Saturday ruminations

     Sipping tea steeped from teabags Lily Langois bought in Barcelona back in July.  Feels like ages ago,  that journey, worlds ago.  Honey and milk added, good.  Clears the mind.  What was the name of that store, hmm, and what street was it on?  A picture would jog the memory.  They're so handy.  I like tea.

     I just recently switched a normal folding chair for a big purple exercise ball to sit on here at my desk.  It is said to be better for your back and posture than a standard chair.  I don't know about the truth of that advice on sitting isometrics.  I sense my back aching now, sitting on this ball of air.  Though I do enjoy thinking on the act of sitting on a rubber ball inflated with air while I blog away.  It somehow adds a peculiar stamp of non-legitimacy to my writing's content, allowing my mind to wander off, drift into this place, then that place, mentally free associate.  Give my dirigible a pass.  All clear.  Airhead blogging, as it were.  I haven't typed that phrase, "as it were," since  university.  Sounds so collegiate.  

     Yes indeed, I once, years ago, wrote with a certain brand of self-righteous levity.  Don't ask me why any self-respecting writer would tag such an imprecise phrase as having "levity."  But this is what I mean when I say that writing one's blog while sitting on a big purple rubber ball filled with air can be so liberating.  All you need to do to stir the mental pot when you brain becomes cottony and ceramic is push down on your feet and rotate your hips in little circles.  Ten circles later, the ideas will sprout like gangbusters.  A bumper crop of brilliantly turn phrases, a tract of maxims worthy to be .pamphleted and handed out on Christmas Day instead of candy canes.  Tie a string to one or two and hang them from door jambs and kitchen entrance ways instead of mistletoe.  The possibilities defy imagination.  Don't they?

     I'm considering taking a picture of myself atop this purple sphere, blogging.  The dream may vanish, however.  The thought bubble might just go pop.  Instead, I may consider reading through to the end of the final chapter of "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, A Year of Food Life," B. Kingsolver's nonfiction narrative about farm living out East.  How long have I been reading this book?  These days, too long.  Milk toast.  Just wanted to write that.

Friday off day

At home on a damp afternoon in San Francisco. It's been raining here, yesterday, the day before. The roads become very treacherous in this weather, and it's imperative that you cycle with great care, particularly on slick surfaces like rail tracks and painted lines. Crosswalks, intersections, and the like. One particularly sketchy spot is on Church St. where the Muni trains emerge from the tunnel heading west into the Sunset district. Years ago, a friend of mine's front tire slipped on one of these steel rails, catapulting his body forward over his handlebars. He failed to let go of the handlebars in order to use his forearms and hands to cushion the impact and protect his face and head. Also, he was not wearing a helmet. I still can hear the sickening thud when his bald head hit the wet concrete hard and full. Incredibly, he did not crack his skull open or suffer major head trauma.  He was able to stand, shake it off, and after a short break remount and ride on. We must have had a strong drink or two soon afterward to dull the pain. Russians, they are indeed hard-headed.

Hola telemundo que vaio!

By extension, vicariously, I return to this musty, decomposing blog. Let's hope on in rewards come. I'm dreaming of ginger & toffee cookies while watching chunks of pebble & marblized meat skim off the surface of my skin, slough off into misty floors. Who knows why we do the things we do?

Vincent van Gogh wrote, "We must accept the reality of our fate, and that's that." Who was that painter? I tend toward Gauguin in style, but am charmed by philosophy. A pity I lost my polaroid. For here I would slide in a picture of a Moto Guzzi. Time to gargle and promenade.

Jeans 11.4

But Mr. Lévi-Strauss rejected Rousseau’s idea that humankind’s problems derive from society’s distortions of nature. In his view, there is no alternative to such distortions. Each society must shape itself out of nature’s raw material, he believed, with law and reason as the essential tools. This application of reason, he argued, created universals that could be found across all cultures and times. He became known as a structuralist because of his conviction that a structural unity underlies all of humanity’s mythmaking, and he showed how those universal motifs played out in societies, even in the ways a village was laid out.
For Mr. Lévi-Strauss, every culture’s mythology was built around oppositions: hot and cold, raw and cooked, animal and human. And it is through these opposing “binary” concepts, he said, that humanity makes sense of the world.

10.30.09 entry

Late tea. How are things? I haven't seen you in ages! That's how we rattle it off.

What shall I write on this morning? How much time do I have? Is that it? We can think about in, see us running through the park, beside the pond, atop a strawberry top, barked by dogs, bicyclists, babies in prams, art museums. In my head, I see an exchange of sites. Here one day in lieu of being there the other day. The temporal distance becomes a fuzzy haze that compromises definition and plants a mustard seed of doubt that begins slowly to burn away all historical certainly. You were not there, and neither was I. That did not happen as you describe it. Really, that did not happen at all. You imagined it. All of it. Where you felt you experience this, cultivated that memory, collect that array of images, you now know that nothing but an ugly discoloured stain holds that place in your consciousness. To think that some kind of act occurred is pure futility.

A sleeping newborn is truly beautiful to see. Often the lack of teeth comes as a surprise, at times a naked shock.

I just napped. It's essential, napping, particularly when there is nothing else to do.

It's nearly coffee time this morning. I'm excited. The cotton will be flushed away from my mind, that's the dream. I can't remember last night's dream. Must have been forgettable. Friday should be movie night. Drag me to the cinema Friday, they should call it. Are there any films currently playing that are actually something more than entertainment? I like to believe I can demand more edifying forms of art here in America, and have my wishes fulfilled. My thinking may be wish fulfillment fantasies. Rather I should search my house for something to read !

I do have a book called The Gift, Lewis Hyde's work on "Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World." An excellent read, regardless that his modern world was 1979. Something can be learned from the text, I feel certain about it. The matter at hand then is to fully commit myself to digging through the information. Hyde's writing is flawless and belled, that is most certain. Who reads this kind of book these days, aside from humdrum academics and social anthropologists? I search for books that embrace me, books to fall in love with. To me, books worth valuing are those that somehow alter my phenomenal world and inspire my mind and spirit atonement. Word.

morning thursday pdf

I do hope that my digital camera re-surfaces soon. Time to take another sip of tea. How many does that make now? All of the images and video clips taken over two weeks in Europe were in that camera and its little storage pouch. Three memory cards totaling 7 gigs of information. I hope Camille recovers it from her car. Otherwise, it will be official: the gods are conspiring against me to erase all memory of my existence, both visual and literary, from this earth's historical record. What terrible luck! Is luck involved, to inquire frankly? Bad luck's cards could be in play here. Misfortune, misadventure, mistakes. Something is clearly missing. It's my brain, that much is certain. I can only place the blame squarely on my own head. More accurately, the absence of it. Such is my life, after all is said and done. Such as it is. I am cloaked in abusive forgetfulness. Yet I am mere mortal, truth be told. That's encouraging, at least, for the moment. Until the tea runs dry, until I'm fully resigned, forced to fill the silence with music and chocolate.

A friend informed me that I have blogged only once this entire year. This entry makes it two. He obligated me to do something about that dismal stat. Only once, and here it's almost November. The month of ill writings, the month of coughing and nose-blowing. A phlegmatic month. He sent me an e-mail linking up to a blog he recently started, so I checked it out and was both very impressed by the quality of writing and mildly disappointed by its content. The discussion was about film-making, cinematography, and camera work, all interesting and informative material, mind you. Some reflex in me, oddly enough when I reflect on it, somehow assumes personal blogs to be precisely that-personal. Intimate, self-conscious, revelatory. I must be crossing blogs with journals and diaries in my thoughts. Granted, I'll be returning to the blog soon enough and have another go at reading it, this time more thoroughly. That is, more ponderously and with a clear head and strong cup of coffee. In the morning, additionally. I like blogs. Every once in a while, writing one or two might just be the difference, that inch or two of relief, that every sentient being needs. The line is nearly always attainable, within reason.

on the icy road

Here in Stockholm, waiting for Sofia to be released into the park from school. She started school this fall, & she's got many years to go before being freed from the education years. Young one, yes she is.

It's cold and colorful outside. Gray skies, blue skies. I am a small measure reluctant to venture, even for the Konditori to read my Harper's. It was the first time I picked up this magazine. Why now, I don't know for certain. Perhaps out of boredom, perhaps I was victimized by advertising, perhaps memory. There are two articles that piqued my interest. One about the pot industry in California, the other about AIG.

I made espresso, strong, with milk and sugar.

Both gladness and relief feel me as I write again. I like this sense.