#340

What an August it has been! So much has happened since last I pounded symbols into these pixels. Indeed, initially, I typed out three weeks, reflecting that it feels more like four. In fact, no! It has been only sixteen days, evidence that not all of life is lived in the same chronometrical rhythm. Veritable cascades of impressions, changes, and conversations, further remarkable in that I have, despite being on vacation, largely hewed to a simple routine, stable despite multitudinous modifiers and prevailing conditions.

Some examples? Why not!

*

August is fourteen days old today, which is a great and very old-school unit of time which makes it for me to measure some things by--a fortnight. In the fort of these nights and days of a two-week period, which is, besides a very sensible span by many utilitarian measures, a comfortable unit of memory to me--the glowing coal of the most recent discrete chunk of time, past, but not yet the past, speaking loosely and subjectively. Anyhow I've taken a dozen round-trips on my bicycle in that time, during which the air quality has been mercifully almost always good. 

Some have been absolutely incredible rides. The worst was merely great. Stuff has happened to me like yesterday a young buck burst out of the scrub not ten meters from me diagonally in full career off the left side of the street, bolted across it, and made as if to zag in my direction; in my zeal to get a good look at the buck in movement I forgot all caution and actually sped up. The buck zagged away, across the path, and into the woods on the right. An air show is in the area and yesterday, too, many strange planes were flying around making some truly remarkable noises, which I factor as a catalyst to the weird but exhilarating deer behavior I personally experienced. Apparently one of the planes crashed later in the day. Bunch of 'em still flying around.

Other things I have seen include many people going about their day in many different modes of being; riding bikes also, puttering about their yards, driving their cars, walking along, being with animals, doing chores or paid work or nothing at all; sometimes, doing bizarre shit, as is normal and expected. For example, one man was shirtless on his porch, delivering a kind of monotone, medium-volume rant which seemed to me the indication of a banked but potentially explosive rage. This interpretation may have colored the impression I received of his holding a large revolver loosely in his right hand. I was never closer than about seven meters and moving along at a good clip I saw no reason to slack on, so my perceptions are by no means certain. Saw a man wandering up and down the strip separating a thoroughfare from a long drive that runs parallel screaming on his cell phone to someody about everything he could see happening interspersed with the outline of a vast conspiracy arrayed against him. He was doing the same from within a car that sat there abandoned ever since that day--perhaps ten days ago--till at least three days ago. 

Many amazing birds--goldfinch pairs, mourning doves, hawks and eagles, turkey vultures, woodpeckers, bluejays, crows, grackles, sparrows, starlings. Some of the flights and activities I have caught glimpses of has been very satisfying indeed--painterly, jewel-bright, elements of a ride which elevate its nature. To ride at the same speed of a low-flying bird not two armslengths away is such a snapshot of motion in space, such a spontaneous unification with the great dance of those who ride the wind with just their bodies, who in that moment seem to be saying, in the language of movement, "hey, you almost could be flying." The memories are all very dear to me, incandescent with that feeling of being close to flight, which is the best part about riding a bicycle.

Could go on and on, but there's other kinds of stuff to it all, which I want to be sure and try and cover. Onwards!

*

Read the incredible History, Big History, & Metahistory, ed. David C. Krakauer, John Lewis Gaddis, & Kenneth Pomeranz, from the Santa Fe Institute Press. It really was fucking phenomenal. Pursuing the Giordano Bruno thread with a certain avidity, I am rereading Lucretius' On The Nature of Things, which is cool but I think I would like to try a different translation. Pursuing concepts from the first book mentioned, also reading the other SFI Press book I have, Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: The Evolving Idea of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute 1984-2019, ed. David C. Krakauer. Also Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, by bell hooks. If I get through those before my vacation is up, I should like to read a small book I have about Logic, or perhaps a book about Math.  

*

The Pontiac Vibe I drive finally shit the bed, so I've been driving Ezra to his job at summer camp in the van, which has been nice time together for us, and this amount of driving has resulted in listening to a lot of different music, following several programs of interest. Those pope teleplays were basically made by the music they wove into their picture, and consequently I have explored their soundtracks and gained an interest in recent electropop. Also this metal band Cattle Decapitation. Other recent trends inclue reacquainting myself with my CD collection and some of the stuff you can't really stream, like Cutting Room Floor's first album and its nested solo projects. Also a live Bob Marley & The Wailers show, Babylon by Bus, which presented its most enjoyable-ever listen--it had been a very long time, and I experienced many aspects and consequences of my maturation very positively through the sounds and ideas on this record. Beautiful. Plus I had never fully realized how amazing the guitar playing is.

*

On the gaming front, I concluded the storyline of Tears of the Kingdom. Absolutely phenomenal. There's a good thirty-five percent of the game still before what one might term true completion, and I have continued with some relish. The end of the story was one of the most gorgeous things that has ever happened to me. From the descent, which I performed from the highest reachable sky island, to the dazzling conclusion, it was perhaps the best ending to any Zelda game ever. Some finales have presented more of a challenge, some were mechanically denser, and the aesthetics of each places it firmly in a Golden Palace type situation, but for me, right now, this one leads the pack. Nintendo saw fit to release some Pokémon games on its official subscription ROM bank, and for some reason the Game Boy Color game featuring the Pokémon TCG really hooked me in. I've reached the Elite Four equivalent of that game.

*

On the social front, a friend I met during winter semester in class is staying with us while she figures out a housing situation. Been nice having a guest, some fun stuff. We saw Oppenheimer with her and her girlfriend, have shared many enlivening conversations, etc. That movie was super good, by the way. She even helped me move my dear friend Persephone's stuff from a storage unit to her new apartment, which was a nice fun time. 

Due to scholarly and transportation-rooted consideration, I've terminated my employment as a school bus driver on excellent terms, deciding that returning after vacation would finally present more logistical problems than it was worth. I'll get a more humble and less demanding position somehwere I can walk or bike to, just as I can walk or bike or bus to school. This is brought up by way of saying that this is why I could apparently so cold-bloodedly partake of ganja and trip on shrooms while in my position; I was fairly certain at the outset it would come to this. 

All that and I should make time for a few other friends, and perhaps my old friend Len, he with whom I am freshly shroom-communed should be playing and recording more soundscapes--one of the things we did on our trip--and perhaps even playing a show. We shall see! I know from wearying experience that one should never speak too confidently of such things are reality before their time, indeed, even up to mounting the stage at showtime. Strange to even entertain the idea of playing onstage again, but with Len, I think the thing may just be plausible. 

*

My spiritual condition has been boosted tremendously by this break, and by reuniting with the bicycle as near-daily practice. Every day a great joy is sustained within me; passes through me and moves around me. My heart is moved towards compassion towards each of the people that I see, however fleetingly. Love my husband and my cats, my digs and my tempos. I feel as though I am at the leading crest of a great vibration, a wave of energy that is clean and refreshing and tuneful. Listening to God's mighty silence I hear the universe, its great rushing whisper. It is infinite, as are we all, though this journey is brief, as all that exists in the universe is brief in the reckoning of infinite time.  

Our lives are an immutable part of an allness. No element of or perspective in the infinite narrative is unnecessary. Thus, all that exists, exists in a perfect balanace of equal meaning with everything else, from the infinitesimal to the cosmic, from the first to the last and in infinite recurrence. 

That's just some of the thinking I've been entertaining, along with its further implications. Possibly I am entirely off-base. 

*

Alright, fuckers! Signing off. Pray for this odd sinner.

--JL

#339

Been on my bike a lot lately. Haven't owned a bike in years and years, and it is crazy what the body and brain will remember with the wheels spinning beneath. Think I wrote a whole post on an old blog I used to write about why I don't wear a helmet (I still don't). Sometimes I wear a safety vest, or a nice eye-catching shirt or pair of shorts. So far this summer I've exclusively worn sandals to ride. For me, a great deal of the pleasure in riding a bicycle is the sense of lightness, of being unencumbered. Helmets, and to a much lesser extent, shoes, and consequently, several layers of safety and protection, hamper my optimal biking experience. In valuing optimized experiences and the feeling of riding the edge of risk if it means the kind of living dangerously I value just as much, riding as I please, how I please, to accomplish what I please achieves the kind of massive endorphin multiplier I rarely bother to deny myself. A measure of heedlessness in every life; it is that too-humanness of ours that makes us just human enough, still, despite everything that seeks to deprive us of such happy dignities, such simple fuck yous at death and the people who would ruin life out of fear of death. 

Bike thinking is often tied to ideas and traumas about freedom and safety, in my experience; in the public sphere, it extends to rights and duties and obligations. Judging by the level of discourse that kicks off when people talk about bicycles whether on internet or meatspace, the space it operates is a powerful emotional and intellectual flashpoint, a hub that can take you down all matter of discursive side arguments and caveats. The conceptual load is wide and tall and by no means neatly packaged. Hard to feel unencumbered with so much baggage, eh, boys?

Anyway, I have a bike again because my mom, purely out of the industry she enjoys engaging in and the great kindness and elevated generosity of spirit she expresses in deed and craft, fixed up my dad's old destroyed one (and my brother's old destroyed one in tandem) like new. It has been a massive pleasure to ride it as much as possible, what with the wildfire pollution and other conditions of our home ellipsoid's agitated systems keeping me at bay. Locally, it has been a very beautiful summer, despite all, and I have ridden a huge amount. 

*

Speaking of baggage, been spending lots of time over at the parent's abode, hanging out and helping with the maintenance of canines. It's been a very good time, though not without it's "hey ok it's time for me to go ok love you bye" moments. 

Family. So wonderful, so essential to the core sense of selfhood, of belonging, of coming from a discrete collective bound by its shared identity. How perfectly designed to drive people a special kind of crazy, and make each other crazy also. I love each member of my family completely and unreservedly, and furthermore, I emphatically respect each one in their own way. The emotional vulnerabilities this creates can be sizable, and lead to a lot of pain and misunderstanding. So it goes.  

*

Another thing I been thinking about is how bad I am at taking care of stuff, like land "property" and housing, largely becaue I love seeing things break and warp and degrade and generally take on a radically altered aspect over time. It's a real effort to rob myself of the pleasure of watching, say, leaves decompose, or the boards of a deck peel up one by one, in different places, each just a little at the tip. The way rust blooms and spreads on once-lustrous metal. A splintered handle, a crooked structure, ivy o'ergrown over all. I love the aesthetic of a broken thing, ancient wood moldering, mosses and lichens, insects calmly moving across surfaces they own in a much more concrete and tangible way than people ever did. 

Love a broken fence. Love a derelict building. Love the mushrooms and the wet, livesome aura 'round a wet, decomposing log. And damn, a vacant lot that's been a vacant lot for a long time, asphalt practically bleached, huge green furrows of weeds like completely insane caterpillars all scribbled across the old cracks, chain-link rusting and balooning like a slow-motion cloth rotting in a ponderous, ominous wind. 

*

Feeling very inspired lately. A great work, a great frenzy of creation and study lies close by my horizon. Gotta save this juice for the work. Oh! Finished David McCullough's John Adams, which I loved and paired very well with the U.S. history classes I took this summer. Nearing the end of Ingrid D. Rowland's Giordano Bruno, which has been a steadily deepening note of bliss. Also I rewatched The Young Pope and watched The New Pope and they comprise a work of art that seemed tailor-made to suit me just fine. I have a lot of ideas about popes and paping about with the lads. This tickled a lot of my pope spots.

Godspeed, dear reader. I shall andeavor to soothe you with a post here and there, but what will be, will be what has to suffice. 

--JL 

#338

Dang, blog! So much has happened that it feels like much longer than it has since last I approached this supple text field. Not just in my life, but all over! Weather is happening like crazy, politics is yowza both at home and abroad, and science marches on. My mom fixed up my dad's old bike for me, which was a fun project for her and a massive boon for me, so I've been pedaling around happily. Many friends that had been living or working abroad or interstate have returned to the local haunts, which is great, and I have been seeing them, mostly for lunch or dinner, and on one memorable occasion for shrooming out.

One reason, though, is I don't have anything to say. Well, I do, but I write it down elsewhere, for (god, hopefully swiflty upcoming) publication, or just say it at a person whose face happens to be near mine.

Gonna go cook some eggs now. Cook'm 'n eat'm. Big bouncy yolks. Mmmm.


--JL

#185

Rode a bicycle today. That's a real releasing thing right there once you find the groove and work up that speed. A state of being particular to itself. Bicycles are an incredible invention and have figured largely in my life; so many bicycle stories. Rather than begin with any specific anecdotes, I'll illustrate something of my mindset.

Though, I will conclude ahead of time that my case is spectacularly weak and simulates cogency only when received by someone who is the same flavor of crazy as me or is open to understanding the motives and calculations of fundamentally weird dudes.

*

Feeling the wind in my hair is, to me, an essential part of the cycling experience. So I haven't worn a head protection for the main bulk of the hours that I've spent on a bicycle. Used to hang my helmet from my handlebar, since like any good parent my mother compelled me to wear one. As I took plenty of spills on my bicycle, and also just plain dropped the things a lot, my artificial carapaces grew convincingly scuffed at a reasonable pace.

This is not to endorse riding your bicycle without a helmet. I think everybody should do that. I should do that. My bad and unwise decision not to is the product of a part of myself that I have to live with but cannot be dealt with. It's that thing in a dude, what in Achilles was his inability to stay and in Hector his inability to leave. It's what makes people climb Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen. It is the thing that kills you, but makes sure you live first. It is also, I would bet, responsible for a lot of unprotected sex. If it were to find expression in a gene, we could call it the "fuck it, go--and go hard."

Personally I do wear a helmet on a motorized two-wheeled vehicle, but I respect folks who do not. I definitely get it. 

Anyhow sure, I've come pretty close to crackin' open the ole cosmic egg a time or two, but who's counting? Every time I've passed a truck on the highway I've been playing fast and loose with all kinds of fucked-up odds, not to mention when you imagine how many times I've been passed myself by some unreachably methed-out wheeltwitcher with one eye screwed shut and a sweaty cauldron of hemorrhoids burning in their coin purse like a lit cigar.

What am I writing about? Helmets? People should wear them on their bicycles. I don't and rarely will, even though it's unsafe. You are never safe anywhere.

But especially not, in my opinion, when you ride your bicycle in the street, where the cars are. I don't give a damn what ordinances they pass, how many people give me the stinkeye, I ride on the sidewalk. I want a curb between me and the cars. That's final. Drivers see you as not only not a person but an actively hostile element invading their driving environment; not only will they kill you on instinct and mask it even to themselves as an "accident", but there is a certain kind of person who will deliberately try to fucking murder you if they think no one is there to see, and this is not counting the vast segment of the population that actively sucks at driving and will kill you without so much as looking up from the text they are composing as they apply makeup and eat a sandwich to absorb the pint of vodka they had for lunch. Sidewalks only, fuck the street, fuck the law, and may a monster made of angry cocks fuck a cycling activist* flapping their whiny business in my face about how my behavior "hurts the cause". I bury your cause with a spade one hundred meters from my area when I am camping. Do you understand.

Contradiction, you say, to worry about cars when I disregard the easy safety of a helmet? Well, surely then I must be the first man to live his life this way, with contradictions. Someday you must tell me what it is like, this life of yours, so engineered as to ensure that none of your choices or ideas conflict with any of the others or the overarching structure as readable for logical cohesion, coherence, and correctness. If you're not sure, and want to double-check, though, I recommend the purchase of a few red pens.

*

Watching this Seth Rogen movie last night (Observe And Report, made me kinda sick with its hackneyed reliances but also definitely had its many moments, some even pretty great, and made its salient points) I was reminded (by soundtrack decisions [really good in this movie]), as I sometimes am, that Queen is basically my favorite band of all time. I've spent more time liking Queen than I have spent liking any music, with the exception of the classical selections from Disney's Fantasia, and possibly, Little Richard. Bohemian Rhapsody is the first piece of art that I can remember interpreting, and my introduction to the problems of fatalism, judgment, regret, meaninglessness, inevitable death, and the indelible nature of decision/irretrievable action. Also the embattled pity and pitilessness of the choir, which is literal within the composition. I'm sure plenty of dissertations and twatter threads make the case ahead of me, but Bohemian Rhapsody is a pretty heavy text. Some density there.

*

Fat Bottomed Girls is the most flawless composition of all time. They could put it in that French building with the meter and the gram and all that other shit that isn't even accurate anymore**. All songs would be measured in thousandths of a part of Fat Bottomed Girls, the only complete song in the world.

*

Queen also has that song Bicycle Race.

I do enjoy riding a bicycle and I am glad I got to today; it's not quite all I wanna do, but I'd definitely rather do that than argue about fake opposites, unimportant connections, and meaningless loyalties, which is the main point of the song as I remember it.


--JL

*fucking listen to yourself, look at what you call yourself, by all rights you should make yourself sick

**untrue? not looking it up