Caveat: Firewood

Location: Arcata, CA

Soundtrack: Inner silence.

This is my home town – I was born here and, with a few interruptions, spent much of my first 18 years here. There are some ghosts, still, but mostly, when I come back, I’m overwhelmed by the natural beauty of this place I grew up, and the warmth and centeredness of the home I grew up, though now Peggy and Latif own it, they were part of the broader community that was involved in my upbringing all those years ago, and there’s huge continuity in things.

Arcata_008_2 The house where I grew up now has gardens all around it, and is very different from when I lived here, but it is strikingly beautiful – Peggy and Latif have done spectacular things with both the internal and external spaces.  All surrounded by gardens and greenery, the redwoods off to the northwest still, but both front yard and back now filled with paths and patches of plants.

Drove to David and Vivian’s “up the hill” and helped David move some firewood, and talked for a few hours.

Old books were found – I’ll take them with me back to Minneapolis to put into storage while I go off to Korea.

Caveat: Tree flesh [Cold – End of the World]

Location: US 101 to Humboldt County

Soundtrack: Cold’s “13 Ways to Bleed on Stage” (on of my favorite albums of all time).

[I retroactively added this embedded video on 2011-06-24 as part of my Background Noise project]

But then Beck’s “Loser” came on my MP3’s shuffle, and I remembered when that song first came on the radio, in 94-95, and I was commuting every night on the I-35W bridge across the Mississippi – the one that just collapsed – and I imagined that if the bridge had aged a little faster, it might have been me sampling the river bottom’s mud with my bumper… so I said goodbye to the bridge, even though I’m in Northern California.

By the time I got onto US 101 at Ukiah, the litter on the roads was no longer tomatoes, but instead the familiar fragments of redwood bark that falls off the log trucks. Because of the fibrous nature of the bark, and its reddish color, this, too, looks a quite a bit like road kill, at times. 

I think I would not do well, moving back to Humboldt (which is where I grew up) – but I always love that feeling of “coming home” that I get driving down into the greenness that is the far north coast.

Caveat: Tomatoes

Location: I-5 Up the Central Valley

Soundtrack: NPR via various valley stations

I left L.A. early – 4:30 am., to beat the traffic out of the city. Dawn at the summit of the Tehachapis. Then tomatoes littering the sides of the highway all the way up the valley, falling off of trucks from the harvest, I guess. A sort of vaguely macabre asphalt marinara.

Quote: “No animals were humped during the making of that song.” Meredith Brooks, regarding her 97 hit “I’m a Bitch”, during a discussion of a recent New York City Council initiative to “censure” the use of the word “bitch” in public discourse, in which she suggested the label was as much empowering as derogatory.

Caveat: Chupe de pescado [Korn – Evolution]

Location: Newport Beach, CA

Soundtrack: 

KLoVE (Spanish soft rock station in LA: más romántica);

KoRn’s new single _Evolution_

[I retroactively added this embedded video on 2011-06-24 as part of my Background Noise project]

I spent the morning in Burbank again, catching up with a few people (Vesper, Diana, Luz…) who I didn’t manage to see yesterday.  Then I drove all the way down to Newport to have lunch with Tyler (colleague from HealthSmart) at my favorite Peruvian restaurant, Inka Grill just across the line in Costa Mesa.  I love their Chupe de pescado, it’s possibly the most delicious soup in the known universe, in my opinion:  potatoes, egg, onion, fish, spices, something that makes it chowdery – I ate here often with Tyler and the rest of the HealthSmart crew during those long months now memorialized as the “battle of Lytec” (which we lost spectacularly to the enemy forces, which fought under the banner “poor project scoping and planning”). 

We went back to the Newport Beach offices and I chatted briefly with some of the other folks there, and I had weird flashbacks of T-SQL code as I walked the aisles between the cubicles.  Too many very late nights practicing slash-and-burn database programming,  I guess.  Visiting ARAMARK was better for my sense of accomplishment, and it stoked my ego to see the accomplishments of my era still percolating on the screens of the National Account Reps, but visiting HealthSmart’s IPM offices has served to remind me why I’ve decided to change careers and try something different:  more people-oriented, perhaps less remunerative, but hopefully more spiritually fulfilling.  Not that I’m particularly spiritual person, as many of you know, but I don’t know how else to express the idea I’m trying to get across.

Why do I listen to Spanish soft, romantic rock, when I abhor the same genre in English? It’s a nostalgia thing, I think.  It was the soundtrack of too many hole-in-the-wall restaurants in Mexico, too many 2nd class bus rides.  Not the same songs, 20 years ago, but the genre is full of songs that, 20 years on, can’t be differentiated from those older ones… it’s all a sort of weird slightly enchilada-flavored aural blur.

The smog in downtown LA was atrocious, driving down, I couldn’t even see downtown from the 5 as I went by  – much worse than anything we saw in Mexico City last week.  But this is smog season in Lalatopia, while this is precisely NOT smog season in Chilangolandia at the moment – which is why we went at this time, of course.  Which is why I always go to Mexico DF at this time of year. 

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Caveat: “There is great chaos under heaven, and the situation is excellent”

Location: Los Angeles

Soundtrack: my brother playing L7 and Echoboy on his turntable – good stuff

The quote above is from Mao Tse-tung. Many years ago (maybe 5? 6?) I had placed that quote on the home page (splash page) of my National Account Data Analysis intranet website that I built at ARAMARK (the application affectionately known as Reportomatic). At the time, it seemed very apropos to the IT/database situation there, but I’ve always assumed that the Reportomatic would eventually be upgraded or replaced. 

NadapageAt right is a screenshot of the page under discussion (click image to see larger).

Yet, yesterday morning I went to visit with old friends there: Joanne, Judy, Paul, Tom, Carol, and all the rest, and Joanne showed me that it was still there, exactly the same, all these years later. I was so pleased to have left such an ambiguous legacy!

Not surprising, perhaps, that things have changed so little there, but I still reflect that that company still seems so much more forward-looking and IT savvy than my more recent job, which was a sort of permanent IT disaster-in-progress.

Anyway, Paul and I went out to lunch in Burbank, and had some pretty good sushi at a place called Kabuki. Paul is the most brilliant database administrator I know, and I was surprised to learn he was still with ARAMARK at first, until I learned he’s a new father – this explains a great deal, as suddenly one’s need for stability and reliability in a job becomes more important than one’s frustration with the job’s nature, I suppose. I can sympathize if not quite relate. Anyway, he’s always great to talk with, and parenthood seems to agree with him.

My brother has the most amazing music collection – all kinds of ripped/burned CDs and tons of stuff on vinyl. He’s going through and playing stuff and it makes for a nice sound track.

Caveat: Vista

So… back in L.A., I bought my new computer on Friday.  A Sony Vaio, again, because, aside from this recent screen failure on my beloved laptop, I’ve had pretty good luck with these machines.  My new machine is not, strictly speaking, a clone or replacement of my previous – it’s a bigger machine, with shorter battery life (which is a sacrifice), but with a dual core processor, 160G harddrive, 2G RAM, it’s a much zippier little machine, and has a nice screen and graphics card, too.  I opted for it because, since I’m now definitely moving out of the country, I’ll not have a “desktop” anymore, so this will be my sole computer, and I wanted something a little more versatile for my programming and DVD-watching and so on.  But the big change – the huge difference – with this new machine is, of course, that it comes installed with Windows Vista.  And THAT is almost PURE suckiness.

It’s not that I’m adverse to change for change’s sake.  I understand the impulse.  But why must Microsoft change, for example, which “hot keys” cause things to happen, each time they upgrade?  And then document in such an obscure way what the new hot keys are?  There seems to be a belief in Redmond that no one actually uses hot keys, that everyone is slavishly devoted to their mouse and that hot keys are some weird concession to the handicapped and luddite faction and deserve minimal attention at best and downright obfuscation at worst.  And this happens not just in the operating system upgrades – it’s even more common in upgrades to, e.g. Microsoft Office.  God, what a ghastly new “look” they’ve managed there – do they believe users of word are illiterate, now?  As much as such a hypothesis has compelling aspects, it seems a bit contradictory to presume the user of a word-processor program can’t read labels on menus, and needs little Egyptian-looking hieroglyphics to know what gadget does what.  And these things are forced down your throat: there’s no “go back to the old look and feel” option – the help file even admits so, explicitly.

So I’ve spent my weekend learning, adapting, porting data and files from my old system over to the new one.  A decidedly unpleasant two days, after a great time visiting with my friend Jay and his friend Cuong on Friday afternoon/evening – we went to a Thai place on Wilshire in Santa Monica (Jay lives in Brentwood) and sat and talked politics, Jay’s amazing business plan, life, the universe and everything for at least four hours – I think the waitstaff at the place was getting a bit annoyed with us, even.  But it was good to see him.  I’m thinking of trying to reconnect with some other former coworkers today and tomorrow, before I begin the looping drive back to Minnesota.

Caveat: No sé nada, pero me la sé muy bien

Yesterday we returned from Xalapa.  A very clear day, but despite this the descent into the City from the east was still a sort of diving-into-smog. 

I've been struggling with a bit of bourgeois guilt (or first-world guilt if you prefer) – that feeling one gets when traveling in places like Mexico City (or south Chicago for that matter) when one resides comfortably.  The guy named Colin whom we met the other day here at the Casa accepted the label "freelance anthropologist" but my question is:  how is this different from being a sort of "cultural daredevil" – i.e. someone who goes out into the world from the safety of middle-class America, whether the urban nightmare labyrinths of Tepito or the destitution of rural Guatemala?

Not that I'm placing a value judgement on it – but let's not fool ourselves into thinking we're somehow helping or even showing solidarity with the "masses" – all we're doing is "having fun" exploring alien cultural spaces, aren't we?  Is this wrong?

Phil and I went to the main modern art museum at Chapultepec this morning, but he wasn't feeling too hot (maybe a bit of elevation sickness finally hitting?  not sure…), so we returned to the Casa for a few hours of relaxation before we run off to the airport this afternoon for the flight back to L.A.

I took a long walk toward Metro Hidalgo, the little park there where Aura and I used to rendezvous and go on our "dates" all those years ago.  Such fond memories of such dysfunctional relathionships… but haven't all my relationships been dysfunctional?

I then zig-zagged my way toward Chopo, enjoying the feel of the little neighborhoods; the streets; the school kids loitering; the policemen (and a few policewoman, in fact) chatting, guarding inobvious things; the vendors selling aguas and jugos; the old women begging; the young men with punk haircuts and a lot of body jewelry cursing; the dogs sleeping; the smells.

I love Mexico City.

Caveat: Jalapeños

We are in the Mexican city of Xalapa (or Jalapa), Veracruz.  This is where jalapeños come from, of course.  But it is also one of my favorite Mexican places, right on the edge of the altiplano as it drops to the rainforests of the gulf coast, it is a bit steamier and much wetter than mexico city, but still not like being at sea level.

This morning we went to the state anthropology museum, which is one of the best outside of the main, national one in the DF.  Lots of giant heads and interesting masks and statues.  I found myself thinking of a story that could develop in relation to confusing the statues with reality, somehow.  A hallucinatory experience inside the museum.  It was sunny when we got there, and cloudy, sporadically thunderstorming, when we left.  We had some chicken at a chain restaurant, and walked toward the centro again.  Stopped in a spectacular park, all jungly and in a sort of arroyo, birds and koi swimming in ponds at the bottom and flowers and children running about playing.  Quite idyllic and earthy.

It began to rain quite hard, and we sat on some steps of a building under construction, and watched the sky wash some motorcycles on sale on the sidewalk.  I took a photo of the license plate of the car in front of me, with a flower fallen from some tree above it on the bumper like a dead creature.  Striking and strange picture, I was thinking.  I will post when I get a chance to upload pictures.

So now we are back downtown xalapa, and Phil is resting in the hotel while I strolled downhill to this internet cafe.  Got an email from my new employer in Korea, confirming receipt of a photograph I emailed him since I had failed to include one with the packet of other documents sent by courier last week with the signed contract.  An emergency ad hoc photo taken by someone at the Casa in mexico city, I find it striking/weird that my visa photo for my new Korean job was thus taken of me standing against the wall of the lounge of my first overseas job 21 years ago.  I love little synchronicities of that nature.

Caveat: Historical Revisionism

I ask myself, what is this process of going back to "old" places (where I once lived or traveled) that I've been doing so much of?  Being here in Mexico City causes me to examine my "agenda" in remembering things, reciting old narratives, visiting with old people or remembering people.  Many people (most) acquire a sort of rose-tinted vision of the past, and conversations about "old" things seem fraught with "it used to better" kinds of remarks.  I, too, practice this rose-tinting – I know I do.  But perhaps that's the difference – it's intentional on my part, and there are other times when I can revise my own historical narratives in profoundly negative directions, too.  I feel that, objectively, the past is merely different – neither better nor worse.

I went to see Guti Aviles this morning – she was a former member of the Casa staff, and was a sort of godmother to me during my year and a half here, feeding me garlic and papaya ("para tu salud m'hijo") and such.  A very caring, gregarious person, now over 70 and with an inoperable brain tumor, nevertheless she seemed cogent and after a bit of chatting seemed to remember me at least enough to repeat my name a few times as we talked.

Yesterday, an afternoon in the Casa like so many from so long ago – long, long hours of political and cultural debate or discussion with interesting, engaging people – a young man named Colin from Seattle, anarcho-socialist and with experience in developing-world communities from western China to Guatemala.   Another mellow world traveler Yaniv from Israel (though currently resident in Madrid) with fond recuerdos de la casa and a very generous, wide-open personality.  These sorts of people and the wonderful, brief relationships that can be build are part of what make this "casa de gringos" (entre otros) so unique in my traveling experience.

Today Phil and I are going to leave for Xalapa for a day or two, so as to experience something external to the gran ciudad podrida.

Luego, más.

Caveat: “Un hombre que grita no es un oso que baila”

La frase citada arriba aparece en una columna llamada "navegaciones" en la edición de hoy de mi periódico favorito La Jornada (traducción del original en francés del poeta Aimé Césaire: "un homme que crie n'est pas un ours que danse").  El autor de la columna, Pedro Miguel (también tiene blog) lo cita aludiendo al fenómeno del reality show, esta tendencia en la cultura popular contemoránea del convertir todo en espectáculo, incluso la guerra en Iraq.  Acerta que la vida real no es espectáculo:  de acuerdo.  Sin embargo, yo he vivido y sigo viviendo, de cierta manera, una vida de espectador, y suelo mirar al mundo de una manera pasiva pero interesada.   ¿Significa ésto que me he sometido a esta cultura de epectáculo a que el autor alude?  ¿Representa entonces alguna deficiencia moral para mí?

Caveat: Lev Bromstein is still dead

This infinite city repossesses my soul.  Each street is a neighborhood, same-yet-different from any other:  poor or bourgeois; green with trees or grey with concrete; festive in colors of political advertisements or gang graffitti.  Last night Phil and I walked back to the 'casa' (the Casa de los Amigos, AC where I lived and worked for over a year in 1986-87) where we're staying as guests now, across the plaza that's in front of the Monumento de la Revolución, and at 8pm there were:  1) a marching band practicing (sound of cars crashing); 2) some boys playing football (americano! – not soccer – los chilangos love american football); 3) a permanent political protest encamped and playing traditional music through loudspeakers; 4) taxistas loitering; 5) men and women selling trinkets or candy or videos or music; 6) tourists strolling (that would have been us, I suppose).  It all felt vibrant, and so typical.  A city full of lives being lived.

This city.  And Manhattan, where I was a month ago, too.  These places always recall to me my untold tales of the truly infinite city.  A city in a Borgesian mode, genuinely devoid of limits or boundaries.  Some authors of science fiction have postulated cities that cover entire planets (Asimov or Walter Jon Williams), but I think there's a germ of something different, unique, evocative (and personally compelling?) in the notion of a city-universe. 

Yesterday, Phil and I took the bus from Autobuses del Norte (terminal) out to the pyramids at Teotihuacán.  We climbed the piramide del sol, saludabamos a los dioses moribundos y mirabamos a la muchedumbre de turistas que estaba ahí.  Sacabamos unas fotos.

We returned to the city, amid the haze of the north side of the valley and the grey suburbios climbing the hillsides, which were punctuated with occasional brightly colored declarations of incipient middle-class wealth in the form of well-built two story houses amid the slums.  Without map or guide I took us from Metro Indios Verdes to MA Quevedo at the south end of the city, and found unerringly but instinctually my favorite Mexican bookstore, la libería gandhi.  Once a sort of counter-cultural institution, this business has in recent decades grown to a sort of Border's-of-Mexico, with multiple locations and a very nifty website from which I've even ordered books from the states, although the cost of shipping is a tad exhorbitant – oddly, it's cheaper to order books shipped from Spain than Mexico.

I bought a spectacular book of short stories, very recent (2004?) entitled El materialismo histérico, by Xavier Velasco.  More on this gem, later?

This morning we went to the museo and casa de Leon Trotsky, who lived his final days here in exile before being murdered by a proto-KGB agent in 1940.  We walked around Coyoacán, had some lunch, and returned.  I met with Rosita, a woman who was one of the cleaning staff when I worked here 20 years ago, and now, despite her 70 years, is still spry and works occasionally to make ends meet.  We chatted and walked over to try to find Guti, another person who was like a godmother to me during my time here, who has been ill.  But she wasn't home or didn't hear us yelling up from the street ("mexican doorbell").  I know where she lives, though, and will try to come back to see her at some point again before we return to L.A.

Caveat: Mexicopolis

Greetings from mexico city.  Walking around with my father, showing him my old haunts, moving efficiently through the subway system on kinesthetic autopilot.  We went to the torre latinoamericana this morning and up to the observation deck (floor 42), but the view was hazy and only a few kilometers visibility – couldn't make out chapultepec or popo, but could just see congreso to the east and torre pemex to the west.   

This afternoon spent a few hours at the museo nacional de antropologia.

Had dinner just now at a traditional style argentine parrilla – I had a pretty nice steak.   Anyway, I'll meditate on my experience and post more later.

Caveat: Obsolescence

I guess I was expecting this to happen, at some point. Last night, my beloved little laptop computer (a Sony Vaio) decided it was done. It's display gave up the ghost – I've seen LCD screens die like this before – something about a just-not-quite-right impact, or too much extreme of temperature (heat, in this case, sitting baking in the heat of my truck cab), and suddenly there erupts an orthogonal rainbow of colors, while the background washes out.  If you bonk it around a bit, squeeze where you know the contacts are inside the plastic case of the lid of the laptop, you can get the colors to come back and make out what's on the screen, but the rainbow remains, and each reboot brings in a few more streaks of color, widening from a mere inch to nearly 50% of the screen in the last 5 reboots.

I've managed to rescue my data, my website development files, pictures, email, but I don't think I'll be getting in there again.  I'm confident not to lose anything, as I'll extract the harddrive and slave it to my desktop when I get back to Minneapolis, but meanwhile, I'll be computerless for at least a short while – though I hadn't been planning on taking the thing to Mexico anyhow, and I leave for thereparts tomorrow morning.

It was a good run – by far the most pleasing laptop I've ever owned:  amazing battery life, compact and lightweight (under 4lbs) and with enough processor power and memory to run my database applications slowly but reliably.   I've definitely recommended Sony Vaio to many people because of the experience over the last several years.

So.  I'd actually been toying with the idea of buying a new machine before taking off for Korea next month, but this, obviously, decides it. The real question is whether, given my strong concerns about Windows Vista (which is the only Microsoft OS being offered now on PCs), do I make the transition to Apple?  I've been on-and-off considering it, but, given I just ported my entire website apparatus to a Microsoft-only platform (ASP.NET 2.0), I'm not sure I want to face re-migrating the thing to something I can maintain on a Mac.  Of course, there's the dual OS option, but there's a learning curve there, too, running some old copy of XP on a Mac – plus, I've heard about performance issues with Windows-on-Mac, even under dual boot (as opposed to virtual machine).

So… we shall see.  I have the next week, in Mexico City, to think about it, and meanwhile, I'll stay "connected" via internet cafes and borrowed computers – I'm writing this from my father's computer here in the hills of L.A.

Caveat: Desert and Smog

The drive from Minneapolis to Phoenix went well. Bernie really got into it – here's a photo: I've never tried posting a photo to this blog before.

20070724_bernietakesadriveWe saw mostly clear, hot weather on the drive, but between Flagstaff and Phoenix met some spectacular thunderstorms and downpours, gorgeous summer "monsoon" as they call it in Arizona.

I stayed a few days at my sister's in Phoenix, watching the cat go through the initial stages of adjusting from a one-human household to a two adult humans, two child humans plus one dog household. I think she'll do fine, in the long run, but the short term involves substantial time camping out in her litter box and behind the refrigerator in the kitchen where no one could get to her.

I managed to spend some time messing things up on my sister's computer, in the name of trying to help her fix it. I'll blog this bizarre technical experience seperately, perhaps – I've definitely reached a new low in my level of respect for Hewlett-Packard.

Jameson and Dylan, my nephews, are great fun to interact with and watch. It was particularly fun to see them playing "dog" – where Jameson led his compliant and cheerful brother around on a leash:

20070724_dylanandjamesonThis morning I left Bernie the cat in Phoenix, adapting to her new home, and drove to L.A., across the smoggydusty desert. It was a sad parting, for me, as I've grown quite attached to my cat, but my commitment to go to Korea to try my hand at teaching is complete, now, so I'm glad to have found a new, caring home for her.

Caveat: Gainful Employment

So, I'm hesitant to announce this widely, for fear of jinxing the process – but I have been offered a one-year contract to teach at a school in Goyang-si in South Korea.  I still don't have the contract in hand, but it should be showing up via email any day now.

Interestingly, Goyang is an exurb northwest of Seoul, along the same commuter rail route and trunk road I used to take between my Army posting (near Munsan) and Seoul – so I actually carry a fairly vivid picture of the town (as seen from a slow-moving train) in my head. The school is exciting – it does not just offer EFL (English as a Foreign Language) but instead offers its curriculum in English.  So I'll get to teach social studies, literature, even math or science to middle/high school students in English, much the way I turned my AP Spanish class at Moorestown, NJ, into a social studies and Latin American history class that just happened, coincidentally, to be taught in Spanish.

Meanwhile, my sister has consented to adopt my cat, Bernie. So, within hours, Bernie and I leave for Phoenix on a short highway odyssey.  Bernie actually turned out to be a very good traveler when we did the trip here to Minneapolis from LA last year, so I'm not terribly worried.  Once she spends an hour or so yowling over the changed circumstances she settles down on the dashboard and watches the world go by fairly contentedly.  Now that I own a camera, maybe I'll even take a picture of the experience.

More later.

Caveat: Robbery

I witnessed a robbery today.  Sitting, eating lunch in the Burrito Loco a block or so east of Hennepin on Lagoon in Uptown, a guy came in and took a well stocked tip jar.  An on-foot chase ensued, police were called and eventually arrived, events were discussed.  Ain't life interesting.

I had a great visit with Jeffrey who came down from St Cloud last week for a few days, intersecting with my sister and her family from Arizona.  We experienced a walk to Lake Calhoun, lunch at Barbette (a cafe I'd been meaning to try – I tried a tofu noodle concoction that was the best tofu I've ever had), afternoon at Mall of America (oh dear, yes, indeed, and the nephews had great fun on a few of the rides and saw the Lego Store).  Next day, we went to the Como Park Zoo, and then lunch at a Korean restaurant I'd wanted to try, on North Snelling – not far from the old neighborhood near Macalester.  Then Jeff and I went and played a round of disc golf (which is his big thing, I think, at least currently) at a course in Highland Park (off Montreal Ave) which is where I first encountered disc golf with Mark about 20 years ago.

I drove Jeff back to St Cloud, and saw Samara and co. off at their motel the next morning.

I've begun trying to scan old photos, and take new ones (finally bought a digital camera).  I'm posting them on my website (https://jaredway.com will get you there [UPDATE 2010: this is no longer true.  Some photos are on this blog host {but not well maintained}, and some others are on my facebook page – the preceding website link takes you to my "professional" site, now]).  My ambition would be to get everything scanned before leaving the country in late August – not sure I'll get there, but I'll give it a try.

Caveat: Abstract Expressionism

When I was at the Guggenheim in NYC last week, I stupidly did not write down the name of an artist I liked, thinking, oh, I’ll remember that. So now, for the last week, I’ve been trying to figure out who it was. I know that it was in the category of abstract expressionism, grouped with in the museum’s “founding collection” in a gallery alongside Braque, Rudolf Bauer, and lots of Kandinskys.
So I went to the MIA [Minneapolis Institute of Arts], thinking I’ll look for the artist there, on the off chance they had one – but they didn’t.
Having learned my lesson, however, I did write down the names of some of the artists I saw there that I liked: I’m going to go to museums, I need to resurrect my old habit of journaling the visits extensively, so I can access the artists and works I liked later.
Here are some of the works I found striking at MIA:
Leonora Carrington’s “Never since we left Prague”
Yves Tanguy’s “Reply to Red” (daliesque)
Joan Miro’s “Head of Woman”
Dali’s “Portrait of Juan de Pareja”
Grant Wood’s “Birthplace of Herbert Hoover”
Luigi Lucioni’s “Village of Stowe Vermont”
Robert Koehler’s “Rainy Evening on Hennepin Avenue”
Morris Kantar’s “Untitled (portrait of mother)” (and I remember Tadeusz Kantor’s work that I saw at the national museum in Warsaw in 2005 – or was this in Krakow?)
I have a definite leaning toward modern and abstract art – I’m not sufficiently sophisticated in the field to explain what it is I find compelling about this type of work, but I do.
I have been putting some work into getting my personal website up and running again, and have finally re-posted some of my own drawings and paintings. I make no claim to be an artist – at the least, I lack the discipline to make it a go of it. But I harbor vague ambitions, I suppose, and I’m fairly certain that if I did pursue it in a disciplined manner I’d have “something to say” – so to speak.
picture

Caveat: Continuation

Well, I rather dropped the ball on blogging the rest of my road trip.

Quick summary:  on Saturday, I went into Manhattan.  Walked around a lot, it was beautiful day, not as humid as east coast summer days can be.  I went up to the Guggenheim museum (Central Park East at 89th) where I'd never actually been before – I try to go to a museum I've never been before to every time I visit New York, and suspect I'll never run out, as there are so many, and I don't go there often enough.  Then I took the subway out to Coney Island, but the crowds were intense and overwhelming – there was a Gay Pride event going on.  The people-watching was riveting, however, as it can be during Gay Pride events.

Late Saturday I began my drive back to Minnesota, and by Sunday evening I was at Bob and Sarah's in Whitewater, Wisconsin, after some horrible smoggy traffic on the far southside of Chicago.  I crashed on their couch and then finished my drive on Monday, and was back at home by 3pm.  Bernie was glad to see me.

I've been rejected for the Public School teaching job at Gangwon province in Korea, but I always viewed the public teaching job with its more stringent requirements as a long shot.  I will continue pursuing private teaching positions.

Meanwhile, I've been, as usual, gradually sorting out old things and trying to lower my "stuff" quotient – without touching the book collection of course.  I made the bold move of realizing that I was never likely to own a cassette tape player ever again, and that my 150 or so cassette tapes were essentially obsolete.  I went through and wrote down the name of any recording for which I don't already own a CD or have MP3, and then threw the entire lot away.  Some of those cassettes have been in my possession for almost 30 years (e.g. Simon & Garfunkel or Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, which I remember making from the LP using Arthur's stereo set-up in about 1977).

Fortunately books, with their amazing low-tech user-interface, won't ever be obsolete in quite the way those cassettes were.

More, and more philosophical (?), to come.

Caveat: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Few pleasures for me exceed that of reading or writing while on a train.  And everyone knows my peculiar and immoderate love of all forms of public transportation.  For this reason, rather than drive into downtown Philadelphia today, I parked at a suburban station northeast of the city and took the train in.  From Bristol, in lower Bucks County to downtown is about 45 minutes.  But the ride closely recapitulates the daily commute I made for a year from Yardley (directly across the Delaware from Trenton) during my second year of grad school.  Those daily meditative rides were the highlight of an otherwise beastly year.

The frequent flashing of Amtrak express trains zooming past on the center rails.  The dilapidated strata of rowhouses like a cretaceous hillside after an earthquake, in tones of sepia and burgundy and dull tin, with organic splashes of graffiti on most smooth surfaces, like crushed dinosaurs.  And rampant green summer vegetation poking and thrusting in every conceivable place, tropically exuberant but temporary, my seasonal knowledge reassures me.

And people and cars, yelling and thumping their urban rhythms respectively, on each corner, lounging and strolling and gazing and chatting.  The city as universe.

I got off at 30th Street station.  I'd deliberately not studied at map of the area – I'd been absent for 10 years – I'd find my way. 

Kinesthetic memory is strange, miraculous thing.  Well, I'm not sure that what happened was, technically speaking, kinesthetic memory, but, it was something programmed at a seemingly subconscious level.  Without thought I wended through the station, down from the commuter platform, through the congested Amtrak lounge, out onto Market Street.  To the left, squatting between the highrises just beyond the unseen Skookle River (OK, that's Schuylkill to you purists, but I so love the way it's pronounced), is the City Hall.  But I turn right, down Market.  On autopilot, I find my way two blocks west to 32nd, cut diagonally across the Drexel University campus, cross Walnut at 34th and angle in front of the prison-esque Van Pelt library of the U of Penn, and then up the tree shrouded Locust walk through the heart of the campus, to emerge at the western end at 40th looking for that coffee shop where I did, probably, 70% of the actual work for my Master's degree.  It's gone.

But this subconscious movement had placed me there unerringly:  40th and Locust – though I hadn't recalled the address or even it's exact relation to campus.  That's what 2 years of pedestrian navigation of a fairly stable space can do for your body's memories, I guess.  But coffee was out of the question – some Mexican upscale restaurant inhabits the corner now.  I was very sad. 

So I kept west on Locust and then zigzagged down to 43rd.  Where I lived, that first year in Philly, before Michelle joined me here.  At first, walking westward from campus, I worried the whole area had gentrified beyond recognition over the last decade, but, abruptly at 42nd, the ghetto kicked in, just as I remembered it.  43rd at Baltimore is still that wonderful edgy space between student slum and REAL slum.  And there, on the northwest corner, the cheesesteak and pizza joint I used to go to.

How could I resist?  I went inside – I don't think the menu has even changed.   I mean, not in content, not even physically – aged red plastic above the counter, yellow letters.  The place doesn't seem to be run by the same family though – I have vague recollections that before it was run by a Caribbean or East Indian family.  Now it appears to be run by a very large and diverse African American family, every single one of whom were squeezed behind the counter.  They couldn't move around back there, so they just passed boxes of pizza over each other's heads and argued among themselves from where each stood.

I ordered a cheesesteak with sweet and hot peppers, just like I used to, and got some iced tea.  I watched some horrible movie on the TV with some men who had quart bottles of Budweiser and looked tired.  The TV was a flat screen, now, I noticed.  I guess some things change.  The trolleys clanged and whirred past on Baltimore Ave. outside the window.

I finished and walked out to the little park on the southwest side of the intersection.  I remembered bring Bernie here, as a kitten, on a leash – she'd actually done pretty well on a leash as a kitten.  But then I made the mistake of taking her while on a leash to see the vet at the U of Penn veterinary clinics – at around Spruce and 40th.  From then on, she behave around the leash about the way one would expect a normal cat to do.  It was at the U of Penn vet that Bernie lost touch with her feminine side.

So I walked back to campus, and found a different coffee shop on the north side, and contemplated my visit with the past.  And, incidentally, wrapped up an essay for the application for the Korean teaching job I'm pursuing, and emailed that off.

Caveat: Memory Function

I got into Philly area last night and stayed at a motel just off the turnpike.  Then this morning, being in the neighborhood more or less, I decided to first drive around the central Montgomery County area where Michelle and I used to live – for the last year I was out here, anyway.

Much to my amazement, I couldn't find my way around!  I have always had such a great geographical memory.  This was very disconcerting.  It took me about 30 minutes of zigzagging and spiraling about Upper Gwynedd / Lansdale to realize we'd lived just off Sumneytown Pike.  I subsequently began to recognize some things – the McDonalds at Valley Forge Rd, the huge Merck campus where Michelle worked, downtown Lansdale. 

But I've been reflecting on the eerie dearth of clear, coherent memories from this period.   I suppose the conventional explanation is that I've "blocked out" this period of my life.  And there's possibly some truth to that.  I have much clearer memories of the year in Philadelphia (95-96, in the apt on 43rd St) I spent alone, while Michelle was finishing her degree in Minnesota.  But what happened, here, in the following two years, with Michelle?  Am I able, or ready, to answer that question?

One thing that I know I've had a very hard time admitting to myself:  when I dropped out of grad school, after that disasterous fall semester in which I barely passed my Master's exams and received much criticism on the quality of my work from my professors – I nursed, from the very start, the idea that my inability to cope with the pressures of school were "because of" my relationship with Michelle.  I felt I'd been forced to make a choice:  Michelle, or grad school, but not both.  In fact, it was Professor Salessi (whom I respected profoundly) who said, "no puedes tener una vida personal y a la vez lograr en un programa como este. [you can't have a personal life and at the same time succeed in a program such as this one.]"

But what happened that I have only just now realized (not quite as an epiphany, but, well, on reflection, I guess) is that that was the seed of the dissolution of our relationship, because from then on I resented the choice – I felt I'd compromised beyond my will to do so.   I'd been un-willed – in a Nietzschean sense.  And however much it was the case that the choice was a true choice or was instead one that I'd manufactured to accommodate my own shortcomings and disappointments, regardless, I lost control of my life at that moment.

OK, that's heavy stuff.  And more:  from that day, I somehow decided that the only way to survive was to be (or to try to become) whatever it was Michelle wanted me to be.  And that was impossible – both for her own inconsistencies and for my own limitations.   In that ill-fated conversation several weeks before her suicide when she'd asked me if there was any way I'd ever consider getting back together again, and I said to her no, I added, "I've recaptured my destiny.  I cannot."

She therefore died in part of a broken heart, and I was the one (or one of the ones) who broke it.  But I know better than to blame myself (or not, exclusively, anyhow) – there were all kinds of scars and damage that "caused" her to depart for somewhere else ("to a world where I belong" – her words, in that same time period).  Nevertheless, these rolling, amazingly verdant hills of suburban Montgomery and Bucks Counties are crawling with ghosts, and I'll not call this part of my trip a pleasure visit, but rather a moment of remembrance.

I'll move on to remembering the happier times of the east coast, and go into the city today, visit the Penn campus, and then go make my pilgrimage to Manhattan.

Caveat: Road Trip

What can I say?  Not currently having a regular job, I have free time.  And what occurs to me, when I have free time?  Travel, of course.

About 11:15 AM yesterday morning I decided it was time to take a road trip.  So I put out lots of food and left the faucet dripping (for water) for Bernie (she does well with this), and by 1 PM I was on the road.  I woke up this morning to the echoes of the interstate somewhere east of Indianapolis – I've decided that since my plan is to leave the country in August, and since I already have a last hurrah planned for late July / early August for the west coast one more time, I needed to pay my respects to the east coast.  So I'm headed for Philadelphia (to revisit old haunts) and New York (inevitable).

I do this sort of thing with bizarre regularity – I drove to Fargo, ND a few weeks back, for no particular reason – but what's new is that I've decided to blog my behavior.  So… more to come.

Caveat: Migration

I have finally decided to go forward attempting to build a website dedicated to the issue of free migration – see my post dated 2006.05.06.  It’s only a first draft, but it’s functional, at least.  After much time spent searching on the web, I have found nothing that coherently presents the issue as I see it, despite the overwhelming amount of content dedicated to immigration issues in general.
Now comes the process of identifying and placing appropriate content – there’s a book called “International Migration” by Jonathon Moses that advocates free human migration quite cogently, despite it’s nondescript title, which I may use as a sort of outline for the sort of content to put on the website.
The website’s “first draft” can be found at https://www.raggedsign.net/miahr, however, I’ve purchased the domain name migrationisahumanright.org and will be linking this domain into that website soon. [UPDATE: all this information is obsolete]
The recent failed immigration bill in congress (but endorsed by Bush) falls far short of the ideals for truly free human migration – yet I feel that, just like the abolition or sufferage movements, progress on this issue must be sought incrementally – for this reason I would hope that, in at least this one small area of policy, Bush will eventually get his way (this is very painful to admit, as, in most areas, the Bush presidency seems to have resulted in the greatest blow to global human rights in general in over a generation).
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Caveat: Domesticity

Never sweep a floor laden with dust and cat hair while wearing a clean, black, linen shirt.

In other news, about two weeks ago, when I got back from my visit with Bob, Sarah and Henry in southern Wisconsin, I had with me most of a loaf of very heavy, dark rye bread that we'd bought at the co-op in Milwaukee.  This is the classic bread known among many as Bob bread – as it's his characteristic dietary staple.  I like it too.  I was trying to think of a way to use it, and thought to myself:  pea soup.  I haven't really done much cooking in the last decade or so – living alone is like that.  But I had this bag of dried split peas, and some nice fresh apricots, and I got creative in the kitchen – generally, this is something that goes well for me. 

I ran to the store and bought some leeks and carrots, and put together a pea-apricot soup (more like stew) with leeks and carrots.   Added some cayenne, tumeric, cumin … you know.  So I cooked up a giant batch, and ate some with the dark bread, and put the rest in little containers in the freezer.  I went back and had some more the other day, and man, that stuff is awesome.  And I'm so dumbfounded that I followed no recipie, just kind of a weird instinct, and that it came out so good – better than the (admittedly quite good) gourmet stuff to be had from the Lunds grocery across the street.

Well, so anyway – such episodes of domesticity are awfully rare.

Caveat: Ranting on behalf of a cat

I'm thinking that posting a myspace profile for Bernie, as part of an effort to get her adopted, has been a mistake.  Part of her having a myspace profile means giving her a blog of her own, and I had decided to include appropriate cat-behaviors such as eating, playing and sleeping in this blog.

However, I just posted a "rant" there, in response to the frankly bizarre reception my cat's myspace profile has gotten from the myspace "community" – whatever that may be.  I'll not repeat that rant here – you can look at Bernie's blog at https://www.myspace.com/berniethecat

Mientras tanto, la vida sigue sin novedades.

Caveat: cat seeks home

Once again, it's been a long time.

On my run/walk around Lake Calhoun this morning, it was very windy, and there were swells of several feet on the tiny (1 mi. long) lake.  The sky was a wonderful cobalt overcast, but there was this hole that caused the morning sun to shine down like a searchlight from a police helicopter onto the lake.  The highlights on the frothy grey-turquoise water moved rapidly across the lake, quickly scanned the sailboats at the northeast end, and disappeared among the condos and trees of Uptown along Lake Street.

I've decided I'm leaving the country in August, to work or travel or whatever I can put together.  This year in Minneapolis has been good for me in some ways, but in others it has only underscored my yearning to travel again – not just tourist travel but *real* travel – i.e. "go to a country and live there for a year or two" travel.  I've applied for a job in Korea that would start in late August, and it seems fairly certain, but I've decided that even if that doesn't pan out, I'll be going *somewhere* by late August – I've given notice to my landlord, and rented a larger storage unit for all my books!

There is only one dilemma around bringing this plan to fruition – I need to find a home for my cat, Bernie.  I've created a myspace profile for her, with a little autobiographical info:  https://myspace.com/berniethecat.

Maybe I'll get around to posting more regularly, now that I've quit my position with HealthSmart of Long Beach (effective back in late March).  Not a good record, so far, but we'll see.

Caveat: The Weather

The season changed abruptly, and too soon. There was a week of snowstorms, and great piles of snow were everywhere. But it was clearly springtime snow:  the way the ground was a bit warm underneath, and melted the lowest layer, which refroze to a crust of ice that the snow could sit on, creating these little continental shelves on the edges of the snowbanks that lined the sidewalks. And then it got warm: a week of above-freezing temperatures, windy, chill, but spring-flavored. And now this:  it would be cold if it were August, but it's late March, and it feels humid and hot and the snow is completely gone after the rain last night. There are buds on the trees and the squirrels scramble on the branches with a sort of distracted optimism, like brand-new meth-addicts, no patina yet on the edges of consciousness.

Caveat: 2006

I took a second trip to Australia. At HealthSmart, I put in several months of ungodly 80-100 hour work weeks. I went insane. So I resigned my job, and tried to succeed as an independent database consultant. My heart wasn’t in it, though.  That fall, I had moved back to Minneapolis, where I found a wonderful apartment near Lake Calhoun in Uptown, and I adopted a new, healthier lifestyle that included losing nearly 40 pounds.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 2006 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: Faith-based Atheist

I’m a “faith-based atheist.”

What in the world is that?

It means that, unlike an agnostic, I’m certain about god: specifically, that there isn’t one. But such certainty isn’t something that submits to any kind of objective proof: just as the religious person must accept the existence of his or her god(s) as a matter of faith, so must the true atheist rely on belief over material evidence – after all, how do you prove god doesn’t exist? Anything short of this standard-of-proof makes one an agnostic, not an atheist.

What’s still more difficult, is to strive for an ethical existence when the most commonly invoked “cause” (or source) of human ethics (namely, the alleged “higher powers”) have been unequivocally rejected. It seems to me that the only ethical atheist is one who accepts that his or her belief is indeed just that – a belief, not a demonstrated “fact.” Atheists who assert some kind of exceptionalism for their own beliefs vis-a-vis the beliefs of non-atheists strike me as hypocritical. I’m profoundly uncomfortable with many atheists – of the secular-humanist stripe – who attempt to position themselves as rationalists – I think it’s not only philosophically perilous but ultimately unethical due to this inherent hypocrisy.

Despite this, I’m also displeased with the tendency of humanists (again, i.e. “secular humanists”) to categorically place human beings in the center of things. Such pre- (or even anti-) Copernican posturing is just as irrational as the traditional, god-centered systems they presume to criticize – in my judgement, anyway.
With the categorical rejection of the transcendental and god-centric, I believe that there must come a similarly vehement rejection of the anthropocentric. So… but what’s left, then?

Let me get back to you on that one. Does this make me sound like a nihilist? This is a possibility. I’m most comfortable with a sort of aesthetic take on the whole matter, a la Robinson Jeffers Inhumanism. But that doesn’t really resolve the epistemological issues – which are what seem to most interest me.

Another issue is how I can reconcile my committed atheism with my frequent self-description as a “Buddhist.” However, one has to understand that Buddhism, in most conceptions, is doctrinally agnostic with respect to the theist question. To attempt to paraphrase Gautama Siddhartha, as I have understood it: when asked about the existence of deities or God, he reportedly answered that, like everything else, it was both true and not true. Thus there is room within Buddhism for both atheists and theists, as well as whatever falls in between.

[Updated 2015-10-08]
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Caveat: politics

Politics is making a comeback in Jared's brain – after a nearly two-decades-long sabbatical.  This may be a false alarm.  But I've been feeling passionate about a certain political issue, and shocked and dismayed by my stand's noticeable unpopularity among nearly all of those with whom I share it. 

So, what has me all worked up?  Not Bush's war(s).  That's just "same old, same old."  Not the environment, or nuclear proliferation, or any of the various greenishly lefty sorts of things that used to get me excited in my ill-spent youth.  No, here in my ill-spent middle age, the issue that has me fuming and actually writing letters to politicians is the issue of immigration.  And most everyone I talk to about is completely put off by the stand that I take.

That position is quite simply summarized in one short, unambiguous sentence:  "citizenship belongs to those who show up."   Is this hard to understand?  I don't think so – it goes all the way back to Rousseau and the idea of the social contract and all that.  It's as democratic as things can get.  It boils down to the notion that if you want to be a part of this participatory democracy, then, welcome aboard.  Here are your rights, here are your obligations (yes, there are obligations:  pay taxes, follow the rules, etc.).  INCLUDING the Thoreauvian obligation which all citizens have to protest and resist unjust laws.  Hence my fundamental beliefs that a) illegal immigrants have as much right to be here as anyone else, and b) the argument against them that focuses on their illegality as opposed to their role as immigrants is xenophobic hogwash.  It's the standard NIMBY / "I got mine, so f**k off" attitude.  Jim Crow laws were wrong in their time, and the laws against the free movement of otherwise law-abiding humans is wrong in ours.   To the extent that we characterize ourselves as truly a democracy embracing human rights, we MUST end this injustice.

I reject any effort to characterize my belief as incoherent – as many of my interlocutors have done.  It's the purest, logical libertarianism imaginable, applied to the question of immigration.  It's about the freedom of peoples to choose their homes and, more importantly, their polities. 

Caveat: nonsense

I spent part of the day, yesterday, reading blogs. I really don't do that, very often. I had discovered (or, more likely, re-discovered) a review of the "Sokal affair" in which a physics professor at NYU had "hoaxed" the pomo (postmodernist) publication "Social Text" by sending in an article full of jargony BS and the editors let it through.   It was quite a scandal, as it allegedly proved just how vacuous pomo discourse really is – it was an "emperor has no clothes" moment. 

I also discovered an interesting little website that randomly generates a pomo article each time you refresh the page.   A lovely tool, but my first thought was – I bet some of the things that get said are really profound.  It's kind of like an instantiation of Borges' infinite library, for a particular type of discourse.  Another tool that has similar functionality is the Kant generator.  Again, my reaction, more than – wow, random BS! – is, instead – I wonder if this can generate real meaning?  Finally, there is a random generator of CSCI research papers made by some people at MIT.  Infinite monkeys, infinite typewriters, all that. 

Regardless, a review of the Sokal affair caused me to question the pomo allegiances I tend to take for granted in myself.   My affairs with Jameson, Deleuze, et al.   Are they really that impenetrable?  Or, contrariwise, am I really so deleuzional as to believe I "get" what they're trying to say?   

Currently I'm struggling through a kind of phase where I question just about everything – about what I believe, about what I want to do, about what I like  to do.  Ad infinitum.  So why no question what philosophical / lit. crit. authors I take seriously, too?

I have no answers, here.  Nor even any profound, clearly-expressed doubts.  But  I think back to Jean-Jacques LeCercle's Philosophy of Nonsense:  just because it's nonsense, doesn't mean it doesn't mean anything.  There's value and, ironically, meaning to be found in nonsense.  It's a worthwhile pursuit in and of itself.  So if the pomos are writing nonsense, maybe they've got a reason for it.   

 

Caveat: jobs & lit crit

So the interview probably didn't go as well, in retrospect, as I might have hoped.  I was unfocused – having the epiphany in the middle that I didn't really WANT the job didn't help, I'm sure.   Meant I was going through the motions, and that can't be good for quality-of-presentation. 

Meanwhile, my current job goes on, despite a deficit of motivation on my part. More limbo, then. More nothing.

Was reading Harper's recently, an article about language and poetry, about Eluard and the way that poetry is about that which cannot be mapped.  Interesting idea – striking because it may have resonances with respect to my thesis on Cervantes' Persiles and the Quijote and the way that they function as "maps" of the Spanish Golden Age social space (and of each other). 

Obviously, Quijote or Persiles are, specifically, NOT poetry, but rather novels.  Prose.  The beginning of the "opposite" (this hyperbole is not meant literally, just literarily) of poetry.  But then… the idea works only if an effort to extend the metaphor to a "poetic" text (e.g. El Cid) failed.  I'm not sure it would.  Then again, there's the unstated fact that the Harper's article was most definitely talking about MODERN poetry.  Perhaps that's different?

Caveat: angst

Everyone who knows me, knows that I struggle with focus. Not the narrow, task-centered, short-term focus associated with getting a piece of query code to work, or explicating a compelling bit of philosophy or literary criticism, or even with driving.  I'm pretty good at that, and on rare occasions even experience that thing I've heard called "flow" wherein I get pretty much inside the current moment, zenishly. 

 

No, the type of focus I struggle with is of that more existential, life-encompassing sort, that leads to a certain large-scale aimlessness.  Many people reference it with the phrase "I haven't figured out what I'm going to do yet, when I grow up."  Which becomes more ironic yet utterly serious with the increasing age of the person making the utterance.  Frankly, although I have always harbored a senseless dislike for the phrase itself, it really subsumes this focus problem of mine quite succinctly.  So there, I've uttered it – with a modicum of redirection, of course.

 

"I'm only on my fourth career, and I don't expect it to be my last."  This is a phrase I have taken to using quite a bit, lately, although it's probably just as sophomoric, ultimately, as the one just discussed above.  Let me try to make this more concrete:  I can envision myself doing so many things that I rarely envision the same future for myself from one hour to the next, much less from one day or week or month or year to the next. 

 

One minute, I'm dropping everything, moving to Lisbon and working on "my book."  (Not sure what book that would be – obviously figuring that out would be a good, though not indispensable, first step). 

 

Next minute, I'm going to business school full time, possibly in Europe, and then moving on to become some kind of high-powered IT manager.

 

An hour later, I'm traveling to Korea and finding a position as an English teacher.

 

Another time, I go to Tunisia, with a sincere commitment to become fluent in that beautiful language, Arabic.

 

I occasionally imagine sticking with my current job, gaining new skills in the area of programming, development, and database architecture.

 

These and many many others are all equally possible, even almost equally plausible.

 

Recently, I had another job interview.  This time, with a fairly high-powered "guru" of the software development world, for a position I really had almost zero qualifications for but some definite degree of interest.  Naturally, the context of a job interview forces one to spend a good deal of energy on working out plausible futures, which can be shared and conveyed to the person doing the interviewing.

 

And somehow in that self-selling moment, all the different possible futures – one specific instance of which is suddenly under a bruising, close, interactive scrutiny – become shockingly, painfully, embarrassingly and equally implausible, and I become stranded on my isle of bitter insecurity and pointless daydreaming.  It all seems drowningly futile, like one of those dreams you cannot wake up from.

 

For the briefest of moments, I experience one of those intractable gasps of aching nostalgia for that least aimless yet really most intentionally purposeless period of my entire life:  I yearn for the psychiatric ward. 

 

Because it was so explicitly, irredeemably FUTURELESS.  Which made it super-easy, from an existential standpoint.

 

Because the future is scary.

 

So I guess this is one of those flexion-points, where I might decide to step away from my current future, and toward another.  But a friend (a colleague) made an observation to me the evening before the interview – really, also, an observation OF me.  He pointed out (and somehow had figured this out despite missing major portions of my biography) that I was a serial quitter. 

 

And maybe I should get over that?

 

The hardest future to adopt, in other words, is the one currently coming at you.  Alternate futures are easier, perhaps.  Am I destined to always be a refugee in my own alternate futures, in exile from my own alternate pasts?

 

 

Caveat: meanwhile, a year later

So, like, I should start posting here again. 

Work's been rather unpleasantish.  Lots of stress, not much sense of reward, accomplishment, closure.   So I go into this withdrawel-from-life mode, and curse my fate.  Or something in that vein, anyway.

Tomorrow I'm going to Australia to visit my mother.  Not to where she lives in the northeastern extremities, this time, but rather meeting in Melbourne, thence to galivant around Victoria state, I guess, seeing new things.  She's got a friend in Apollo Bay (SW of Melbourne) which will be a starting point, I'm thinking.

I had put my resume out there, updated, online, a couple weeks back.  So I've been getting a lot of calls from recruiters.  Most intriguing was a nibble from a guy who wanted to forward my resume to Microsoft Corp.  Not likely to pan out, but one always wonders, "what might working for the locus of evil in software be like, exactly?"  I hear they have wicked good benefits.  Probably like what they say about hell – it's much better once you're on the inside. 

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