blog (September, 2004)
glide you're alive
It was just going to be a quick ride to drop off some library items. Figured since I had the backpack to tote along the goods, I'd head right back home afterward and go running. iPod on shuffle for my rides today. Such a beautiful deathtrap.
So... maybe I'll take the longer way home. Ope, turn the opposite direction and head east. The empty backpack's no burden, and I can still get a solid run in after sundown. The suburban homes become a bit less urbanand begin to back away from the road, and I'm happy to have fewer cars out here to worry about.
Each track sets its own mood for that part of the ride, and what began as easy pedaling on the way out (so's I'd have plenty left for the run) turned into a feverish cadence on the return trip, with Chick Corea pounding out climax just as I gunned through the green light I was chasing at the home stretch mile-to-go point -- and fell out on the other side of the intersection to roll gently Brian Eno's first of three variations on Pachelbel's Canon, which, with the breeze, carried me home slowpoke easy-please.
In the driveway I dismounted and decapitated -- still swimming the same soundscape -- arched back to look upside down the trees, roofs, garages. I spit over the telephone wire coming back up, and thought about writing swimming in soundscape, just as I'd thought about writing about the climax through the stoplight. And I wondered if, just then, I had really meant my gaze at the leaves and neighborhood houses, or if I'd just meant to be the boy in the story who leans back and sighs wistfully.
I'm going running now. Maybe we'll talk more later about writing here?
i pod i
Dads just bought a PowerBook, making the switch back to Mac after, what, 8 years? I piggybacked a $70 iPod through Apple's cram&jam deal.
I've been tabbing the pod's travels on FedEx's site the last few days. It hopped along from Shanghai to Denver, where dad bought it lunch and a flight to Cleveland, where it arrived at my workplace this afternoon:
Sep 13, 2004
8:55 pm EST - Left FedEx Ramp, SHANGHAI CNSep 14, 2004
12:32 pm EST - Arrived at Sort Facility, ANCHORAGE AK
8:17 pm EST - Left FedEx Sort Facility, ANCHORAGE AKSep 15, 2004
2:22 am EST - Arrived at Sort Facility, INDIANAPOLIS IN
5:49 am EST - Left FedEx Sort Facility, INDIANAPOLIS IN
7:32 am EST - Arrived at FedEx Ramp, DENVER CO
11:41 am EST - Delivered, ENGLEWOOD COSep 15, 2004
6:20 pm EST - Picked up by FedEx, ENGLEWOOD CO
11:39 pm EST - Left FedEx Ramp, DENVER COSep 16, 2004
1:46 am EST - Arrived at Sort Facility, INDIANAPOLIS IN
5:05 am EST - Left FedEx Sort Facility, INDIANAPOLIS IN
11:17 am EST - Delivered, CLEVELAND OH
Ten minutes outta the box and I had ten days' worth music loaded up to rock on.
...new dimensions in listening experiences...
external and distant
To the untrained eye ego-climbing and selfless climbing may appear identical. Both kinds of climbers place one foot in front of the other. Both breathe in and out at the same rate. Both stop when tired. Both go forward when rested. But what a difference! The ego-climber is like an instrument that's out of adjustment. He puts his foot down an instant too soon or too late. He's likely to miss a beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees. He goes on when the sloppiness of his step shows he's tired. He rests at odd times. He looks up the trail trying to see what's ahead even when he knows what's ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He's here but he's not here. He rejects the here, is unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then it will be "here." What he's looking for, what he wants is all around him, but he doesn't want that because it is all around him. Every step's an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant.
-- Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
fight causes, not symptoms
But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attact effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.
-- Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Monday morning I awoke, breathing labor'd(ay), head stuffed so tight it couldn't even leak out my nose. The cold has persisted, so I'm trying to eat and sleep right. Causes.
agree I disagree
I believe that nothing is unconditionally true, and hence I am opposed to every statement of positive truth and to every man who states it.
-- H.L. Mencken