embody the struggle

Regarding Indian Halloween Costumes

2014-11-01T10:43:00.000-07:00

I was sad to see a leading figure in contemporary music dressed as an Indian chief for Halloween. Sad and confused. Really? Still?

Then a friend posted this and it helped give direction and fuel to my thoughts.

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Regarding Indian Halloween Costumes:

Forgive them for the know not what they do.

They are so detached from anything that resembles an authentic culture, that they can't possibly understand what it's like to have traditions that actually mean something.

Their own traditions have been packaged and commodified so many times that even ironic representations of them seem cliché. (See: Christmas, Halloween, and every other holiday)

They started by consuming things made by people, then they cut out the middle man and just started consuming people as "services." That got old, so they packaged the service in an experience. Now we're grouping those experiences together as a culture.

The ad wizards who run this culture have been selling culture/lifestyle to them their whole lives and they have become completely numb to it.

Within their own culture, the hints of authenticity that have emerged over the years have been similarly cannibalized and commodified.

They consume what they're sold; they eat what they're fed.

Having no strong cultural ties, they drift in a quasi-nihilist haze, trying on bits and pieces of other cultures like they're garments in a Target dressing room.

But there is hope, and the hope is education. We need to educate people that there are some things that can't be bought and sold because they are sacred. We may even need to teach them what sacred means any more.

And we need to decommodify and rehumanize people and cultures.

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Hiatus Landed: Bay Area

2014-02-08T21:57:00.001-08:00

I don't know why I'm writing a blog post right now.

I'm sitting on a couch in a house in a rather suburban part of Oakland, and it's raining. It's raining on both sides of the bay, where I spent the better part of the day and where I am now.

I was struck by the idea today that writing literature is a handy way of purging demons from your past—all those little emotional hangups that we could pay a therapist to talk through or simply invent characters and make them go through the same thing.

And the characters are the easy part. The hard part is the situation. I may not have an overwhelming character, but I find myself in the most interesting situations. And as I accrue new ones, I notice the patterns, the inversions, retrogrades and transpositions of the same themes.

This is also a good time to redefine the blog title, embody the struggle.

The original quote is referring to a novel, not a character. In my head, I had it wrong, whether or not I ever explained it.

For a *novel* to have merit, *it* must embody the struggle of some characters against that keeps them from existing in their own way. The characters struggle, the novel embodies the struggle.

And I am merely a character. Which makes the novel the blog. So the *blog* embodies the struggle. I write the blog to embody my struggle.

So it does make sense. Sorry to think out loud.

Stay tuned, though, for some fiction. It may be loosely based on reality. But the names will be changed to protect the innocent—and the guilty.

Thinking

2012-12-28T12:30:00.003-08:00

A lot of times, when I look like I'm thinking—or I say that I am—I'm actually trying to think, struggling, and most likely failing.

I have many good thoughts—self-assessed—but, wait for the big surprise, lack the structure to make sense of them.

It pains me to submit this post, release it into the wild, for no one should read this or care.

It's helpful, though, to me as I read through these things to see how often and when I have this thought. It's not new, and it will never go away unless I conquer it once and for all.

["Once and for all" is a pretty epic phrase if you really think about it—literally.]

TWENTYTWELVE

2012-12-22T21:13:00.001-08:00

I wish I were the type of person who did this every week. Or every month. Or every mesocycle.

I'm going to say that I do it every year, but that's probably an exaggeration.

But what's important is that I'm doing it now: reflecting.

And documenting.

And reliving.

And feeling.

And since it's the almost the end of the year—actually past the end of the world—I'll start from the beginning.

It was a warm January. I rode a lot and worked out at David Barton while looking for a "real" job so as to avoid going back to bike tours once again. The synchronicity led me to think I'd find one with Groupon so I could work out at David Barton before and/or after work.

But then the one-month free trial ended and Groupon hired someone else—many other people.

Some time around February I started learning to code and started dating Martha, an Obama campaign worker. It's hard to separate January from February from March since I stayed mostly at home during the day trying to build a rideshare website à la Mitfahrgelegenheit.

March, I remember because that was the month Will quit drugs and channeled all his anxiety into writing music. It was a relatively peaceful month; he mostly stayed in his room writing acoustic songs.

The months after that, however, saw drug experimentation reach a whole new level: Molly, Coke, daily THC, Mushrooms, etc. Which created quite the unsettled home life for me. I remember coming home from bike tours—which I still ended up doing—and he was filling our space with tape loops fed back into distortion pedals and delay. I tried calling it noise music, but that description was one word too long.

And then there were bike tours and more Martha; in between there was more coding.

Martha couldn't take up too much of my time since hers was already being all taken up. 60 hours a week at minimum, most of her weeks were more like 80 or more.

I'd meet her sometimes for diner and drinks at 11. Or I'd just meet her at her place at midnight. Or 1. Or 2.

2 was where I drew the line.

Life was pretty full: gainful employment that I was tired of, ungainful work on my website ideas, and a part-part-time girlfriend. I hardly noticed that I wasn't making any music.

Like Rilke says to the young artist, you have to ask yourself how great your need is. If you don't need to write poetry or make music, then why are you doing it?

I think I still have a need deep down but that it was drowned in this strange sense of obligation.

Obligation kills fun.

By September, I had some job prospects making websites, and so, mimicking my departure from Chicago State happening on my birthday, I quit bike tours.

I got an ungainful gig doing coding for a Chicago-based startup called Dabble with offices in an "incubator" called Catapult on the 25th floor of some random office building downtown.

[Not so random, it turns out: a month or two after roommate Will moved out, I ran into him there—there where he's been working all along.]

Then I got a small gig working for a gun website where you can track your purchases of various guns, ammunition, and accoutrements.

And no, the website did not use the word accoutrements.

And then real work. And love. November was a good month. While every other dude was growing mustaches—[what is it about my personality that loathes such mass movements?]—I was living the dream. I went with Martha to her family's Thanksgiving and we got to suddenly spend a lot more time together. In fact, all the time. And it was good.

We came back both feeling dreamily in love and unable to imagine the future.

The future, which was fast upon us.

Over Thanksgiving she convinced me to join her and her sisters in Puerto Rico, a trip which had been planned for months and was a nagging possibility in my mind for as long. My feelings about going were a tangled mess of Ego, Superego, and Id reasons, but Martha helped me overcome my hesitations and bite the bullet.

The day before she left, 5 days before I was to join her, she got a job offer in DC. The dream was over; the mental dam that was holding back the waters of reality burst and we were sinking and swimming—simultaneously.

To be fair, I sank for a good couple of days. Then I went to join her and put it out of my mind. Or mostly. It's not the kind of thing you can forget emotionally so, while I felt relaxed and present, I also felt more fractious and disagreeable. I didn't want to be with anyone but her while feeling this pressure to get the most out of my trip.

In the end, I think I exhausted myself, physically, emotionally, and sexually.

We got back and had 4-5 days of togetherness before she left.

I denied my exhaustion and ignored the reality of her leaving. It was easier to imagine her departure as the end—of the world or whatever—but a big fucking punctuation mark beyond which I couldn't see past.

Doing so, I was able to stay relatively happy with the situation and get the most out of our time together. After she left, however, I gave in to my exhaustion and had 3 days of hangover-like doldrums. And after the 3rd day I rose and it was good again.

The untenable whirlwind of the last few months was over and I was alone again. Not lonely but alone. My head cleared and I felt like me again, not realizing that I had not felt myself for quite some time.

The big question for our relationship during the campaign was about how we'd be together in a "normal" life. Still not having had that, the question lingers as wide open as ever.

And now it's the holidays. Christmas has made me so sad in years past. One awful Christmas 5 years ago, my hear was rendered in asunder and every one since has reminded me more and more forcefully that I'm alone—a loner perhaps—in a world of families.

Give and Take

2012-10-01T19:48:00.001-07:00

I don't like to give, so I try not to take. There always has to be balance.

Giving is a risk with more risk than reward.

I think every blog post should include the phrase: "I haven't posted anything in a while, so this is really important." Since I just said it, I don't have to say it again.

I'm reading a book in which the book jacket may or may not be part of the plot. As in, the book jacket tells a tale of what happened to the manuscript itself, which then happens in the plot itself.

ITSELF IS ITSELF!

I'm giving you a lot of points on the map, but I'm hesitant to give you a compass.

I used to be in a relationship where I gave it everything I had. Even when the other person stopped giving, unbeknownst to me, I kept giving. And then I gave too much. And finally I gave up.

Giving is for suckers.

But now I'm doing it again: giving too much to someone and not getting enough in return.
I'm wiser, of course, so I know when to stop. But then things happen—crises, contests, what-have-yous—and I get tricked into giving again.

It's like politics: I keep distancing myself from institutions but then am presented with 2 clearly difference interpretations of the same institution. And one is revolting.

I keep forgetting that there are joiners and leavers. And I'm a leaver: individuals over institutions. The latter serves the former not that the former is defined by the latter.

And then I'm presented with a joiner. A believer. I can't believe in anything, but there are still people being born—EVEN IN THIS AGE OF POSTPOSTPOSTPOSTSOMETHING—whose nature it is to believe. Belief is supposed to beget emotion; these people are also more emotional than I. There was supposed to be a causal clause in there but I couldn't figure out where.

EVERYWHERE.

So I keep trying to keep my giving in check. Because there always has to be balance. And when one person gives more than the other, there is Koyaanisqatsi.

Philip Glass once drove a taxi in New York. And by once I mean for SEVERAL YEARS. My mom used to like to tell me this back when I had ambition.

So as life became more and more out of balance, I stopped giving. But it was too late and it hurt. And then I imagined everyone else around me who gives and gives to me without reciprocation. I don't want or need them to give but they do, and without reciprocation, they stop. [See line 1]

PRINCIPLE 2

So I find it hard to give in almost every situation except those in which I should most definitely not give. And then when I do I get nothing and am even more determined not to give again.

I just want to lay calmly in the salt water bath, floating easily, causing no ripples. But angels throw pebbles from above and demons cause currents below: and I am trapped motionless in between trying to calm the waters, neither giving nor taking for neither side is right.

Hot and cold.

2012-07-25T16:04:00.002-07:00

In this, the Summer of the Apocalypse, it's hard to believe things are going so well. Sure, I'm frazzled and irascible, but those are the temporary states that interrupt an otherwise much happier existence than I've been used to.

Things are changing, and maybe it's the rapidity of the change that is causing me to fall behind. Just as I wrap my mind around a new event, but before I can understand it emotionally, a new crisis arises.

I gave up on music over the winter, devoting a month or two in early Spring to learning, teaching myself, a new set of languages--umbrella'ed under web development.

It started with Ruby on Rails, coming as a recommendation of a friend as I was looking to build a rideshare website. Dream big and jump in feet first but recognize the futility forthwith.

After a couple months and couple of iterations, I realized that my little rideshare website was a gimpy little punk who could never compete with such slicked-back entrepreneurs. I was content to give the people a ride first and charge later, but when you start with a profit model, you can attract investors and real professionals.

But I was smitten and blind to the flaws in my scheme up until the point that I had learned enough to work on other projects.

I realized that there's more money and less risk in working on other projects; if I get good enough, I can branch off on my own later.

I embarked on this new lifestyle within weeks of getting together with a lady who is still centrally peripheral to my life picture.

She used to live with me and, according to her, was crushing hard on me then despite its inappropriateness. I surely thought she was cute and flirted her up, but didn't think it was anything serious until it was.

And now she makes me happy whenever we're together and sad whenever we're apart.

As we near doomsday, the latter is becoming the dominant reality and my moods are swinging more and more wildly. It's a rollercoaster. Of love.

And on top of it, my things are breaking, dying, or leaving me.

My laptop, my beloved MacBook Pro--don't laugh--died a silent death in the middle of the night on the eve of July 4th. I was awoken in a drunken stupor by my roommates coming home and found that my computer had been transformed from an aluminum spaceship to the depths of my imagination and the web to a lump of inert silicon, a paperweight.

This computer had been my companion when I hibernated away a winter in Michigan and had been a great too for both music and web development. And it was I who killed it.

It had been really hot and our a/c was struggling to keep the apartment at about 85. So I put it on an ice pack from the fridge. No big deal.

But then, after a few days of doing this, I stopped putting the magazine in between the ice pack and the aluminum body and the condensation must have shorted it out.

Apple wanted 1200 to fix it, MicroCenter 1100. So I freaked out and bought a Lenovo ThinkPad and installed Linux on it.

So now I'm a *real* developer but can't do much with music.

Today, on the enlongening list of things that are weigh on my mind and soul, I took the Mac in with a 300-dollar logic board that I got from Ebay and am hoping they'll be able to make it work. So far, it's only 70 bucks; could be a bit more if that doesn't fix it.

In other news, my car got stolen. I filed a police report but haven't notified the insurance. I'll live car-free for a while and see how that goes.

It makes small things more stressful--like going on roadtrips around the midwest--but in general, I think it will make things easier, less stressful.

Good thing there's all these rideshare websites! Including craigstlist, ridejoy, and zimride.

Irony. Karma. Fate. Whatever.

I'll keep surviving in between states of thriving. For now, I'll just fan myself in air-conditioned coffee shops and move as little as possible.

Waiting Game

2012-01-19T07:48:00.000-08:00

Growing up, we would play games like Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, and The Game of Life—at which I was mysteriously adept at becoming the lawyer—but I still think Kill Dr. Lucky was one of the best.

And cards. We would play cards too, like retirees killing time.

Now I'm playing one of those real-life games that is impossible to win and yet impossible to throw a tantrum, flip the board in the air and storm home.

Waiting.

The past few days I've stayed shuttered in the house with occasional excursions to teach some piano. It's cold; I've been under the weather; there's nothing to force me out into the world.

And while I've gotten a lot done at home—making some phat beats and hip-happening grooves—there's always the gmail inbox twinkling at me in the distance, begging me to check for anything important.

Whether it's a new piano student, a romantic interest, a potential performance gig, or just a new Facebook friend, the compounding of unrequited communication is an experiment in anti-matter containment, each new void expanding the black hole below.

And yet I can't stop. I keep throwing boomerangs off the cliff never to be seen again. Only some do I get to see washed up on the shore, their potential energy wasted, overcome by gravity and the infinite mist.

Jon Stories

2012-01-03T12:35:00.000-08:00

There was this guy I grew up with who used to tell one-line stories with no punchline.

We all know the kind and have all told them; at one point, it became the thing to add "and then I found 5 dollars" at the end.

I used to find myself telling similarly pointless stories—can we even call them stories?—and quickly put an end to it once my friends started saying that instead of "Jon Stories" we should call them "Evan Strories."

I learned my lesson.

But sometimes these days, after a long day of sitting and contemplating, my capacity for speech feels rusted—the juices aren't flowing. Pointless stories are usually the first to come out.

But I'm so conditioned against it that I keep them in, looking around for something else. Nothing comes.

You have to let it all come out before you get to the good stuff. So is life.

co-evolution

2011-12-31T10:51:00.000-08:00

highlights from a wide-ranging and interesting conversation, laid on the table without pretense.

* Philosophers are after the Truth [capital T], but they, like composers, are merely the articulators of a moment, making the Zeitgeist palpable/lisible/audible, orating from the mountaintop their own personal truth. The successful truths find resonance with the people of the time (or the time just after).

That is, Nietzsche wasn't so much calling for the death of God as much as proclaiming it. The messenger not the executioner.

* We live in a predominantly capitalist pseudo-democracy for a good reason: competition, survival of the fittest. Societies evolve like species. Religions, too. Myriad economic systems, myriad insignificant religions, have attempted to win over the hearts of people, but only a few have succeeded. Christianity succeeded in the West *because* it declared Jesus was the one and only son of God. While that rings false to me in the 21st century, it is perhaps the one decision that allowed me to hear about him at all.

Capitalism was just one possible system—of the 10,000 we tried—but was not so much chosen as it was proven to be effective. The reason why it won out is a big question. It's not the fairest system, it's probably not even the most efficient system, but it is dominating right now.

Maybe societies succeed or fail not because of what they give people but based on what people give them. Society creates its own needs, people fill them. Ultimately, when people have a role in society, when they are giving back, they feel a part of it.

* People created societies based on their fear of the unknown in order to stabilize food availability and weather. Thus, we needed to dominate nature to provide stability. Domination is always inherent, unavoidable.

We all need a different mix of certainty and uncertainty. I'm an uncertainty freak and so don't feel compelled to relinquish options in the name of stability. As such I neither join nor create many organizations. [Somehow, being on a bike team is the only one that makes sense.] But, still, I depend on organizations that others have created to give a modicum of stability to our chaotic lives.

Bigger organizations are more stable. More stability means less individual freedom. How do we balance these? We don't. We let the market decide. We let the powerful—the organization leaders—get away with more and more until the unfairness becomes excessive, then we stage protests and occupy shit.

We need organizations, but when there are organizations who have been organized to organized other organizations, it gets a little too meta for real life.

We seem to be living in the most stable time for the most number of people ever in history. There's a lot of evil still in the world, but we need to acknowledge how far we've come lest we pale at the sight of how far is left to go.

The Shape of the Sword

2011-12-30T08:11:00.000-08:00

Last night before bed, I read The Shape of the Sword by Borges.

I have it in a book, legitimately bought from a bookstore.

As far as a plot archetype, it's more of a Keyser Söze story than anything. It's a short story, hard to really develop the characters.

It's also a story within a story, so it's hard to tell who the main character is.

If anything, it's the Outlaw Myth: the hero has stumbled and fallen and is using his one virtue to find redemption. Except there is no redemption nor any attempt to obtain it.

Turns out, you can read it online.

It's a story almost devoid of plot, entirely based on fleshing out a single character and then twisting the plot. It's fine for a short story, but for a feature-length movie, a little thin.

Would make a good short, maybe.

bongiorno

2011-12-30T06:54:00.000-08:00

Finally, it's on Netflix streaming—but not for long.

Breaking Away.

Yes, one of the few bike racing movies, one that I should probably own (if I still believed in owning CDs and DVDs) that was shown in Grant Park earlier this year to kick off bike-to-work week.

I was loathe to attribute it to an archetype, as if they were even avoidable. A real story about real characters, the movie is a far cry from Shutter Island, a plot device wrapped in clichés.

It's about 4 recently graduated high school friends who have nothing to show for their first summer out. No jobs, no aspirations, only feelings of inadequacy for being townies in a college town. Sons of stonecutters, quarrymen, they're called cutters. And you can see the word impale itself in their flesh each time it's leveled at them—like a knife.

Dave stands out. Having won an Italian bike, he's been obsessed with bikes and Italy, speaking either Italian or broken English with an affected accent. He's blissed out living in his delusion while his friends and father are downtrodden realists, even pessimists.

Dave meets a girl in this state who believes him to be an Italian exchange student, presumably studying at the University. Double lie.

But he's so happy, albeit due explicitly to his idealism and naïveté.

He reminds me of myself for a few months in the Fall of '07.

And naïve idealism is precisely what makes his fall so hard. The Italians come to town for a race; Dave participates, spends the first half of the race catching up to them; he tries to hang with them, riding with them, speaking Italian; they [take offense to this?] stick a pipe in his spokes and crash him out of the race. [Were they earnestly worried about losing to him?]

In Dave's case, his idealism was shattered, his flesh bruised. He stops speaking Italian, even to his girl [who dumps him], and he suddenly resembles any one of his dejected friends. His father finally recognizes him, content that he's finally acting "normal" again. Or just real?

His father had been highly put out by the Italian act, and though he probably didn't realize, maybe deep down he was just concerned that his son's idealized delusion would turn around to cause him pain. Was he just being (subconsciously) protective or just miffed that his son could be so namby-pamby happy?

Then there's the big race. The Little 500. It goes as you might expect, and we feel the requisite joy at the end.

As for an archetype, I had forgotten about the "Rags to Riches" type, one that includes a "Coming of Age" type. Each of the 4 high school friends develops as the story progresses, leaving behind their insecurities and stepping boldly into new terrain. And the hero, the main character Dave, experiences the "False Ending" in which the bad guys win and it looks bleak. But that makes the triumph at the end all the greater.

Win.

bettering morning coffee

2011-12-29T07:00:00.000-08:00

There are some friends who you have friend-dates with, and then there are those to whose house you bring a bike pump to fill their tires and eat some bread. And then maybe watch them do their hair and put their makeup on.

It's nice when they live close by.

And sometimes you can trigger deep truths from within that erupt unexpectedly; sometimes you learn things about coffee.

The friend in question used to work at a swank coffee shop in Brooklyn—Oslo—who, to my taste buds roasts the best coffee in the world. Try Freya.

[Shameless attempt at promotional support? Or simply earnest?]

One new hot thing in the world of coffee is Chemex: a glass carafe with a filter for the beans on top. Sounds too simple to be good, but it's the new big thing. And apparently there's a right way and a righter way to pour.

The trick, apparently, is to do an initial pour that soaks the beans and releases the bitter aromas. Then it's time for a long slow pour in a spiral, starting from the outside.

I tried the first trick on our standard drip coffee maker, and it worked.

It requires you making some hot water first, but pour it over the beans and let them steam for a few seconds before starting the pot. Turns cheap Trader Joe's coffee into acid-free B+ coffee.

RWG

2011-12-28T11:48:00.000-08:00

While walking this morning—my new habit, going through my listening list on Spotify—I saw a paradox. A man came up to me and said "I am lying to you like you lie to yourself."

Like a canary in a coal mine he was a warning sign of things to come.

It was cold out this morning, so I was bundled up; I realized that, inside, I was wrapped like a mummy, layers of bandages on top of bandages on top of wounds.

I was listening to The Woodmans—music by David Lang, a composer whom I greatly admire, but not in this case; what I was hearing was oversimplified, overly repetitious and banal. However infectious his other music, this was a disease I was not contracting.

One of my favorite pieces of his—"Cheating, Lying Stealing"—has obvious repetition, but each time a cell repeats, it's altered in some way. The inattentive listener might not even realize, but everyone will perceive its unmechanicalness—irregularly regular.

For the least initiated listeners, this is a relatively easy point of entry, all while keeping it interesting. The Woodmans sounded like film music.

Which, it turns out, it is.

Or was. Whatever tense, it was intended as the score to a film, which leaves it 2-dimensional when you give it your full attention. Now that I know, the jury is still out; now I have to think of it totally differently.

The point of this post, however, is not my new habit of walking in the morning, at the end of night—the easiest way to stay healthy (in the bike racing off-season)—but tools for creativity, specifically the Random Word Generator. Hence all the underlined words.

xmas 2011

2011-12-27T10:38:00.000-08:00

in the days leading up to christmas, i learned that i'm nearing the end of my money.

i'm never quite sure how that happens, but it happens every winter, usually not till late february or march.

this year, sooner. was it the bike racing? i did more bike racing this year which means 20-30 dollar entry fees and gas for getting to the races.

or was i just living an unsustainable lifestyle? not that i'm prone to excess, but i feel surrounded by people who don't have to be as careful with money. easy to get sucked along.

fortunately, i had already bought most of the presents for my family, so i didn't have to think about it too much while shopping.

i'm usually a terrible gift-giver, relying heavily on the "thought-that-counts". this year, however, i think i did alright. for my mom, the poetess, i got an international journal of poetry and the granta issue on chicago. for my dad... well, his present started off as something mysterious and impractical and ended up as something practical: roku. not without an air of mystery, the roku streams movies and such (pandora) to your tv. it's how some of my friends watch netflix. for my brother-in-law, the fixins for old fashioneds (whisky and bitters). for my sister, an illustrated history of graphic design in america. and for the kids, books.

the whole weekend, i tried to keep my caloric intake the right side of total bacchanalia but still felt overfull, oversugared, and overserved. every year i think it would be a lot better if i could just do a 3-hour bike ride at some point. but i never do.

christmas day night, i had an insight that i hope to elaborate on later. suffice it to say that i poked around on the internet to find the basic plot archetypes. i found a book that described the 7 basic forms. it looks a little long to read, but there are some good dissections, summaries, and reactions out there on the net.

but let's get to the good part, the result of which is a busted up nose and an emptiness in my belly.

i started to feel nauseous midday boxing day. i thought i was just over-caffeinated or overstuffed on holiday treats but it turned out to be more sinister.

i felt ill on the drive back to the city, where i dropped off my stuff at home and got on my bike. moving, circulating the blood made me feel better. i joined my family at RJ Grunts, the historic restaurant at the edge of Lincoln Park and the only decent family place within walking distance of the zoo. the real zoo, though was inside. hoards of families were stuffed into the 70s-themed tavern, and the possibility of getting a table was in serious question.

we got seated, though, at 2 separate tables on opposite ends of the restaurant. i was back to feeling sickly and deliberated on which table to join. the one, my sister, mom, and my baby niece lily; the other, my dad, my brother-in-law, and my toddler nephew lincoln. i chose the man-table and then had to deliberate on which deep-fried, greasy meat i'd be able to digest.

my choice raised eye-brows: tuna melt. [i never found out if it was good; it's still in my fridge.]

i rode slowly on the way home, not having the energy nor the intestinal fortitude to go fast, choosing low-traffic streets both for safety and quietude.

i considered stopping at the river to unleash the demons in my stomach, but the moment passed too quickly.

getting sick moves in a spiral. you feel on the verge of being sick but then it passes. when it comes back, it's worse but it passes. all the way until you are dozing on the couch, shivering under a warm blanket, concentrating on keeping your lunch inside where it belongs.

when the sweat comes, you know it's over.

made it to the bathroom, calmly took off my christmas-present-flannel, and was nearly ready for the onslaught. only the toilet seat was in my way, which i threw open with such urgency that it bounced, whacking the bridge of my nose on the way down.

it still hurts a little to wear glasses.

i felt so much better. not only was something malevolent inside but i was just full on excess. i felt depleted but ready to start over. not quite ready-ready—i still could only stomach glasses of water—but i knew i was on the mend.

so far today, i've had mostly bread and honey, some weak coffee with milk, and yogurt—starting slowly.

might need to take a nap...

Narrative Arc

2011-12-27T09:21:00.000-08:00

Christmas day evening, I was alone in my room-room at home-home and, perhaps through the mysterious interconnectivity of the internet, I got turned on to the basic plot archetypes.

There's a book that came out I'll never read—too many pages—but there are several good summaries and reactions to it on the internet.

For as much as the Romantic Hero wants to be a unique individual, s/he still needs to feel a part of something.

"Yes, we're all individuals!"

Sometimes you're a camel in a caravan; sometimes you're just a camel in the desert.

Sometimes the path gets lost in the shifting sands.

I am both the driver of the caravan and the camels; being your own boss is de rigueur these days, especially if you're trying to do creative things.

And the question has remained unanswered—indeed, unasked: what's my archetype? Hero, Outlaw, Messiah, Vengeful Messiah, Blithe Angel?

Lately, I've felt more like an Outlaw. Potential, however, for a Hero. The Messiah would then go further and transform the world.

I'm not so much into vengeance: lucky for you. The Blithe Angel sounds more and more attractive.

I may be essentially one or all of these things in my core, but I have the freedom to try them all out, to avoid decision.

Indecision is a freedom. And a tiresome state.

Remembering where we've come from helps us see the arc, the trajectory of where we're going.

motherboards

2011-12-01T09:38:00.001-08:00

On a whim, in a stupor induced by headcold, finding myself thinking clearly but simply, even more distracted than usual, I got interested in electronics.

It started with the annual winter yen to build a Theremin. Followed closely by the thought: how hard could it be?

Theremins are the electronic instruments from 1950s horror movies, an electronic, hands-free instrument that produces sound based on the performers hands interacting with electrical fields surrounding antennas.

Read about its basic operating principles per wikipedia.

It's one thing to know about Theremins, it's another to know how they work. I want to build one; I want to know how they work.

Which requires a serious dredging up of lost knowledge regarding electronics.

Actually, I never knew much about electronics, though I did well on the EM section of the Physics AP exam.

It's been that long.

Granted we built a robot, but I never got a good understanding of circuits beyond basic principles and simple schematics. A Theremin, it turns out, is pretty advanced.

So I decided to start small. A visit to American Science and Surplus (a wonderland of strangeness) resulted in me being the proud owner of a "My First Strobe Kit", a DIY electronic circuit that requires soldering ("sottering") and whatnot.

The more I think about electronic circuits, the more I don't understand them. How does information flow through them? I'm learning, of course, about resistors, potentiometers, capacitors, and whatever else. Lots to keep track of.

So I started with a problem, how to build a Theremin, which turned out to be too complicated, so I broke it down, and broke it down, and broke it down. Electricity is still pretty complicated, but with this Strobe kit I can at least start learning by doing.

[As if I needed another hobby.]

But maybe this is just a rhythm of thought, a wavelength, that I've been fostering, against all odds: trying to figure out how things work. It begins with identifying the problem and ends with breaking it down into the simplest components. Whether or not I put the parts back together remains to be seen.

Deconstruct first; reconstruct second.

Through this process, I've realized that I don't actually believe in anything. Or the opposite. I believe in too many things, contradictory things, that render them un-possible.

["Me fail English? That's unpossible!"]

For instance, it doesn't happen too often, but there was at least one time on the bike tour that someone asked me about my religious beliefs. I don't know how, but I realized that I both believe in God and in the death of God. I both believe in reincarnation and don't. I both believe in good and evil and don't.

It's like, when I get down to the electronic circuit of my mind, there's all these switches that allow both 1's and 0's.

Which coincides with this book that I'm reading: Erring by Mark C Taylor.

"There is a large, and I believe growing, number of people who find themselves in the middle of such extremes. Suspended between the loss of old certainties and the discovery of new beliefs, these marginal people constantly live on the border that both joins and separates belief and unbelief. They look but do not find, search but do not discover."

So I'm not so unusual. There's always consolation in that.

throwing things into other things

2011-11-08T08:44:00.000-08:00

I've been storing up these stories, awaiting the completion of a trilogy. The other day, completion; here they are.

1) It's no secret that I go to Kuma's Corner maybe once a week. Meat, it's good. It's maybe a secret that I used to be vegetarian and, for this reason, have little sympathy for veggies, thinking that that was a phase that I went through and thought better of. Glad I did it though.

Generally what happens is this: I eat something for dinner - neither a mere snack nor a feast - and feel pretty satisfied until one or another of my roommates sends me a text: "House meeting." This, of course, means Kuma's, and it's almost always after 10:30, sometimes 11.

If we happen to be in person, one of us will say: "Yeah, I could wrap my dick around that" which somehow translates to "I'm in." [I'm in = I'm down = I'm up for it... etc.]

So one time a week or two ago, the crazy roommate and the aborted-baby-daddy suddenly said they were going, but I had just opened a beer. Dilemma! I was on the ram's horns, wanting to sit and finish my beer (waste not!) but also wanting to go get some meat.

Solution: bike with beer.

It's not legal per se, but it's not exactly immoral. I draw the line at immoral. Or at least just a little past.

So I'm biking one-handed on the fixie, left hand poised on the brake [safety first!], when, about half-way there [it's a 7-minute ride], I finish my beer and feel an immediate desire to dispose of the empty bottle. I'm feeling fractious and have an urge to just throw it, devil may care. But then, golden opportunity: a dumpster on the other side of the street. Almost like a reflex, I hook-shotted the bottle in an arc over my head.

Draino.

It couldn't have gone any better.

2) My crazy roommate had gone to Florida and come back, was forbidden to come back to the house, and was spending the weekend in a padded room. [At least that's how I picture it.] The day after her institutionalization was C's birthday party. He had a keg of good beer [that still has some left in it] and a barrel for a hobo-fire.

So, now that we all know what a hobo fire is, let's carry on. [We didn't use a blowtorch to make the holes, rather a drill with some hole-cutting attachment.]

Picture this. The fire is burning and people are showing up. I showed up after a concert that was pretty terrible and had drank 2 G&Ts at the post-concert reception. [I ended up way drunker that night and ended up missing my cross race the next day.]

So things are happening, I turn on the music, it's a party.

At some point, we were going to burn this small wicker ottoman that was taking up space in the living room. In honor of clean-space-clean-mind, I'm getting rid of the random junk in our apartment.

Somehow, I decided to try to throw it from the balcony [2nd floor] into the hobo fire 30 feet away. It seemed unlikely to work, but the greatest rewards come from the highest risk. And the best risks are the one you're not attached to (or are ignoring).

First throw! Miss. Just wide. No can, no fire. Close but no cigar.

C throws the ottoman back up to me (wicker is pretty light), I catch (amazing!), and throw again.

No real thought, just a vague amount of preparation.

Draino. Right in. There were only a few orientations that the stool could even fit into the can, and it happened to find it just as it went in.

Someone came up to me afterwards and said: "If that was on Youtube I'd think it a fake."

Not a fake, just being awesome.

3) On Sunday, my chef-friend and I are driving to a bike race (I've learned my lesson about drinking too much the night before and have made it to *all* subsequent races), and we stop at a gas station for some 5-hour energy and coffee.

But I have this cup from last week still in the cup holder and don't have room for my coffee. What to do?! Dilemma!

So I look around for a drive-up trash can. Nothing.

I find one right in front of the cashier but that's 4 feet away from the curb. I drive up and ask him: "think I can make it?" He laughs, I aim and shoot...

Way way too high, like 3 feet. Hit the window right by the cashier and sort of exploded with melted ice from last week's post-race soda. Missed the can.

So I take my foot off the clutch [LURCH, stall...] and go throw it away. Total fail. The lurch even spilled my coffee [a little] in the car.

Then driving away, he's still laughing in fits, I'm trying to drink the coffee. He gets me laughing right as I'm drinking, and I inhale it. Really. Inhale. Not just choking on it, the coffee enters my lungs and I feel this strange sensation like I'm freebasing coffee, the caffeine entering straight into my blood stream.

I managed to cough most of it out before the race and like to think that it was to blame for my 8th place finish in the race. Not too shabby but would have liked to do better.

Trilogy complete.

coincidences

2011-11-04T06:46:00.001-07:00

I think I am done talking about the ex-roommate. Then again, that's exactly what I thought about a million times already and, really, after the thousand-and-first time, I started writing about it. So, sometimes excess is for the win.

We had 2 girls over last week to fill the vacancy. One of my roommates had said "No girls." after the last one, but we assured him that not all women are prone to insanity.

Neither of the 2 who came over seemed borderline anything, and we approved of both. The girl interested in a long-term living situation flaked out, and we went with the short-term Scottish girl who's in town for a semester at the SAIC, something about sculptural installation art.

When she was by the house, she told us a sob story about why she had to leave her current place on short notice and under duress. She was subletting from some folks, had given them a security deposit, and they went to Détroit. Then, mid-October, the landlord comes by and says that the folks who skipped town owed a month or two in rent. For some reason, this poor Scottish lass was on the hook for it. So she was being asked to leave. Shitty sitch.

W heard all this and asked for clarification: where exactly was this house she was living in?

Turns out, he knows the people who live on the other half of the house - good friends of his - and he knew more about the sitch.

One of the people who left earned the nickname "The Step-Shitter" due to an unfortunate mess that he left on the steps leading up to the house, probably while on drugs.

That was another thing W heard about the folks who left: junkies. So somehow, through the magic of the internet, this girl ended up at our place.

W thought all this was very funny when he met her, for, he too was on drugs, though nothing so deleterious as heroin. Just hard enough, however, for him to bring up, multiple times, how insanely coincidental it was that she lived with the step-shitter.

So now she lives with us and made dinner last night. Real food! Yum.

In other news, I had a SLEEP burger the other day. Fuck yeah.

finding is the new losing

2011-11-02T13:28:00.001-07:00

New day, same topic.

I thought we had moved on. I would have thought the hospital would have figured out her brand of crazy and tweezed it out.

No communication for a while, followed by a rumor that she had stopped by the house. Something about being drunk and talking to C.

Sure enough, it happened. But no one seemed to want to talk about it.

Then I get a text from my friend, the one who set her up with us. (That is, her ex.)

"Did she leave her phone at her house?"

I told him I was sure she didn't come in the house and haven't seen it.

More texts, more insistent, and it comes out that she was, in fact, at our place, inside, and had possibly left her phone.

And by "left", I mean "threw".

No visual proof, but it sounds like, after a heated confrontation with C, she flipped out and, on the way out, threw her phone somewhere in our apartment.

In order to have a reason to come back?

I was set to ignore it, not caring what happens. I have sympathy for everyone - up to a point. Once it's gone, it takes a long time to grow back. Her account is bankrupt.

But today, I was tearing apart the living room in search of her phone.

And then I got into it, moving couches, dusting, wiping the floor in the dark corner where clutter accumulates, and rearranging the furniture situation.

It was, in fact, on my list to do some cleaning/organizing today. I didn't get to my space, but made a good dent in the common space.

And then, after having forgotten the original impetus for cleaning, her phone turned up. The rumors and theories were true: she was over and planted her phone in a fit of drunken rage at random in our house.

She's burned through her allotment of sympathy and now is accruing ire. I'll get her her phone back but she'd better stay away while we forget (and block out) her very existence.

A microcosm of a small world

2011-10-26T06:27:00.000-07:00

We had 2 potential roommates come over yesterday to drink some keg beer (left over from C's b-day rampage) and hang out on the back porch as the lightning flashed through the drizzle.

Double-Dub was skeptical, still scarred from our last roommate experience: "No girls." Not that we're not scarred in some way, but Cee and I agree that a stable girl would bring balance to the house-force.

The first knew a friend of Dub's, a fact apparently disclosed as I was letting the second one in. A little overlap makes for a little awkwardness, a good test of how borderline-psycho they are.

The second lived over by Doble-Dub's friends, a fact discovered by Sea; he tried to ask if she'd seen them around, describing them as "guys who wear black shirts a lot. Not scary, just like punks."

She was moving because the people she was subletting with skipped town owing the landlord rent, having taken a security deposit from her. Poor lass, she is only in Chicago for a semester at the SAIC before returning to Glasgow to install more site-specific art.

She also describes her current place as rat-infested, as in there are many rats in the yard when she gets home and scares them off. But not all the way off.

Dub comes back out, probably high on something or another, and puts two and two together; she lives on the other side of the house his friends live in.

He knows about the drama with the absconders - apparently one of them took a shit on the stairs, a fact that gets repeated a lot - and offers his sympathy: sounds like a bad-bad situation.

[Apparently the shit incident was induced by heroin?]

So apparently, while I still don't know anyone personally who does heroin, I know people who know people who used to live next to people who do it. Close enough.

Dub even called it a shitshow without realizing how literally true that figure of speech was. And then went on to bring up how crazy it was that she was living there. And that he knew the situation. And how bad the situation was. And how he doesn't blame her for getting out.

Maybe to our place...?

[Sidenote: anyone know where "Shitshow" first appeared?]

Small world.

Unlock the Door

2011-10-25T08:47:00.000-07:00

The ex-roommate has been in the hospital all weekend. The whole situation has been a lesson in "just-when-you-think-it's-over-it's-not" and "just-when-you-are-resigned-to-it-going-on-forever-it-may-just-come-to-an-end."

Either way, a total chick-flick-turned-horror-movie.

So after she spent almost 12 hours in her hometown, full of people who would presumably be able to take care of her but didn't, she came back to Chicago, was refused re-entry to the house and wandered the streets. Finally, other roommate picked her up at a neutral meeting place and she acquiesced to being hospitalized.

My mom read the saga and sent two very nice emails of support, the latter describing the ex-roomie's condition and giving it a name: Borderline Personality Disorder.

Really, I think it should be called Borderline Psychosis, and it seems that that's the origin of the label.

According to wikipedia, it involves deep and variable moods, black/white thinking, and the propensity to idealize and demonize (others, etc.).

Something that always bothered me about the former roommate was her black/white thinking. I always attributed it to her living a relatively sheltered life, primarily experiencing life through her Orlando-colored sunglasses.

Maybe living in Chicago shattered her idealized vision of the world.

In the last conversation that I had with her (possibly forever), she admitted, finally, that one of the big reasons why she moved to Chicago was to pursue a relationship with her ex, my co-worker who set us up on this blind-roommate-date in the first place.

She describes them as having a long-distance relationship for the 2 years that he's been her. Unclear how long they'd been together before. She complained that he only called her 22 times in 2 years. I think that was the number; she seemed pretty clear on exactly how many.

He says he clearly broke it off when he left Florida.

Turns out, she had this idealized notion of him and was unwilling/unable to let go of it.

I feel like I did that once, went a little crazy. But only a little.

Yet another proof that reality is determined by what you are able/willing to believe. What you believe is truth. Even if you can *think* something different, you are limited by your ability to *believe*.

"Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said 'one can't believe impossible things.'

'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Clearly we are able to believe impossible things, unreal things: that the Earth is flat, that Jesus rose from the dead, and especially love.

rom com / drama / horror

2011-10-21T06:47:00.000-07:00

Somehow the last few months have encompassed every genre. And it was all because of one person, admittedly with a flair for the dramatic, an actor.

We were looking for a roommate, so I posted a note on facebook. Within an hour, I was talking to a girl, the friend of a co-worker (really, the ex of a friend) moving to Chicago to pursue improv comedy.

Yes, improv comedians can have a lot of energy; yes, she was only 22; yes, she was from Florida and had never seen snow. And, sight unseen, we approved her. It seemed to work out too well, like the stars had aligned. And when I say "we" approved her, I mean I did - along with the outmoving girl.

The Princess moved in - and I don't mean princess in the entitled way, rather Disney - and we started off in our little romantic comedy.

Not that there was real romance, but there was always the threat lurking under the surface. She's a flirt. She likes people to like her, in need of constant approval. A typical actor. She lies for a living.

She spent her days working retail, her nights gigging or taking improv classes. And somehow still had time to spend with her ex, maybe in an effort to manipulate him back in love with her.

When that fell apart, the wheels started to come off the bus. And yet, finally, with all the wheels off, the bus kept hurtling through space, losing pieces until it was just the driver's seat on fire, sliding down the road, no driver to be seen.

It came out that she had body image issues. I had never really met anyone with an eating disorder, so that was novel for me. And confusing. And I really didn't want to understand what was going through her head. To me, it was so wrong, that I didn't want to understand how someone could do it. It's one of those topics that doesn't get explored too much in literature, leaving us unprepared. We have put ourselves in the minds of the killers, the victims, the lovers, and all the rest. Even suicide victims. But this, this is the silent soul stealer that remains totally incomprehensible.

And she drank. But she didn't have a problem. But it was a problem.

She could go a couple nights without drinking, but it was clearly her method of dealing with whatever was going wrong, and when she hit the sauce, she hit it hard. Sometimes for days.

Like a pendulum filmed in reverse, she oscillated slowly at first but got wilder and wilder. Her mom was bi-polar. I don't know if she, herself, was quite there, but she was definitely bi-curious-polar.

It's amazing what people can get away with if they're attractive and confident.

She started sleeping with people in the house. Another coping mechanism? It's a lot easier for a woman to seduce a man. That statement is so cliché that I'm just going to leave it. Masochism.

At some point, the sex stopped between her and one of the guys. Or rather, he tried to stop it. A few days later, there was a dramatic falling out between them at the bar. And the next day she was preggers.

Or was she?

I'm guessing she was, which would make the visit to Planned Parenthood less than a charade. If there's anyone in this world who should not be bringing a child into this world, it's this girl. Her mom had 6 still-borns; nature was trying to tell this gene pool that breeding is not the best idea.

The oscillations became wilder.

After the supposed abortion, there was a 3-day period where she was so drunk that she didn't even feel drunk any more. Mostly hard stuff, a couple 6-packs of Mothership Wit (per day).

And throughout all this, she kept promising to leave. Kept going back and forth. It felt almost tidal: a rush of hope that this saga would end, a crash of disappointment that it kept dragging on.

All I ever wanted was my rug back. And by rug, I mean stability.

It takes a lot of energy to be around someone who is so volatile. It prevents you from living your own life. And she had collapsed so far into the black hole of a soul that it was getting harder to escape her gravity. She, herself, had no idea how much her actions were affecting those around her. [Then again, do any of us?]

It was getting to the point that we were going to have to ask her to leave. Her preemptive promises to vacate were only prolonging the inevitable. She had a few moments of clarity, during which I was tempted to tell her that she could stay or go, but that she'd have to leave the booze at the door.

On Wednesday, I came home to cops and firefighters in the apartment waiting for her to get her things. She apparently was drunk (er than usual) and was talking about suicide. I thought this would get her the help she needed.

But, like a professional liar, she convinced them she was sane and was back home in 3 hours. [It took her that long to walk home from the hospital. No phone and no money meant that she walked back in the rain.]

The next day, more lucidity. And then, out of nowhere: "help me to go back to Florida." Denial is the hardest hurdle; once over it, we weren't about to waste any time.

Finally, put to rest, left behind us.

She sent some optimistic texts when she got back to Florida. And I closed that door in my head. Closure.

Until the next morning. Roommate got some 3am texts: "Sleeping on the floor in a pile of cat hair." "The haven that I thought I had isn't here." "I'm coming back to Chicago, be there by noon."

We put her on the first flight out of Chicago, and she took the first flight back in.

Or did she?

Was this a hoax? Or, did she ever leave?

Were the texts coming from IN the apartment?!?!?

Our best guess is no. That she really made it to Florida. Panicked. Couldn't find friends willing to put her up (let alone family) and thought she was still welcome in Chicago.

She thought wrong.

We sent her some texts to indicate that this was a bad idea, but she had either turned her phone off or was really on a plane. Got some texts at 9:30. First plane from Orlando to Chicago was at 7:30, landed at 9:20.

Maybe she only lies about the small stuff. The big stuff is really too crazy to make up. No one would ever believe it.

And here we are, wondering what comes next. The doors are locked, and we have her keys.

constant maintenance

2011-08-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

I am getting awesomer and awesomer at certain things, worser and worser at others. Your attention begets your intentions, and mine are sporadic and chaotic, governed by a mind warped by the internet unable to listen to an entire mp3 from start to finish without seeing what else might be better.

Listening to records, strangely, is the opposite. Maybe the effort required to skip around - getting up, physically moving the needle - is enough to allow me to enjoy whatever's on as good-enough-for-right-now.

So today, I was pleased with myself that I could maintain a task for a better part of the day, even if the task was only tangentially related to my overall ambitions and goals for this lifetime. I fixed my bikes.

Yes, bikes. My racing bike needed truer wheels (unwobbly), and my get-around-town-bike, my old 10-speed that I converted to a fixie (très hip) needed a lot of shit. The bearings in the wheels gristed too much, too much grit, not enough grease. Actually, that's all. But both wheels needed it, and each one had a different style of bearings.

The rear wheel, the one that I'm going to use on my new track racing bike, had sealed cartridges - reminding me today, for the first time, of the skateboard wheel bearings we used to use - and the seals were broken and rusty grease was leaking out. I had never changed such bearings before; thought it was much more difficult.

So I traipsed over the boulevard to my LBS (local bike shop) and pestered them. I made them true my wheels - in exchange for money - and picked their brain about the feasibility of me reinserting the bearings into the hub without fucking it up. He made it seem manageable, so I took my $16 worth of bearings and traipsed back home. Tra-la-la-dee.

Carefully, I hammered the cartridge in, making sure that it was going straight in lest it damage the hub. No damage and 20 minutes later...

I got distracted by fixing the other hub. I went to use it as a reference but, as it turns out, it's not a cartridge but a loose set of bearings. It, too, was rusty and gristy, so I took it apart and cleaned and degreased and cleaned and degreased. Almost lost a bearing down the sink but saved it in the nick of time. The nick!

Finished that one in about 1/2 hour and finally banged the last cartridge in the first one. Success! Two functioning wheels.

Almost time for food - [I was starving at this point] - but no: I felt I should change some tires around. No food till the work is done.

Finally, time to eat. And write this post about how I don't write enough posts. Looks like it got hijacked by bike talk, which is sort of fitting, since that's how my life has been this summer. #extendedmetaphor

Actually, the whole morning started with a piano lesson followed by a text from my roommate W offering to take me to Kuma's if I could fix his bike. That was the easiest fix but the one that got my hands greasy and my mind into a mechanical rut.

I actually sat down to write a post on Beyond Words about how much I loathe Classical music. Actually, it's not the music, it's the people. The music itself is nice and worth listening to from time to time. For some people, it's essential, but for most people today, there is nothing essential about Classical music. It's hardly pertinent and borders on irrelevance. And that's fine.

The real problem is that we are still subjected to the mediocre music from the past. For instance, Haydn doesn't have anything important to say to modern audiences. The gist of his music is how he uses and abuses the forms and styles of the time, of which we have less and less knowledge. His music should reside solely in specialty concerts. Much of Mozart is the same but there are some pieces whose musical content is interesting regardless of form or style.

Haydn's music is far too much form with no content; Mozart achieved somewhat of a balance; Beethoven was content-driven, and so therefore maintains more relevance.

The Romantic period is more content-driven, so has more potential to be relevant. There's still plenty of music, though, that has inconsequential content and so can be left by the wayside.

There's so much music out there, there's no need to dwell on mediocre pieces from the past. And yet we do because programmers have a personal attachment to a piece, inventing objective reasons for its significance. Sure, every piece is important in some way. Much of my music stirs my soul - even still! after all these years - but that doesn't make it essential.

If they were to make an episode of Hoarders about Classical music, I would love to go through these crusty curmudgeons' attics and throw out all their Kleiber recordings. I'll bet they would squirm just like the packrats on the show. From what I've seen of the show in my imagination.

blank

2011-07-26T09:57:00.001-07:00

I'm concerned about the lack of thoughts in my head. I'm not sure where they've gone, hopefully on vacation to an exotic locale, but I'd like them to come back refreshed and abuzz with possibilities.

It seems almost unfathomable, but I think I'm tired of communication. I'm tired of expressing both the easily expressible and the ineffable. Other people should just know what I know without all the effort.

A coworker told me the other day about this article that finds a correlation between monkey brain size and the size of their social circles. It's really helped me to organize people in my mind. While I dislike the inherent dehumanization involved in this, I find my current strategy - or lack there of - to be unsustainable. As it is, I try to recognize everyone's humanity, which reduces everyone to a 1-bit character. Or somewhere in between 1 and 2 bits.

So by totally ignoring the humanity of the vast majority of people I meet, I can save my limited resources for people who are important.

Instead of everyone being an equal friend on Facebook, from Mom and Dad to former and future girlfriends to that guy from 7th period English class, I am falling down the rabbit hole that is Google+, organizing people into circles.

The problem, of course, is the bike tour, where I get paid - and get paid more - to recognize people's humanity. The more I know about someone, the more customized I can make the tour, which leads to more financial rewards. Which especially sucks when I work hard to recognize someone's humanity and then get stiffed.

Then there are tragedies like Norway. I know cerebrally how terrible it is but keep it from really sinking in. I don't think most people have the capacity to process such savagery from around the world on a daily basis. 80 people is already half way to 150, the theoretical max for our social circle - our Monkeysphere. I hesitate but want to call it a "tribe".

I also liked that the article talked about "grooming cliques," which are only a couple of monkeys. I would like a grooming clique of a handful of people with whom I'm really close. Not all physical affection has to be sexual. I think our society has this black and white attitude - sex or non-physical - and it creates this arbitrary distance between people.

I started this post to tell you how there's nothing in my head these days, but then all this came out - granted it's not very well organized or particularly interesting. At least I tapped into something; I'm just terribly out of practice.

Le Grand Boucle

2011-07-10T18:35:00.000-07:00

They call the Tour de France Le Grand Boucle, The Big Loop, and yet it rarely ever looks like a continuous loop around the country. In this year's race, there's a day near the end where they hop on a train to race the next day around Paris. I'm sure it's a difficult race to organize - year in, year out - but they seem to be missing the point.

Or maybe I am.

Regardless of everything, it's an amazing feat: a physical feat, a logistical feat, a cultural feat.

Yes, maybe even a medical feat.

This year's Tour started with 378 feet, belonging to 189 riders on 21 teams. I don't know why they vary the # of riders every year, but this is one of the biggest fields.

Perhaps because of that, perhaps due to myriad extraneous reasons, it's been a total shitshow: every day there are crashes, and often the crashes end a rider's tour, forcing him to "abandon."

It's been all the talk, perhaps because many of the bigger name riders have been forced to abandon.

One British announcer was near tears when British star Bradley Wiggins broke a collar bone. I cried a little today, but I'm not exactly sure why.

Chris Horner's condition got to me. After a brutal crash, he was lying motionless, unconscious on the side of the road. He had had a concussion and somehow came with enough clarity to ride the 20 remaining miles. At the finish though, he couldn't seem to figure out why he was 16 minutes behind everyone else. [Watch it]

Then today, Alexander Vinokourov broke his leg in a massive pile-up that affected so many riders that the peloton waited around for 5 minutes to allow everyone to get back on.

Vino is a total badass riding in his last Tour - monumental misfortune.

[When I first read about it, the news headline said that his crash was "career-ending", which alluded to something even more serious than a broken leg. It just happens to be career-ending because he's at the end of his career.]

And then the nightmare.

A French TV car was passing a group of riders at grande vitesse - too fast - and had to swerve to avoid a tree, clipping a rider and causing another to do a double somersault in the air before landing backside first on a barbed wire fence. [Watch it]

It was just so ghastly. Every cyclist's worst nightmare. And the car, with its smug, unchanging expression, seemed so unapologetic, like it did it on purpose.

Which would be the case if it happened to me on Chicago roads.

It's getting to the point that I don't even care who wins and loses, hoping instead that everyone stays safe. In the Italian version of the Tour de France earlier this year, a rider died from head injuries sustained during a crash. It happens and it's scary. Or maybe it's scary because it happens.

see: Wouter Weylandt