Yeah. I miss her. I loved her. I miss all the girls, the women now, I’ve loved. It hurts to have lost them. Does that mean I’m not over them? No. It should hurt. There was a vast goodness in them and I loved them for it. If I were able to discard those feelings, to ignore them, if that loss did not hurt - to me that means I probably didn’t love them. The loss of something important, something special, involves pain. For me, deep pain. And that’s OK. That proves to me it’s real. Proves it was real. I don’t want someone who loved me, who said they loved me, to forget about me that easily. Would you? I will miss the people I’ve loved forever. That to me is something about me that is a strength, not a weakness. And if they needed me somehow, even now - I’d be hard pressed to say no. Even if I’m not sure they’d do that for me. Again, that proves to me - it was real. For me.

I can’t speak for them - but I don’t have to, I don’t need to - it was real. For me.

So I drive on, there’s pain there, there’s hurt. There’s nostalgia. There’s wonderment. Someday I hope to find a love that sticks. That lasts. That endures regardless of differences. Maybe I’ve loved people who are flawed - but we’re all flawed. Maybe my flaw is that I couldn’t look past theirs. Maybe their flaws include not looking past mine. I continue to flail in the dark.

Turn the corner, head home, the same way I always have from Whitsett. Now, for different reasons. Tonight was a night of fun, of camaraderie,one of the few things I look forward to these days. It’s a dark night - they all are of late. But there’s two beacons of hope, two shinings in the darkness. One, my friends and the fun we had tonight. Two, the lost love that used to live on this street. One is current and I’m so glad I’ve found it. One is in the past, but that I hope to find again, elsewhere, one day.

These memories are mine. I will feel about them how I feel. It is my opinion that the hurt of the loss is actually a good thing. Don’t try to take it away from me - because I respect that person too much, and those feelings too much. They’re mine, OK? Mine. I don’t need them to be any different than they are.

Good night, everyone.

LE If you’re not failing some of the time, you’re playing it too safe.

Cephyn @LE my problem is failing almost of the time, since i play way, way too safe and never try at all. i break axioms.

JM @LE @cephyn hmm I have never been good at playing it safe. It bores the crap out of me.

LE Agreed. I’d rather be called reckless than boring. RT @JM @cephyn I have never been good at playing it safe. It bores the crap out of me

cephyn @LE @JM I admire and envy you both. cheers.

We were all standing up on a mountain…high up on a wall, staring down and across a deep valley. Thousands of vertical feet of open air lay before us and we could see as far as anyone could see. The distance was line after line of increasingly higher mountain peaks, the last being the Great Western Divide. Many of the highest peaks in the Lower 48 formed our horizon. Sitting up there, looking at the splendor of the world.

What do you do, when staring into a natural chasm? What does anyone do – what have humans done, as long as anyone can remember, when standing on a mountain peak above a valley? They yell. They wait. They listen. Then they hear themselves yelling back, echoing from thousands of feet away. Granite walls all around us, perfect echoing surfaces. So my friends whooped and hollered. They laughed and smiled in wonderment. When else will you have the opportunity to hear an echo from miles away? It is not an opportunity to be missed, right?

And yet, I stood silent. Like I so often do. Why? It made me uncomfortable. Nervous. Anxious. What if someone heard us? We’re in a National Park, that nature is here for us all to enjoy – what if we disturb someone else’s appreciation of nature? What if we ruin someone else’s trip because, in the middle of their solitary nature hike – they hear us yelling down from on high? What if, what if, what if, what if. What if. That’s all that I could think of. So I said nothing. I did nothing. I missed that opportunity.

And that was an opportunity I recognized. Usually I don’t recognize them until long after the critical moment has passed. And many, I’m positive, I never recognize at all. But I can’t prove that.

My friends did the right thing. They indulged. A minute or two of yelling into the ether from the top of the known world wasn’t going to hurt anyone. But it froze me. I freeze all the time, for fear of offending anyone with my actions. I’m worried about ruining their moment. Any moment. Even if I don’t know them – actually, especially if I don’t know them – I don’t want to be annoying or offensive. That fear, of ruining someone else’s day, of making them uncomfortable, paralyzes me.

It’s also an abject fear of being the center of attention. I want badly to blend in and melt away, almost all the time. Subconsciously, at least. I consciously wish I was a much more forceful, magnetic, comfortable and public personality. I admire those personalities. But I am betrayed by my own self-consciousness. To take a risk is to invite notice, to invite scrutiny. That is a scary prospect for me, it is another risk in itself.

But of course, that’s not all it is. I don’t take many risks in any other way either. I guess I’m just a fearful person, sadly. Most people who know me know I’m very reserved. And normally I’m ok with that. It’s who I am. But often – and increasingly so – I’m frustrated by the fact that I don’t choose to be this way, I simply am this way. Because of fear. Because something internal to me is always screaming not to take risks. I’m not sure why – it’s not fear of failure, because by not taking risks I know I fail a million times more frequently than if I did go out on a limb. But I can’t seem to very easily get over that fear.

Trying to fills me with great anxiety and that horrible sinking feeling. Every subconscious part of me fights me whenever I step out of my comfort zones. Strongly. I feel sick. I feel sleepy. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do, where to stand, how to sit, how to BE. I freeze. I panic. I have to leave.

But I do try, in frustratingly and excruciatingly small steps. One at a time. Often, past the moment, whether I actually did anything or not, I’m sweating bullets. I’m overloaded. I feel the need to hide. Just considering certain things puts me in a cold sweat. But I do try. I will continue to try. But it’s slow, and difficult, and hard to identify spontaneously when I’m backing away from something I shouldn’t. And hard to even know how to push myself, because I just don’t possess the tools.

I don’t take risks. I am afraid of risks. But I’m getting nowhere without them. I’m trying. I’m hoping it comes easier someday. Because right now – it’s one of the hardest things I do and when I fail at it (and I do, a lot) I disappoint myself beyond measure.

I do envy those that don’t play it safe. But I don’t know if they realize just how debilitating and terrifying it is for me. I wish I knew a better way to myself, a better way to just BE. I hope to figure it out someday…but for my sake, I hope it’s someday soon.

We had been moving her all day. Trip after trip after trip. All that existed in her new apartment was boxes and a mattress. We were so tired - exhausted. We’d been moving the day before too. We faced a choice, one hour before we had to go to her brother’s for dinner - do we make another trip? There was still enough to bring that it seemed like it was never going to get done, but not enough left to make it feel like there was no progress to be made. Or, do we nap. She begged for a nap and I didn’t argue. So we laid down in an empty room with just an hour of quiet to steal a nap. No sounds, from anywhere. Just a phone counting down the hour. It was late in the day and the sun was waning, slanting a bit of light through the window. And we fell fast asleep, on a bare mattress in a silent apartment.

When we awoke, we lay there, silent, having hardly moved - together and still. Not wanting to move. Not wanting to get up and lose the fleeting moment of rest. But we had to, so I got us up and going again.

One hour, most of it asleep, but one hour of perfection with someone I’ve since lost. I don’t know why that particular moment has stuck with me, lodged deep in my heart, now dredged up again by some random association….but it has, and I ache for that that lost feeling. Just that feeling of peace and contentment. I want to go there with someone again - even if I don’t know it at the time. I want to share a moment like that again. This is not the only perfect moment I’ve ever had, it’s just the one that came to me tonight unbidden, unrequested - but not unappreciated.

But that’s our country, where we have a foundation of law stemming from England and its jury system. That isn’t so in other countries - even ones that have been heavily influenced by our country. Case in point - Japan. Japan has held its first jury trial since 1943. It’s pretty amazing that the US influence after the war didn’t insert right to a jury trial into the constitution, but upon heavier reflection it does make some sense. The guy in charge was an authoritarian military man. The Japanese have a traditionally hierarchical society - not one of “everyone’s equal” like we’re (nominally) used to. But times have changed, the system has become completely bogged down and so Japan - in its never ending quest for efficiency - is overhauling its trial system.

In the Japanese system, 3 judges and 6 citizens decide the fate of the defendant - both guilt and sentencing. All 9 are considered judges for the duration of the trial.  It is an interesting system and I think it had great merits. But what can we say about the American system? That is a much thornier topic.

Assume for a moment that you are innocent of a crime, but are about to stand trial. Twelve citizens will decide your guilt. Their decision will be almost certainly be considered final. How comfortable are you knowing that most people don’t want to do that? That they want to be elsewhere, badly, have tried as hard as they could to get out of it and are being paid so little that they want to get it over with as soon as possible to go back to their real job? Does that instill confidence in you as a defendant? Also, what are you on trial for? What are the charges? The system is so complicated that we have lawyers - people who have studied years in school to reach this point - hired to navigate and defend or prosecute. The judge is almost certainly a lawyer as well, with even more schooling and experience. Do you trust 12 average (possibly below average as well as above average) individuals to be able to see through any slick lawyering? To understand the law as explained by biased parties?

Suddenly a fair trial gets scary. Why do we still have it this way? Jury selection has become a game in itself as both sides try to weed out anyone who might hurt their side. It’s considered a “fair” balance because both sides are working against each other…but neither side is fighting for “fair” - and that’s a little scary. Maybe we should consider reforming the US trial system too. Laws are so complex it’s hard to imagine getting a fair trial from a group of people with no special knowledge. I’ve heard that’s part of the beauty of the system, but I think that’s a glaring weakness. I’d rather have educated professionals deciding my fate, not a group who might get snookered by biased legal wrangling. I think we need professional jurors in this country, sooner rather than later. Would you trust your life and your future to 12 randomly chosen amateurs in ANY other setting? Ever?

I think Japan has reformed their system wrongly - though since they’re willing to tweak, maybe they’ll have professional jurors at some point. Time will tell. But it’s pretty cool to see a country actually reforming a system as basic as their trial system - that’s something we should learn from them.

I take some pills. I was out today, having fun and neglecting my usual worries. I paid too little attention to little things and now I will pay in pain. In the coming days, the sun will exact its price, its pound of flesh from me. I worry, now, about the damage I have done. I am not so young anymore. If I were a pro athlete - just an average one - I’d be nearing the end of my productive life. But I am me and many days I feel like I have yet to actually start my productive life.

Sleep has not arrived here. It is too hot. I am too tired to deal with a wet towel. I can barely move. My heart now - once again - barely beats - smothered by my thoughts and my doubts and my fears. It lies dormant until my soul finds something, someone to nudge it back to life.

The sun is still beating on my back, hours after it has gone on to flare unto the other side of the world. I flounder and await my alarm clock to sound - too soon, too soon. I sit in the middle of the world now - the middle, but not the center, far from the center. I am at phantom crossroads, crossed by phantoms all around me. I need to follow them, one of them (any of them?), but I sit at the bus stop of my life, waiting, sleepless and scorched. I can only hope I will be an ember on the wind, soon. It seems I will not be doused, here, tonight - or quenched - or saved. I have a future. I just cannot see where to go right now. I hope it comes soon, I am tired, sleepy, hot and alone. Not alone. No. But just a little - off…

For all this marvel and wonder, the sad fact remains that 1969 was the pinnacle of human exploration of space. We have not since surpassed the achievements of the Apollo program. We have explored no more than a small city park’s worth of the moon, close-up. We have not returned in over 30 years. While we have made great technological strides in robotic exploration and put some semi-long term structures in low-earth orbit, we have not actively explored much of anything since Apollo. And that is a failure.

Science and technology go hand-in-hand but are not the same. Apollo was mostly about applied technology, cutting-edge technology. That technology was meant to eventually facilitate science. But it did not happen that way. Since Apollo we have contracted our horizons. Soon they will contract even more. We do not currently possess even the technology to go back to the moon, in person. No heavy lifting rockets. No lunar modules. Our best bet, if for some reason we had to go back on short notice, would be to dig up any remaining engineers and blueprints from Apollo and try to replicate the designs. This is sad and pathetic. This is like having to fight a war today, but your only way of doing so would be to dig up plans for jet fighters from the Korean War.  Or considering the plans for the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria as your best bets to cross the Atlantic. We have failed in our technological advancement in space exploration - and travel, for that matter.

Why is any of this important? People who aren’t particularly interested in science and technology often wonder about space exploration - whether it’s worth it. Apollo was just about rocks and flags - but it was supposed to be a starting point, not an end point. And you have to start somewhere. But more importantly is that humans are explorers - it’s what we do, it’s what we do best (besides fight, maybe). Every civilization that has ceased to explore has stagnated and choked on it’s own problems.  Not immediately, but eventually. It is not just about political and economic isolation (things that don’t apply to space) but about societal isolation.

The 20th Century was the bloodiest in all of human history. The greatest technological triumphs were applied to both war and peace. The atom bomb and the Apollo program are pinnacles, their application is separate. We must learn that we cannot fight wars AND advance humanity. Fighting a war brings us all down. We must expand our horizons. The space shuttle program was a contraction of horizons. The ISS is a pathetic joke, it is seen as an end and not a stepping stone. Technology must be used to advance us, to further us, not to build dead ends. The longer we spend collapsing in ourselves, the heavier will be the weight of this rock being all there is and all we know.

Think about this next time someone trots out the line “we can put a man on the moon but we can’t do X” - because right now, we can’t put a man on the moon. We once did. But we can’t anymore. This would be like Columbus crossing the Atlantic but in 1532 no one having had followed him and Europe no longer having a single ship that could make the trek. We must explore or we will shrivel up and die. We must advance ourselves or we will end up consuming ourselves in the fires of our failed dreams and forgotten hopes.

I’ve been going through some internally stressful times the past couple weeks. I needed an out, a release of this tension and had to get away from familiar, lazy things. I left town. I headed up the coast to Santa Barbara.

My weekend enjoyment was cut slightly short by me falling ill on Sunday night. Unfortunate. But that’s the way it goes with me sometimes. Once I was finally feeling OK I headed home, down the coast, down the 101. The traffic was thick heading out of Santa Barbara. Just a long trail of red lights on a thin ribbon of asphalt, a sinew of civilization, hanging on the edge of the continent. The moon was out and close to full. It reflected off the water in a way that I’m sure humans have marveled at for thousands of years. The only lights were from the cars, the moon and the oil rigs, clusters of jewels on the horizon in an otherwise black and forbidding ocean. Why is it that the moon looks silver? Moon rock and dust is remarkably dark…but from here it looks like silver or brushed metal. The light off the water is a streak of metallic white. The water was so calm this weekend I could almost make out the features of the moon in the water before the ripples muddled it all up.

I was in that water just the day before. The plan was to join in on a rafting trip of sorts - to float from one beach a few miles down the coast to another beach, haul the rafts up and bbq there. Of course there were beer rafts. I chose to express my independence by selecting a raft resembling a pirate ship. A kid’s toy, though as big as any single person pool raft. Most other people had opted for actual boats. A pool toy, in the ocean? Was this wise? Probably not. But I did it to be interesting. I fight off boredom with myself almost every day. I rebel against laxity and this trip was all about getting away from “me” for a few days too. By launch time, I was getting pretty nervous - not just because of my seemingly inadequate raft, but also because I harbor a deep fear of the ocean. I hadn’t been in the ocean in 25 years, even though I’m a perfectly competent swimmer and don’t fear swimming or water in any way.

What I fear is murky water, water I can’t see the bottom of. I fear the suffocating dark. I fear being dragged under or swept away and no one ever hearing from me again. I fear being forgotten, forever. The ocean is the perfect embodiment of those fears. Who knows what lurks in the murk… In that deep, black water, what monsters under the bed await? Is the water the monster itself?

A few of the fellow rafters - I only knew a couple participants - decided to lash (duct tape) my raft to others for added stability and safety. They didn’t trust the ship either, I guess. We headed out into the swell, into the breakers, heading for open, flat water to relax and drift away on. Once that water was up to my chest, the panic - oh, god, the panic - set in. I broke into a sweat. I started looking around for an out. Could I still bail and swim back? Where was everyone? Is everything floating? Am I floating? Oh god, I can’t touch the bottom anymore…that’s when it really set in. But I faced it. I stared it down. I shoved the panic deep inside me and told it I’d deal with it later. I just kept moving - I had to…if I stopped, I’d have surely broken for shore. I just kept going. Panicking all the while, wishing I’d never done this, wishing I wasn’t alone on my raft, wishing I’d had someone to go with me so I’d have bought a real 2 person raft. Not a pool toy. But that was not what happened - that’s not where I was. That wasn’t reality. I was ultimately stuck in this and I wasn’t going to quit, since I’d never have forgiven myself.

Why is that the swell looks so benign from shore, but when you’re in it, suddenly it looks like a mountain, 20 or 30 feet high, looming overhead? How is it that it makes you think you’re suddenly swimming uphill? We paddled, and kicked, and paddled. My raft’s configuration - lashed to others - was not real convenient for paddling. The beer rafts were too heavy to tow. Our lashed rafts too clunky to get out past the breakers. Paddles snapped. Rafts drifted back to shore. Other people, with better paddles and no towing responsibilities made it out onto flat water and drifted down the coast. The rest of us…we headed back to land, only a few hundred yards from our starting point. My raft would have made it, I’m convinced, but that was not my fate.

We sat, drinking our dead weight and enjoying the sun, waiting for rescue. I shivered. The sun was hot, the wind was cold, but really I was shivering away the panic and fear. Now I knew no one. They had no clue who I was. My friends had succeeded in reaching the main phase of the voyage. I relaxed on my pirate raft, now detached from the fleet and I tried to join in the fun as best I could. Who knows if they’ll remember me, or if I have since been drawn beneath the waves of their memories. I may not have made it down the coast, but I faced a deep, personal fear and beat it back as best I could. For that, I’m a little more independent. Until next time.

And that’s how I celebrated Independence Day. I relived it all, driving home on that slash of humanity, straddling the black rocks on the left and the liquid obsidian reflecting the moon on the right. I took a deep breath and remembered. I headed home, back to my everyday problems, my current worries and unpleasantries - but now with one less phobia. One less reason to panic in life. One more reason to believe I can win, once in a while. One more reason to smile.

Seriously, so what? I mean - what if people weren’t following the law? Then what? The CHP has issued 112,000 citations - about 6% of the total citations issued. I guess that means slightly more - but not much more - revenue for the great State of California. Obviously, it wasn’t enough of a cash infusion to make much of a difference. So, wait, why did we pass these laws? It wasn’t to generate a ton of revenue. It wasn’t a social experiment to see if people will follow new and inconvenient laws. It was to increase safety on the highways.

So, AAA, where is THAT study? Since the laws have gone into effect, has there been any significant decrease in auto accidents? In frequency OR severity? Anything? That’s the study I want to see. It’s wonderful that people follow laws (hooray for us) but the real question is whether or not the laws have done ANY good. That question remains unanswered.

I’ve known, met, even loved a fair amount of people in my life. I’ve made mistakes and some of them have made their mistakes at my expense. I regret things and I bet some others regret things they’ve done as well. But as much as we’d like to, no matter how hard any of us try - we can’t go back and fix it. I can’t go back and not do things I’ve done - or do things I’ve not done. No one can go back and unsay things. Or say things.

Sometimes I wonder if that’s why there’s so many lonely people out there. They’re just a half-step out of sync from the rest of the world. Maybe we’re almost all just slightly off from the rest of everyone. Part of the magic is finding one other person who’s arrow of time, point for point, overlaps yours. Sometimes close isn’t good enough. Sometimes, I think, maybe that’s what religion is, or even just a shared experience is - it’s a way for multiple people to choose an abstract point and say, “That - that is ours. This is where we are. This is where we’re starting from.” Everyone who agrees on it, is part of the group. Or the pair. Maybe that’s what love at first sight really is - an accident of sharing the exact same slice of time at the exact same speed. And then, that lucky pair can choose, somehow, to move forward through time at the same speed starting from the same spot.

It’s not easy. At least, it hasn’t been for me. I feel rather out of sync of everything right now. Past, present, future - I’m moving through it at my own, seemingly unique, pace. I keep crashing into to someone for a while but then, no matter how hard either of us try - we slip away from each other, on separate arrows of time. Different people. Different lives. Different worlds. Ghosts and phantoms, tangible for only a moment and then, fleetingly, gone again.

Right place at the right time. Luck, in other words. They say you make your own luck - but in my experience, luck makes you. Random chance slaps you in the back of the head like some asshole friend you haven’t seen in a while but know as well as anyone in the world. If you recognize it happening, you turn, stunned and angry, a little scared - but you then suddenly see who it is and you smile. If you are able to recognize Serendipity, kudos to you. Smile. Embrace it. Otherwise you might push it away, not share the moment and be lost once again on a different slipstream.

We all want to love and be loved. Just have to remember that we are all our own separate species, living in different worlds, different times. It’s a miracle any of us ever find what we’re looking for - and yet, it happens every day to someone.

I hope I didn’t miss my day. I hope you haven’t either, if you’re still waiting. Because we can’t go back and check - the arrow only points in one direction.

But it seems that, barely a month into the Presidency of Barack Obama, some of the starry-eyed left is finally figuring out what I’ve been saying all along - Obama is a politician, a man among us and not a man above it all. It’s been a month and he hasn’t turned the world around and revolutionized America! Panic and fear, Phobos and Deimos my friends! He’s a fraud! We’ve been hoodwinked and hornswaggled!

Hyperbole, all of it. It simply comes from unrealistic expectations. Thirty days is not enough time to make good on all campaign promises (were they really promises?). Thirty days is not enough time to ram an agenda through all of government. Thirty days is barely enough time to remember the names of the White House staff.

So the title of the article is “Liberals not pleased with go-slow approach by Obama” - well that’s because it’s simply a measured approach and too many expected too much too fast. That’s it. They are not focusing on what Obama has already accomplished. Let’s start with something that I personally feel strongly about:

“Advocates for stem cell research thought Obama would quickly sign an order to reverse former President Bush’s restrictions on the science. Now they are fretting over Obama’s statement that he wants to act in tandem with Congress, possibly causing a delay.”

President Bush exec-ordered stem cell research to stop. President Bush unilaterally decided the direction of governmental scientific research. I think that is wrong. No one man should have that power. Scientific research should not be subject to the whims of the President. There will be another Republican President someday - maybe as soon as 4 years from now - and he (or she) could simply re-reverse the decision. That is too chaotic for research that has great potential but will also take a long time to fully explore and perfect. No, while I want the stem-cell research ban lifted ASAP, I also want it done right - and Obama is doing it right. By working in tandem with Congress, he solidifies and strengthens the decision - so that it cannot be overturned again on the whim of one person. He’s doing the right thing. Too many liberals think that the Democrat majority will last forever. Guess what - it will not.

How about another issue close to me:

“Critics of Bush’s faith-based initiative thought Obama had promised to end religious discrimination among social service groups taking federal money.

But Obama, in announcing his own faith-based program this month, said only that the discrimination issue might be reviewed.”

Look, if we don’t want religious discrimination by our leaders, we need to STOP MAKING RELIGION AN ISSUE. Stop pressing candidates for their religion and their views on it. Stop making hay over what religion they are (or aren’t). Stop. Just stop. By forcing the issue to the forefront, that has made it so that a leader must profess his religion AND act upon that when in power. So, Obama has professed his religion (and been unfairly forced to prove it over and over) and is now still acting to prove to people that he is a friend of the religious. And that means faith-based programs (which I am very skeptical of, personally). He will review the discrimination issue - great! - but that doesn’t mean he’s going to stop it. Anyone who thought he would while being forced to profess his faith over and over was deluding themselves.

Some further discussion:

“The anxiety is also being felt in the labor movement, one of Obama’s most important support bases. Some union officials and their allies are frustrated that at a crucial point in negotiations over his massive stimulus package, Obama seemed to call for limits on “Buy American” provisions in the bill aimed at making sure stimulus money would be spent on U.S.-made materials. “

If the labor groups thought Obama would blindly do whatever they said, they were fools. They missed one of the lynchpins of Obama’s campaign - one that I believe in strongly:

“Obama has long said his administration will be driven by competence, not political ideology.”

This is a huge promise that I am glad to see Obama working on. Look, I’ve said before that the Buy American rules are feel-good but ultimately hurt the economy. Badly. And now is no time for that. This is not a Dem-Rep issue. It is not ideology. It is the prevailing view of nearly every economist - protectionism is bad, bad, BAD. Look up the lesson of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and learn. This was a Republican supported bill that Democrat FDR opposed during his campaign. Economists all over opposed it. And guess who was right? The opposers. It was a disastrous decision.

The article continues to detail hedging on campaign promises. Did anyone really expect Obama to be perfect on that? What politician ever has been? And that’s the problem - too many believed that Obama wasn’t a politician, but a messiah, above the fray. He’s not. It is my hope that he will eventually fulfill promises to the best of his ability - but I never expected them all to unconditionally happen in 30 days. That is insanity.