Kristina and I went to a choir performance on Friday, it was quite moving, in a mystical way. All the words were unintelligible, and some of the singing was more like overlapping sounds rather than singing at all. The choir was like a chorus of Tibetan Singing Bowls, and I found I did not like watching them, I would rather imagine the sound emanating from the stage without a driving force. I watched instead, with an unfocused gaze, the beautiful, skeletal woman- the conductor- waving her pale, fragile arms and shaking fingers as if she were a trembling, falling leaf in a strange, slow, warm-colored autumnal dream.

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From my trip to the aquarium:

From my trip to the launch of Space Ship One, this is the White Knight companion ship:

Random picture from Spring 2004:

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Today Michael and I went surfing. We got to try out our different kinds of knots, which turned out to be a mix of masterpiece and tangled rope, but the surf-boards stayed on the roof, so we are obviously awesome. (Michael tied the main rope on, I tied the one holding down the back).

I love to surf. Sometimes I sit there on my board, feeling a little sick from a huge amount of salt water I may have just swallowed, or scanning the water for signs of shark fins, or hyperventilating just a little when it's quite cold... and I wonder what I am doing out there on this foam board getting bashed around by the great ocean. But then a good-looking wave comes and everything- pain, thought, unhappiness, leave my mind and there is only thrill. I always ask people that I am teaching... do you want to know which waves are going to be best? You know the huge ones that come right at you with foaming tips- the ones that look like they are going to crash right on your head and kill you? Those are the ones you are looking for. If you're trying to paddle past it and you realize it is going to break right on you... turn around, paddle like hell, and catch it. It's not really the most comforting thing to say to a prospective student, but it serves them well. For one, that time in the wave's life is the best time to catch it, hands down. Secondly, if you are paddling like crazy away from the wave, you aren't looking at it, and believe me, you don't want to look at it.
Sometimes when I am surfing and nothing is going on, I just slide off my board so that my chest is supported but my legs are drifting aimlessly in the tide. If I am at San Onofre, I'll feel the sea weed sliding through my toes. My feet look incredibly white through the water. And I think... this is what it would be like to be dead. Drowned, that is. Peacefully floating along through the water at a medium buoyancy, sea weed sliding between my cold, white toes. That said, I still don't want to drown. While it wouldn't be so bad to be a body drifting along, it would be terrible to find one, and that's what I usually consider when I'm deciding which way is the best way to die. Plus it would suck to be nibbled on by millions of little fish... because that's just gross.

Conclusion: Surfing is fun! Also, it stopped raining here, which is sad.

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I love Lowe's. Why? Is it because of all of the people there who don't know what friction is? That could be part of it. Is it because of that one guy who works there by day and does doughnuts in the parking lot by night? Maybe. Lowe's is full of happy memories. Lowe's makes me miss my Phi Rho gals, and it makes me miss the warehouse (you carry cement, why don't you carry cement PIGMENT! You're sitting on a gold mine, Trebek!) I miss T and the forklifts we used to ride in the old days. Lowe's has inferior forklifts in many ways, but I bet T and I could still unload a Hays with them, and that's all you'd really ask. I love the way that everything smells like Hardware store... is it the lumber? Is it the drawers upon drawers of tiny screws and nails of all sizes? I love the way that everyone is carrying around fifteen foot long plastic piping and disembodied doorknobs and drawer handles! I love the show countertops and the dozen bathtubs organized into fake bathrooms and the display with tons of different showerheads sticking out everywhere. I love thinking about what I am going to buy and planning to make my own shower floor out of Labradorite. I think to myself that that awesome ceiling fan is about the same price as my longboard was- and wouldn't I use and appreciate a ceiling fan as much as my skateboard?
Hardware stores make me want to have a house so I could decorate it and build a deck onto it and cut down a Christmas tree with a sharp-toothed saw and put it in the window I sealed from the winter looking over the deck with a candy-cane tree skirt around the trunk.
Hardware stores make me want a house and a husband and children and a job that helps us get by and snow and Thanksgiving and Christmas....

...and then I walk into the garden section. You have to go through a door, and you are immediately greeted by the smell I always associate with The Big Toolbox back home... it smells like garden hoses and coy ponds and good, clean dirt and the air rings with running water. Suddenly my life has expanded to summer! There was a little juniper-type bush for two dollars, I could hardly restrain myself, but it had to be grown in full sun and my room is very shady. They had a plant called Chocolate Mint, and when I rubbed its leaves between my fingers, it smelled like Chocolate Mint!! Again, I had to physically restrain myself from buying it because it too needed full sunlight. $1.49!!!
My polka dot plant, Herbert, has been doing pretty well in the shade but you don't want to press your luck.

By the time I left that section, I had added a beautiful garden to my dream Lowe's-fabricated life, with climbing roses and Chocolate Mint and Peppermint and Oregano and Chives and Juniper and lots and lots of MUMS! Plants right now are the anti-gas.... that is, they are really cheap.

Gas prices are up to $2.40. They are CRIPPLING ME. But not Lowe's. Ah, Lowe's is setting me free.

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The fire flies began their dance over the countryside.
With love in their veins, they left wandering trails of light across the meadow.
Back and forth they weaved, blinking slowly in and out.
It seemed as if they were there only to make the night more beautiful,
as if they had been summoned only so that I could see them
as I trailed my hand among the heads of the ripe wheat,
as its silky hair tickled my palm
and the grass swished between my bare toes.

The night was not dark, it was a deep blue lighted by the sorrowful white moon.

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For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.

-William Wordsworth


Nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in the solitary walk;
And let the mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies.
-W.W

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
-W.W

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the measure of love is in lost

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NOTE: z

No smoking around zanzibar. Thank-you for your co-operation.

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Dayum straight!

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