macro-" and μικρο- "Micro-", which are Greek respectively for "large" and "small", and the word κόσμος kósmos which means "order" as well as "world" or "ordered world".

... my own microcosm, my own occupancy in these cosmos which is only newly ordered, and astonishingly almost orderly.

 

i am in love with the beach. i am in love with living in a tiny orderly apartment over a generally disorderly collection of businesses including one called 'tacos and beer', i mean seriously, tacos and beer, what's not to love?

 

& within this there is indeed a golden mean, by which i mean the elegant feel of the air against my skin & the soft late afternoon light & the peace that comes of solace, of having solved most of the things which had haunted me leaving me in this hauntingly beautiful aftermath, with its ocean view & its elegant air & this feeling of finally having settled into something that is not stillness at all, & yet ...

 

if this is as close as it ever gets to perfect, that will be fine. there is still an edge out there & many details to which i must still attend, & yet ...

 

life is good.

lessons of the beach:

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.