#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

#326

Probably the nicest thing about getting up super duper early even when I don't have to leave the house at six in the morning is listening to the birds wake up and do their morning dispatches, or paeans to their avian deities, or self-promotions, or community catchups, or hate speeches, or their art for art's sake, or whatever it is they're warbling and chirruping about before the sun comes up. Love to hear that stuff. 

*

Maybe you're wondering what kind of music I've been listening to lately! If so, today is a present just for you; today, the universe has rewarded you, and you specifically, with precisely what you crave, what you long for in the cold watches of the night. And who could blame you for these harrowing needs? To try to live one's life in ignorance of what I play in the car to stave off transit madness is to languish in a darkness far from God. I also play music when I do the dishes.

That's the when of it. The how? A bluetoof speaker, because our hatchback's audio system is not functional. Sometimes, with the dishes, a boombox, to play CD's. 

Now, finally, the what.

Carpenter Brut's first album, Trilogy, has seen some play, as has The Protomen's The Protomen. SeZon's remake of the Metroid Prime OST is quite good. Taken separately, Kimya Dawson's album Thunder Thighs and Aesop Rock's Garbology have made their rounds, especially Thunder Thighs, which is probably my most-played music lately; taken together, as The Uncluded, their album Hokey Fright has also been "spinning", inasmuch as albums can spin through a streaming service and in a telephone. Kimya Dawson's other albums have also seen action of late. Traditional and Folk Songs of Yugoslavia, played by Branko Mataja, brought me great pleasure. 

Finally, deserving of their own paragraph, The Movers have brought me such joy and lightness of soul that I seriously considered printing pamphlpets and making time to hand them out on street corners, courtyards, pavilions--wherever the public blood courses, that I may infuse it with Glad Tidings. 

Seriously, in my head, I was composing lines like "Did you know that music has healing properties? Have you ever imagined a world living in a sustained and glorious harmony? Please, take a minute to listen to The Movers, and once you have, tell a friend. In this simple way, we can contribute to a new era of peace and prosperity on our beautiful planet."

*

Ok! There is a lot for me to do for school right about now, but I'll try to make some more posts this week. Maybe sometime this spring deliver a fresh book, finally, finally go from ninety-five percent complete to one hundred. I keep saying it, in hopes that it may encourage the thing to come to pass. 

PEACE


--JL

#59

Before I got sick, I saw a red-tailed hawk do some magnificent flying. She lit from the top of a municipal light to  cross a road and wing her way powerfully across an empty soccer field over to the treeline by the river. She was a strong, built, stocky bird, well-made for self-directed, energetic flight. She engaged in a great deal of exuberant altitude-play once across the river before deigning to perch. Clearly, some birds have seasons in their prime wherein the lean season and the easy pickings blur together. The tightening days trouble them not at all. I'm watching some fat robins make mock of the snowy day we're having right now, in fact. They look like chubby little frat boys screwing around together.

*

Putting books on a wall is a lot like putting maps on a wall. I used to have both, but I lost all my maps. I love cartography. Basically I love data points arranged in space, in whatever dimensionality or variety of such you please. Finally, the feeling of being surrounded by connections both unintentional and personal, by literal battlements of psychic power, is a very potent defensive barrier. I cannot recommend it enough. 

I don't have any shelves right now. I have instead arranged great stacks, mostly against walls, a few freestanding, all around the walls of my room. It's a mess, but even in this chaos there are little jokes and coincidences to ponder. For example, I see a series of books that was important to an ex of mine and their sibling just beneath a copy of Civilization and Its Discontents that their mother gave to me as a gift--unintentional, but a nice little twinge. Freud would heartily approve, which carries the whole thing into the realm of the truly disgusting.

Gender Trouble is right over Peter Pan. Amusing. Would that I had any Alison Bechdel to add to the mix; alas, Ulysses is across the room--atop You Can't Go Home Again. Who seethes the more? Ugh. I miss my maps. Ah, well, but they were maps of Middle-Earth anyway. Who the hell am I kidding.

Too many books, folks. Too much bullshit. 

I know a dude, a mechanic works out of a garage in a Citgo station, who once a few years back asked me why the fuck I was reading. Since I was on the clock and delivering him auto parts, I told him I didn't get paid enough not to read a few minutes every stop. 

"No, motherfucker, I'm  talking about why the fuck do you even do that. Read books. All that bullshit. It's all fucking lies."
"Well, lies are kind of the point, with fiction--"
"All of it, motherfucker! I mean all of it! Don't even talk to me about fiction, I mean every book is just lies, history, religion, social shit, all that fuckin bullshit. My fuckin wife, she's always reading books, listening to the news, and now she's full of fucking bullshit. Making her waste her fuckin time thinking about problems that have nothing to do with fuckin anything. Lies!"

At this point I put the book down and leaned forward, interested. "Hold up, man. Are you saying you don't read anything? Like, no books ever, no magazines, no news, because it is all of it nothing but lies? What the fuck do you think is true, man?"

He smiled and waved his hand to show he'd been hot-airin' a little, but dragged his cig and bore down on his point. "Almost all lies, almost, fucking bullshit anyway, news, definitely lies, history, so much lies--listen, the real thing is business, every day. Work. Fuckin money. This shit right here, bitch. Fucking books just fill your head with bullshit, bullshit keeps you from making money. You're a smart motherfucker, you don't need to be reading no books."

Many pleasant arguments with him as we whiled away the cigarettes, neither of us much shifting our positions. Yet, given time and the reading of a lot more books, I find I have become more warmed to his viewpoint than I would have ever believed possible.

Hey, have you read my now-in-paperback lies?


--JL

#46

Saw so many great birds in between getting up from typing last time I wrote a post and sitting down to type one now. Let me tell you about some.

I saw a really great blue jay. I saw several merely great blue jays in flight, from below, their distinctive dippy sort of slow flap they use when they're just cruisin' and their palest gray, wonderfully expansive bellies--all very well in order, but without a better look at the whole bird, you can't get a sense of what you're really dealing with. The really great one was much nearer me, in a tree; a most pert little fellow. Full-grown youngster with a slight, sharp build, very sunny sky-colored blues, a tall crest, a short dark beak and comically round and large of eye. He called loudly at swift intervals, as if to banter, and hopped about freely. 

*

You know what? I'm extremely tired. I am an early bird, ha-ha. I'll tell you about the hawks tomorrow. It'll be rad, you won't wanna miss it.

Peace, horse dogg maniacs


--JL