Tree Rings

I've been thinking about tree rings. Annual growth rings that are thicker and thinner depending on how good or how difficult the year. 

Metaphorically this should be a slam dunk but I'm just not feeling it right now. 

Middle of the day

It's the middle of the day and I'm thinking of you and how you'd probably say it's a bad idea to keep ostriches for the sole purpose of making giant omelettes out of their eggs because yeah the eggs are much bigger but regular chickens lay eggs more frequently so you get more eggs overall from the chicken, and also if a chicken are not able to unleash a sudden axe kick into your balls. 

Well maybe some of the fancier chicken breeds might be able to, but not nearly as hard as a 200-pound ostrich. 

I guess you're right. 

Last night, I got a text at 2 AM. I rolled over and groggily checked my phone. The text just said "fuck you". I laughed and went back to sleep. 

When I woke up, the text was gone. I don't think it was ever really there. I think I only dreamed it. I have a Do Not Disturb mode that kicks on between 11 PM and 7 AM so only a select few people can actually trigger my notifications, and this person wasn't one of them. 

I've heard that people aren't supposed to be able to read in dreams. Something about how the language processing part of the brain is a different area than the part where dreams happen. 

I don't know much about it. I can read in dreams. Maybe because my eyes are weird. 

I have "Visual Snow Syndrome." I see static when I close my eyes. I also see it when I open my eyes. Except it doesn't interfere with my vision. It's... underneath everything. 

I don't know what any of this means. 

Surely it's nothing to worry about. 

Goodnight! Sweet dreams. 

 There's a sword-fighting gym that I have been meaning to check out. Er, Historical European Martial Arts gym. (They also teach you how to use a polearm, which we all know is the far superior weapon.) While I do secretly long to be an amazing swordfighter, my primary reason is to find something I can do with my nephews and friends that is also a kind of "moving-around" activity that could promote health if done regularly. Like an exercise, but not boring. And it has the built-in motivation of getting to hit people. 

And you get to wear armor!

Oh, I'm here. Winding down for the evening. I'm quite cozy in this chair. Feels like I could fall asleep right here. That would be a funny thing. Because I'd fall out of the chair at some point. My reflexes are pretty good though. I'm sure I'd wake up in time to appreciate the full impact of hitting the floor.

Bedtime. Goodnight!

***

Okay I'm back. I didn't like how we left things, so here I am again. I'm not fooling myself into thinking something magical is going to happen this time, but maybe we can make a better ending.

One thing I meant to talk about but didn't remember until I got into bed was that I've been taking a quick shower when I get home from work. I like feeling clean and the act of showering seems to reset my brain. 

So yes, showers are great and probably magical. This is a better ending. 

More anniversaries

 My calendar reminds me that it's the anniversary of the death of my little brother, Luis. That takes the wind out of my sails a bit. There were lots of things that happened today, lots of good things. I can't recall them at this precise moment, but the moments linger. 

It's been a long time. February 24, 2009. 

Bedtime now, I think. 

Last night, I woke up at 3 AM, feeling refreshed and ready to start my day. Clearly, I was going mad, because that is not normal. I lay awake for a while, trying not to stress about falling back asleep before I had to get up for work. Because that's a trap. Creates anxiety, then it's impossible to sleep. The key is to not think at all, or at least as little as possible. I like to pretend that I'm supposed to be getting up, but I've decided to remain in my cozy bed. 

It works pretty well.

I felt pretty good most of the day, despite my night of truncated sleep. 

Must be all that kombucha I've been drinking.

Wendy brewed up some kombucha, and I stole some and now I have a couple of gallon jugs full of the stuff. I drink until they get about halfway, then I brew up some sweet tea and fill them back up. It recently occurred to me that I had been doing this for a while...and I don't know how long it's safe to keep the stuff. I may be slowly poisoning myself. I think this batch has been going since... August of last year? 

A quick internet search assures me that the living symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (that floating blob that converts the sweet black tea into whatever the hell kombucha is) shouldn't become sentient for at least another six months.

We've got time!

Cooking

 Let me preface this by saying that I know it's a bad idea to cook while naked, and that I'm not stupid enough to ever do that.

I was not cooking; I was only moving the freshly-cooked Spanish rice from the pan to a storage container. And I was wearing a towel.

I don't have to justify myself. (I will, but I don't have to.) I'm still unraveling the art of making Spanish rice and while I am certainly improving, I cannot yet say that I'm an expert. Probably because I look up the recipe and then think "oh yeah this isn't so hard" and then don't look at it again. 

Life is just more exciting this way. 

But now I have pretty dang good rice for tomorrow, and probably another scar. It's no big deal. I've got so many scars, and they all tell a story. Usually that story is "I was hungry and didn't wait for it to cool down."

I didn't say they were good stories.

What day is it today...Monday! That's it. I have a tiny goal of sitting down for a few minutes in the evening, after I've taken my nightly shower, and writing down my thoughts. It's very easy to get stuck in the same patterns of thinking. One of the useful things about this blog is the ability to re-read it and realize I've been behaving like a jackass. Like how I'm so much less tolerant of any amount of discomfort. I blame the medication. That's the thing about being depressed; I was half-miserable all the time so I would do a lot more stuff, because what's a little more suffering?

Oh, it's cold outside? That's fine; the icy grip of sadness is already clutching at my throat; I doubt I'll even notice it.

Hey what the hell...I appear to have downloaded something called MuseHub. Was I drunk on the internet again? I vaguely remember thinking about making music. Also thinking that it's probably too late to get really good at learning to play an instrument, but not too late to use music software to make sad banjo songs.

Yeah, I must have. I also seem to have downloaded Audacity. Oh wait, I think that was because I wanted to record myself reading Moby Dick so when I die and if someone wants to hear my voice again, they'll have to sit through Moby Dick. 

It's very easy to get stuck in the same patterns of thinking.

Been very busy trying to create an ambient space for ideas to gestate. 

Okay, no I haven't. I've been looking up the difference between alpacas and llamas. I thought I would know instinctively, but I guess I don't know my even-toed ungulates as well as I thought. 

Size: Alpacas are small. Llamas are large. 

Face: Llamas got the long face. Lamentably long, is how I'll remember that. 

Hair: Alpacas have shaggy hair that is finer than llama hair, and makes really nice wool. So when in doubt, I'll make a sweater out of the hair and the nicer one is probably the alpaca. 

(Besides the alpaca and the llama, there are two other extant lamoids: the guanaco and the vicuña. I'm sleepy so I'm not going to try to think of mnemonic devices for telling them apart. I'll leave that problem for future, South American Guillermo to figure out.)

We're close enough to the train tracks that when it goes by, the mirrors in our house rattle against the walls. The train rarely runs at night, but when it does, at least it never blows its horn. I'll wake up sometimes, to silence, and wonder if it passed by and I was just now waking up. 

Zoo

Yesterday was great. I went to the Phoenix Zoo. The last time I had gone, the hyena was dead. Presumably, it's still dead, but the point is that I really like hyenas and I was sad about it. The zoo has a new hyena exhibit, and they've done a few other cool things also. The weather was extremely pleasant. 

It's an excellent zoo. One of the best in the country, in my opinion. 

Now it's bedtime. 

I wonder if I'll dream of animals.

Caught The Air

Sometimes I think I hear an ocean. The wind over waves. Dropping anchors in safe harbors. 

Can't leave footprints in an ocean. Not like the desert, in all this sand. 

There is so much to see. 

I'm in bed at a reasonable hour (for me anyway). I'll get up early tomorrow and try to see. 

Oh yeah and I've got this chocolate bread stuff to eat for breakfast. That's gonna be good. 

today

I've had a slight headache today. That's unusual for me. 

I went to the funeral of Grandma Liem today. Also unusual. 

It wasn't called a funeral; it was a "celebration of life." And it was. There was as much laughter as there were tears. 

She wasn't my biological grandmother; she was my mom's godmother. An all-around great person. I probably wouldn't be here without her, since she had a hand in my parents getting together. 

Later in the evening, Barbara, Ender, and I went to see Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die. It was wild. 

Sometimes I feel like I know exactly what I'm doing, and sometimes I feel like I have no idea. 

 Usually multiple times, throughout the span of a single day. 

Today is a beautiful day. 

Feb 9th

It's not yet midnight yet; that means there's time to write. 

Because it's not the future yet. Still plenty of time to capture the moment. 

Sweep away the half-muttered curses that have gathered in the corners. 

Whatever hurt me is probably still out there but it isn't here now. 

Check the cobwebs for answers. 

This sounds morose but I'm going for contemplative. I'm just so used to seeing beauty in all things ya know? 

The Three C's is something I've been thinking about. I forget where I heard this...

Create. Create something every day. 

Community? Do something with other people. Maybe it was Connect. That sounds right. Talk to people. Go see 'em and stuff. Leaving the house can be annoying because you have to put on pants but you can also get to put on fun socks. 

Cherish. I think it meant to appreciate any dang old thing that is pretty cool but maybe we take for granted. Like a cookie.

Cookie also starts with "c". 

I've been dreaming so much lately. And I already dream a lot. I wake up and feel like I've lived a dozen lives.

It's interesting. Kind of feels like cheating. Most people only get one life, and here I am with more than I know what to do with. 

It does feel like it gets lost when I wake up. Lessons are learned, but most slip away by the time I've brushed my teeth. 

I'll keep practicing. 

Playlists, lately

I've been listening to haunting ballads of monsters slain, devils outsmarted, and lovers lost. Sea shanties and land lamentations. Whistling, clapping, snapping, thumping of bodhran and droning of hurdy-gurdy. 

I pretend I'm floating on a quiet patch of ocean, on a sailboat built from stolen wood. 

a quick experiment

I have returned safely from the Moby Dick Marathon. Got my 2026 merch and everything. It was a blast. Reading a book for 26 hours doesn't seem like a blast to the outside observer, but it is. I even got to go to HP Lovecraft's grave. It was great. Oh, I'm using my voice to dictate this this post. I was wondering if it would capture my various stutters and it appears that it does so you're going to see some duplication. Probably definitely. Maybe. This is great because it can't handle my the way I talk the ADHD pattern speaking where there's maybe no punctuation. It's trying to detect that I can clearly see it's struggling. My phone is getting hot in my hand and it's steaming and there's various cartoon curse emojis popping up in the air around my phone, which I didn't think was possible, but apparently that's some kind of new feature. This phone is still pretty new to me so that's why I'm trying to trying to spend a little more time learning about it. But this is good. I feel like this is going to be a good step for me who needs editing when you can just talk at a machine and it will say the words I don't know. I was trying to look at device to help me just get in the habit of sitting down and riding and at what I end up doing is looking at all kinds of stuff. Oh man we probably should have a

Here I said. 

What if I just want to write the words new and paragraph? 

So I can say the word separately. But God forbid I attempt new para graph. I paused in between the word and it added that. That's great. This is very entertaining to me. Probably not so much for the reader but hey if you love what you do. 

I was saying that I just keep researching all these various writing devices and there's so many cool things out there. There is the what is it type free. It's sort of a little word processor portable or built-in screen. Kind of a typewriter ish device. Sort of like what you'd see it on alt universe steampunk universe. 

This is a good thing I think because I can keep talking and then go back and edit because sometimes I just write and I do not edit at all and then I go back to the post. You know a day or two later ending you see? Oh no! I said something not so good or indelicately phrased or maybe not exactly what I meant. 

I see that my ability to go off on tangents is unaffected probably even exacerbated so I was looking at devices that would help me and I did actually just purchase a magnetic attachment. That's the little keyboard if you remember. BlackBerry phones they had. They have the built-in actually some older phones but they had the the built-in keyboards. I had a full-sized built-in keyboard not full size but it was the length of the phone and one of my phones and I loved that thing. How I loved typing on that thing. Just full keyboard so this is similar but but it's not the same. What's it called? A click power keyboard anyway I pre-ordered it cuz all the other stuff I was looking at was you know pushing 100 bucks essentially just a keyboard and and I guess what I was looking at ultimately was how do I use my phone now? Am I going to log a full size keyboard around with me and the answer is no I barely take any stuff. I'm reluctant to take my wallet with me most places. I've got a phone that or a phone case that has the little flappy thing where I can put in my credit card and my driver's license. And what more do I need? What more do I need in this crazy world? 

You know I'm not going to edit this. I'm just going to publish it because this whole thing was an experiment and and it's time to gather some data. I did say datum and then it corrected to Data but I meant datum even though it wasn't correct. 

I like that it made the word data capitalized like the Star Trek character. One of my favorites. I also got a pixel watch and it has a watch face that has the Star Trek the next generation interface. It's called LCARS I think. I love it. 

Searching for Moby Dick

After a lovely New Year's Eve party at Donovan and Lauren's, I fall into bed, excited to fly out to New Bedford, Massachusetts, for the annual Moby Dick reading marathon early Friday, the next morning.

Except the flight isn't on Friday. It's Thursday morning, as in today, this morning. Brian Young calls me and wakes me up with "Hey buddy, are you on your way?" And horrible realization hits me that I've got exactly 50 minutes before the plane starts boarding. 

After a prodigious amount of swearing, I hang up and call my mom. She's an early riser and says she can take me to the airport. Excellent. Now it's time for this desert dweller to pack for...snow. I turn on the shower and don't even wait for the water to warm up. I run naked and wet down the hall and grab my bag, which I had meant to pack days ago. I hurl in a coat, socks, and underwear, a copy of Moby Dick and then get dressed and run outside where my beloved mother is waiting. 

She is a very polite driver and loves to just under the speed limit. I grit my teeth while she prays for God to bless me and my journey. I remind myself that if it weren't for her, I would have no chance of making it at all; let her do her thing and focus on the mission. 

Security is no problem. Brian waited for me there and the line was very short because who the hell takes a 7 am flight on New Year's Day. Nobody. 

Almost not me, too. Because I forget entire days.

But we made it!

Now we just have to make our connection in Chicago. So there's still plenty of time for things to go wrong. I'll try not to get cocky.

After all, there's a high probability I will freeze to death once we get there, like some Dickensian urchin. 

But if I don't, everything else should be smooth sailing.