Temp at 10am. 55 minutes before sunrise.

At least it's supposed to be sunny.

Single digits

That's 9° F

Not C

So. Sometimes The Dude bowls

197 people. Take note. This may be my peak. I may never again reach
this level in the game.

White

September. Mid September. I took this a week ago.

The leaves have all fallen now, except for a few stubborn ones.

It isn't quite sticking though, but that won't last for long.

They don't call it winter here till it's ankle deep.

And the winner is...

Honolulu: for the most freakishly consistent weather award. Although
it isn't a palindrome.

Although 88 IS a palindrome in itself. Damn. Hawaii is awesome. How
does it DO that?

Suck

Aw... NYC has a palindrome day on thursday… now I don't feel very
special

AND it's way warmer there. Definitely not snowing in September.

Palindrome Wednesday

So check it out:
on wednesday, the high is 42˚ and the low is 24˚

palindrome Wednesday!

new kicks

Sometimes the only thing better than great new shoes is the long green
grass of summer.

Jalama Beach Cafe: Lompoc, CA

currently 75 degrees and cloudless

currently digesting coffee, fries, and one Kobe beef and avocado burger.

Tokyo

yes. Tokyo

ice

the ship is was massive.
it was made to break passages where there were none. it's hull dense and reinforced to slide up on the sheet ice and cut through with it's own weight.

it was never taught how to feel sharpness because it was always the blade and never the butter. it's emotions are delayed. a masterful 30 second delay to separate a false positive from a real emergency... which means when the gauge reads low it is already too late.

[written April 17, 2007... found recently]

a hitchhiker told me i don't talk a lot... made me feel fine... made me quiet

i recently found a band that i like: Blind Pilot

sometimes music just speaks to you, and sometimes it doesn't.

i won't go on to say that these musicians speak to my soul. i won't say that they found a voice to my inner monologue. i won't say that they capture the energy of my inner day, each and every day.

i won't say that i've listened to their album 4o times in the last week and a half

i imagine they are a few guys with a guitar and a simple drum. i imagine they feel good about the music they make. i imagine they like sharing it with the world and they would appreciate it if a few people sat down and listened to it.

i think there are moments in our lives when we are receptive to certain paths... when we want to see things presented to ourselves in a distinct way. i find it curious that the music that speaks to me comes from a band called Blind Pilot...

me being a pilot and all

not a bad image. a pilot being someone who is in control. who has possession of his world... someone who is skilled and trained to guide his being through all dimensions... but he's blind. flying on faith. or memory. or trust. or hope.

i've always been in control, or striving for it. i've always been driving, or at least i thought i have been. i suppose the first part of healing is admitting there is a problem

i'm not necessarily sure where i'm going. i'm not really sure what i'll find when i get there.

there... step one... now what?

Wax Poetic

i wish i could remember what i was looking for.

it mustn't have been too large... smaller than a breadbox... and yet too big to put in my pocket. that's always how it is with important things... nebulous.

i think i felt it once in my hand. small and weighty, i could almost close my hands around it, two at a time, but not quite. i wish i had taken a better look, instead of just feeling it along my fingers and thinking i had it squared away... dicked... settled.

looking back, i never should have closed my eyes. i should have opened them, looked down, taken it all in. i should have held it up to my lips and breathed it in. i should have curled in a ball around it. i should have.

but i didn't, and i lost it

i must have put it down somewhere, thinking i'd come back for it... thinking i'd pick it up again... never figuring that it wouldn't be there when i finally reached for it...

you should have seen the look on my face... the fool... the sap... the imbecile.
the one who knew finally and too late

it is easy to forget sometimes... the value of what is in your hand. it is easy to look at what is on the horizon and forget that precious weight in your hand. i cannot explain what it feels like to have felt it and lost it... to have misplaced it... to have misprioritized... to have misfocused... to be awakened into your own personal incomplete reality.

time will heal. time always heals.
whatever that means

it means time helps you forget. time helps you move on. time helps you put distance between you and your mistakes. time makes it easier to distract yourself with the immediate pressing matters of the present and disremember the past... to let it fall out of focus.

so there it is, over my shoulder and out of focus... behind me.... possibly in front of me... but i can no longer remember the weight or shape in my hand. i can't even trust that i'd remember it if it's mass settled into my palm... or on my chest... or my heart... or my mind. so there is a trust, a blind faith, that it will all will be just fine...

surely i'll know. surely i'll recognize it.

surely i won't put it down on the piano, as i have before, and walk away to focus on other things. seemingly more pressing things. things on the horizon. things just beyond my grasp.

surely not.

truffula trees

to reminisce

this weekend i made gloriously soft homemade pretzels.
i made a spectacular curry from scratch.
i cooked a traditional hungarian goulash.
i created strawberry apple pancakes from thin air.
i pan-fried a steak medium rare and placed it on a bed of ginger sweet potatoes, green onions, red peppers, and asparagus.

and i washed it down with belgian beer

this weekend i cleaned my apartment... sort of.

this weekend i watched a vampire movie.

i watched the only football game that i've seen all year, i rooted for the underdog, and then didn't mind when they lost because i won the pot for the third and fourth quarters anyway.

this weekend i went looking for star anise, lemon grass, and galangal and came home sorely disappointed and empty handed... i had to substitute ginger for galangal, lime juice for lemongrass, and cinnimon for star anise... it's not the same people.

this weekend i ordered a 3-cup granite mortar and pestle and a 20-inch cast iron griddle.

this weekend i dropped off my car to get the suspension realigned after i kind of drove sideways into a curb on one particularly rambunctious day in the snow about three weeks ago.

this weekend i wore my flip flops even though it was 35 degrees outside.

this weekend i ordered an album called Push the Heart from a band called Devics because i stumbled across them and liked them.

this weekend i caught up with a handful of old friends on skype, that magical window into your loved one's homes halfway around the world.

this weekend i took a shower on saturday and on sunday but not today, because i had to get up right away to cook the pancakes.

this weekend i went with some friends who are about to get married to a lake in the nearby city and we walked around and i took pictures of the two of them looking oh-so-much in love.

this weekend i almost got guilted into playing pictionary.

this weekend will never happen again, but it was wonderful while it lasted.
love
p

trusted

sometimes we find ourselves with a lack of trusted individuals... you know?

I know

now... i have to preface this... i have the kind of job where i need to be able to trust my LIFE with the person next to me... but that doesn't mean i need to trust my life with them... if you know what i mean...

quite literally, there are people that i would trust to defend me from those forces out in the world that would love to do me physical harm... and yet, i wouldn't share my personal life with them...

why is that? i mean... that's kind of fucked up... isn't it?

not really.

now, don't get me wrong, i love the guys i work with... i would even put myself in imminent danger on a regular basis if it meant that it would increase the chances that the guy next to me would get home safely...

but...

at the same time, i feel that my personal life is mine alone, and not one to be monitored or recorded or interpreted by any people other than those with whom i entrust it...

and that number is very small.

after all... we only NEED a small audience... above that and people are likely only looking for drama... for the most part, we only need a sounding board... above that and we lose control over what we wish to be out in the open.

strange though, isn't it? that i entrust those around me more with my cardiovascular and neurological state (read biological survival) than with my mental, cognitive, interpretive, and personal manifestations.

fucked up world it is sometimes.

i like to spend my time thinking about things sometimes

my life sometimes feels a little bit... what's the word... amorphous.

nebulous... lacking clarity perhaps... for example: i like cottage cheese and wheat thins. i mean i really like it. i might even say that i love it, and those who know me might say, "yes, that is quite true, that guy loves his cottage cheese and wheat thins."

so, i thought, maybe that's a problem... MAYBE, i shouldn't like it so much. MAYBE i should vary my diet somewhat. MAYBE i shouldn't have two extra boxes of wheat thins my cabinet and two extra containers of cottage cheese in my fridge just to make sure i don't run out.

and so i went cold turkey.

this was a while ago, back when i lived in italia... about a year and a half ago.

i made a conscious decision to buy NEITHER cottage cheese NOR wheat thins (both of them being gateway foods you see... leading unwaveringly towards each other), and i survived. i varied my diet. i was happy.

and yet something happened and i can't quite explain it. something subtle and with a scheming laugh crawled through my mind and waited until just the right moment when i was walking down the cracker aisle... it waited until i was kind of distracted with some other tidbit of my life and it casually mentioned that maybe i might want to get a box of wheat thins for my self... just wheat thins. no harm in that really.

i mean, so what if i had a tub of cottage cheese already in my cart. it was purely a coincidence.

everyone knows that cottage cheese, when added to whisked eggs, makes the fluffiest scrambled eggs on earth... and i had been planning on eating the fluffiest scrambled eggs for a while. right?

"totally," said the subtle and scheming laugh

i'm not sure what happened afterwards, because it all seems like a blur now, but the next thing i remember is waking up on my floor with an empty box of wheat thins and a empty tub of cottage cheese with the realization that i was not as strong as i once believed.

friends complain that i don't call anymore. they say i never write them back.

when they come by i casually open my fridge and cabinets, in an offhand way, to reveal a total absence of wheat thins and cottage cheese... little do they know that the wheat thins are hidden in an unappetizing box of pancake mix and the cottage cheese is in an old yogurt tub.

some people may call it a problem, but i don't think i'm hurting anyone. i mean, i can handle myself.

but seriously... i was talking about amorphousness... nebulousness