david taus

While Giants Mark Time

music: Peter Gabriel- Secret World Live d.2

The calendar year is rapidly drawing to a close, and I, for one, am glad for it. I’ve never liked the Holiday season. Too much obligation and social demand, far too much consumption. And my birthday. When New Year’s rolls around, it’s my time again. Mostly, I think, because it marks the end of the Holiday season. But also because I’ve managed to have one hell of a good time on New Year’s for the past 5 or so years-stark contrast to the dull and dreary days between Thanksgiving and the 31st of December. P., a good friend from camp, has been hosting camp folk (now almost all alumni) up at his cabin in the North Woods of Wisconsin every New Year’s for quite some time, and being one of the original pioneers to venture out to such lands, I plot my return this year. In years past, the motto for our time up North was “There is nothing I should do.” But this year, some colleagues and I will be making some music, recording it for posterity. This year we have a mission. This year, there is something we should do. And I’m excited about it.

The push starts tomorrow: AJM rolls into town from Chicago along with P. and The Doctor, and we commence to plan. There is a lot to take care of on the homefront before we skeedaddle-cleaning out the basement of all my stuff, putting some corks in the academic tunnels I’ve been digging for myself (so nothing will get stale or go flat until I get back), restring my guitar, go food shopping, find a ride there and back, etc. Plus AJM and I have a long-standing date to make some music, and that starts tomorrow night. Tomorrow we synch up before we begin in earnest. This, above all, is what I’ve been looking forward to-making music with other people. I really don’t have that sort of outlet in Boston, and playing with camp folk, in many ways, is a return to the roots of my guitar playing. Plus, playing music is like orgasm. Sure, you can do it by yourself and it’s alright, but it’s a lot better when others are involved. Music is absolutely a conversation, a dialogue, and you can only talk to yourself for so long.

The work for school has been progressing, albeit slower than I thought it would. But it is quality. There is time to get down to it when I get back to Boston, and I think I’ll be able to work much better when I’m back in the library. All the while, though, I had this inward smirk at just how solitary this research on solitude has been. I guess that is the point. To quote ol’ Henry directly:

“Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervis in the desert.”

How true. I think writing this paper is that much more potent knowing that I am walking the same paths that Henry once did in Cambridge, and I am in such close proximity to both Concord and Walden. The next logical step would be to pop out to Muir’s haunts in the High Sierras, revisit Abbey’s stomping grounds in the Southwest, and maybe even follow McCandliss’s footsteps all the way north to Alaska. I think this is more a project for this summer. Still, I have a feeling that this paper will take on a significance greater than academic for me. I’ll post a copy when I’m done.

Seeing as though I’m going incommunicado for the rest of 2003, this will be it as far as blogging until the new year begins. But this is where I’m at as of the end of 2003…not half bad.

I’ll allow myself to dive into the realm of meta-comment for a second…I have to say that I’ve quite enjoyed doing these entries over the past couple months and keeping this public record of my internal thoughts for any and all to read. I wonder sometimes who, exactly, is reading, and if you have never met me in person what you think of all this (but the mystery is kind of nice too). The anize.org circle is growing and producing. Big ups to AJM, 1ey, and Bell for going big on the blog front and putting themselves out there. I’ve enjoyed reading your works; the dialogue has been fabulous. Words of encouragement to tmo to stop being an anize curmudgeon. You’re not that old. And a hearty cheers to DFC for making it all possible. I have no doubts that the thinking will continue into the new year and beyond.

Here’s to a productive, fruitful, and HAPPY New Year.

From the Archives: We Don't Need No Education

music: The Waifs- Up All Night

I pulled this out of the piles of paper and thought it noteworthy. It looks like something I jotted down in a notebook during English class senior year of high school and then ripped out and stuffed deep in a folder. Such thoughts are valueable to me as a future high school teacher, sure. But this sort of thing is also affirming to me that I’ve been on the reactionary track for quite some time. Even back then my perceptions reeked of Freire This short passage, a snapshot of my thinking as a student, is nevertheless potent. Now it presents a special challenge for me in my own teaching. Hopefully I’m closer to figuring out some answers.

Quarter-Century

music: mix tape I made in middle school and found today

Today is my birthday. Today I turn 25 years old.

I used to very much look forward to the 24th of December; I used to wake up earlier than I ever would otherwise. I used to feel like the king of the world on my birthday, that I could do no wrong, that I was the center of the universe. Now not so much.

I spent the day very much by myself, fixing myself some breakfast, working a little bit on my book research on solitude, and experiencing the solitary life on top of that. As this is some sort of temporal marker, I thought it appropriate to take some time to indulge in some cerebral exploration and reflection on some aspects of the past 25 years I have spent on the planet.

I found myself spending the majority of the day (a good 10 hours) going through all my remaining material possessions stored in various corners of the house, saving some of the most important or representative documents and artifacts, but throwing out most. A quarter-century is a good amount of time to do a little purging and tidying up. This was my project for the day: unpacking, sorting, disposing, reorganizing, and repacking what remained. There isn’t much left-just enough to fill four big tupperwares and three clothes drawers. It feels good to get rid of all this stuff that has been sitting there. Granted, what remains will just sit there, but it will take up less room. This is a second major downsizing of my worldly possessions. The first was largely involuntary: my room in the basement flooded about two years ago and mom was forced to dismantle my room and in doing so threw out a lot of my stuff. Today I finished what she started, and now I’m happy to say that the majority of my material possessions are in Boston. Which amounts to just over two carloads-not a bad figure as far as my anti-consumer personal goals are concerned.

Mom invited my grandma and aunt and uncle over for dinner tonight for a “party,” but she came down with a fever and had to call it off, which was fine by me. I was happy to be left to myself for the majority of the day and surround myself with piles and piles of artifacts from my past. We had a normal family dinner, i got a generous check from my mom and grandma (the latter via mail), and then my sisters went off to party with their friends, the ‘rents went to bed, and I did the dishes. It didn’t even feel like a birthday, which is, i guess, what I was aiming for.

I don’t know when I started to dislike my birthday so much, although I think it was around 14. Around that point, I think it registered on some abstract level that time was moving in one direction and that I was only getting older. Moreover, that I would never have back the time that had already come. The future will inevitably come, I reasoned, why celebrate it? At the same time, the past is growing larger and larger and I am slipping farther and farther away from childhood. This isn’t something I really want to celebrate. I wouldn’t mind getting older if it didn’t mean that I would be less young, if it didn’t mean that I was inching closer to death. My life is most likely about than 1/3 over, if I’m lucky, and the (arguably) most exciting times are behind me. That’s not something to celebrate. Will there be good in the future? Of course. But it is to come, and I don’t think I have to celebrate that.

Rather, I find myself feeling sad that the past is growing larger. Every birthday I have I try to wrap my head around the previous year and I end up with more regrets than I originally thought I might have. I should have taken that impulsive midnight drive to the middle of nowhere. I should not have slept so much. I should have splurged and gone to that concert. I should have kissed the girl at the end of the night. And the like. But, of course, nothing can be done about it now. 24 is done, and the best I can do is try to follow through during 25. For tonight, though, I sift through these tangible reminders of who I’ve been and what I’ve done for the past quarter-century, and am reminded of where I have to go. And this time ‘round, where I have to go is back into the stacks of books waiting for me upstairs. This time ‘round, my task is to find some intellecutual solace in the concept of solitude.

Towards the end of the night I got a surprise happy birthday call from M., vacationing with her extended family in Florida, and on her way with her family to midnight mass, no less. It was my only birthday call besides my grandparents. She is a sweetheart.

K., a dear friend, wrote out a poem for me for one of my birthdays-my 15th or 16th. That was 10 years ago, it occurs to me. She is an important figure in my own history: my first real crush, my first kiss, all that. I was not sure what she was aiming for by giving me this poem, but today, as I unearthed the tattered half-sheet from piles upon piles of personal history, I realized that she was trying to tell me something about myself that I somehow didn’t grasp back then. At the time it was about me in relation to her, but it can be generalized. I might have only fully grasped the lesson recently. But the poem (and K.’s intentions in giving it to me way back when) seemed to align themselves neatly with today’s predicament: turning a quarter-century old and not liking it, and reconciling solitude with personal experience. Happy birthday to me.

“The Snow King”
by Rita Dove

And he weeps for the sparrows, their clumped feathers:
Where is the summer that lasts forever,
with night as soft as antelope eyes?
The Snow King roams the lime-filled spaces
his cracked heart a slow fire, a garnet.

Enforced Paradigm Shift

music: Beatles- Abbey Road

After such a long and full weekend of connection and reconnection, I am left now, just one day later, to a distinct and glaring absence of such joys. I am once again surrounded by stacks of books laid out in piles on an oversized dining room table. The next couple of days will be dedicated to working my way through these stacks and assembling something of a position on topics relating to the role of wilderness in the practice of solitude. And appropirately so; academic inquiry of this type is a solitary project.

I chose the topic a couple months back, when solitude was more of a theme in my life than it was this past weekend. Having just had the chance to spend some quality time in celebration of friendship this past weekend, I’m not in such a good position to be embarking on this voyage. The past half-year (and a good chunk of my time in Boston at that) has been spent in solitude. Of course I have friends, of course I love my friends. But the quality of these friendships are fundamentally different from those I forged as a child. Additionally, my experience in Boston has included much time to myself, perhaps moreso than any other period in my life. Unfortunately, the circumstances dictate that I face this task of writing about solitude here, and so soon after an experience that pushes me to the opposite pole on the spectrum of social relationship. This task requires the monastic discipline of the scholar, but my mind is elsewhere.

With time, I’ll settle back into the necessary mindset. For better or worse. I’ve started to make a dent in some of the background reading and will get into the work in earnest within the next couple days. I know this can be a rewarding activity, but given the current circumstances, it’s a struggle.

When asked how he would define mental health, Freud said: love and work. Love being the interpersonal realm, and work being the intellectual/tangible acts of creation and production. I am able to taste the two, but it seems as though the two are complimentary opposites: they come one at a time no matter how hard I try. So the pendulum swings again. I can’t help but have faith that it’s for the best. You can’t always get what you want (I’ve learned), but sometimes you might find you get what you need.

Union and Reunion

music: Nickel Creek- Nickel Creek

Real friendship is a remarkable thing. This weekend was a celebration of friendship of the highest order. Reuben and Mara were married this weekend; they have been best friends since ninth grade. Theirs is a friendship that has held strong across distance and time, has transcended the various phases of life through which each has passed, and has culminated in them becoming family. Gathered this weekend were their family, as well as friends from present and past (we friends being a family of sorts in our own right), to celebrate this remarkable friendship that has become a marriage.

A union between two people from the same place in the world and with so much common history is a special thing for the community to which they belong. The world seems a little more welcome and full, a little more familiar and comfortable. The fact that the wedding was held in Milwaukee was an important piece of the picture, and I was glad to come back here and reconnect with that part of me which grew here alongside Reuben, Mara, and the others with whom I shared my childhood. It would not really be held anywhere else, of cousre, but the city in which we grew up together provided that context appropriate to us gathering and celebrating something that started right here so many years back. There is a sense of deep history in this place for a lot of us who were gathered this weekend. Milwaukee itself lended meaning to the celebration through the ties that we all have to this place. It is easy to forget where one comes from if one no longer lives there and is not surrounded with people from there. It is easy to lose track of my own history and to have a chance to come back to Milwaukee this weekend and reunite with so many friends and celebrate the next chapter in this community was a necessary.

One of the perks of having one of your oldest friends get married to his high school sweetheart is that our group of friends would reunite in order to celebrate the occasion. As time has gone on and we have spread out around the country, we have had less and less opportunity to see each other. Sometimes we would meet up in smaller numbers, more frequently we would continue the back-and-forth that started in high school electronically. Rare is the occasion that we all find ourselves in the same place at the same time, and thanks to an occasion such as the one this weekend, we all had an opportunity to spend some good time with each other and celebrate our own friendships which are still very much alive, even after significant time spent apart. I feel especially blessed to know these people and be a part of such a wonderful group of friends, which has expanded over the years to include people I have only met through my friends from grade school and high school. There were Reuben’s friends from camp (Mara being one of them, now that I think about it) that did not go to high school with me, but still have become my friends. There are friends that Reuben made in college that have become my friends. And, of course, there are the friends I made in grade school and high school that I don’t have the opportunity to see all that often. That we all could come together this weekend to celebrate one of our friends’ most potent and wonderful rites of passage was a special thing, something I cherish.

There is something to be said for my relationship with these people here that is fundamentally different from the relationships with people I’ve met and value as friends since moving from Milwaukee. While my friends here are just as valued as my friends elsewhere, I feel a certain affinity for people with whom I grew up, whose families I know, with whom I have shared a much more deep sampling of my life. I spent some quality time talking with some people this weekend that I haven’t seen since high school, and haven’t talked to in even longer, but nevertheless found a certian level of comfort and familiarity that can only come from growing up together. Coupled with that was the task of bridging the past several years, realizing where we have been respectively since then, and relating on how we’ve grown and changed. And that there is still much of that same person that I knew and who knew me when we were kids. In this sense, the wedding was a re-union with many aspects of many of our shared past that have morphed and developed into something that is completely viable here and now, in the present.

This last point might be the centerpiece of Reuben and Mara’s marriage. As we grew up with them, they grew up with each other, and as such have a deep and strong history. I know that the roots they they share will serve as the foundation for a strong and lasting union and the basis from which they will spend the rest of their lives together, perpetuating this community of friendship and love well into the future.

This weekend of connection and re-union with so many good people from long-neglected corners of my life is a shift from my recent life’s practices and activities. I have been living somewhat of a monastic life in Boston as of late, occupied with the intellectual and the institutional. It is supremely ironic that I will be researching and writing a paper on solitude for that world for the rest of the week.

Long-Term Potentiation

music: Abdullah Ibrahim- Good News from Africa d.1

The semester has ended; I find myself tonight in Milwaukee. It’s as if I were still in college. Almost, but three years later I can’t help but know better. I left Boston not having tied up everything that I had wanted, but, realistically, I never expected to do it all. Thus, things are left dangling, awaiting my imminent return in January. It frustrates me to be away from that world for so long. Boston is my home now, and a place that I want to give my energy and attention, especially because things are left unfinished. For now, though, I have a world on which to focus here. Focus has become easier since I decided to stop popping pills and fight my headaches on other fronts. It’s amazing how my mood has improved as compared to earlier in the week as a result. This weekend is a respite. This weekend, my world is filled with goodness.

This is a dynamic time of year. This week alone I’ve experienced as wide a range of emotions as I have during any given week, as have others. Bell’s hardships, (soon to have a blog of their own), AJM’s life-changing decisions, and my own trials have proven the point. This is a dynamic time of year: this week daylight itself turns the corner and begins to expand again.

This weekend one of my oldest friends is to be married. A good portion of the high school gang has gathered and we are all in for a weekend of celebration and of recollection. I am due to encounter people I haven’t seen in far too long, as well as people long forgotten. The primary task at hand is to mark the occassion of two people deciding to spend the rest of their lives together (a notion deserving of its own entry…in due time), but as a perk benefit, the crew is reuniting. Milwaukee always reeks of the past, but it hasn’t been this potent in quite some time. Tonight I saw C.J. for the first time in almost a year, and a certain comfort and familiarity fell right into place. So will it be for the rest of the weekend. It’s a strange phenomenon. I suppose the only question is why these people aren’t as much a part of my present, why I am not talking to these people more regularly. I think, though, that I know the answer, and that in truth, everything is pretty much as it should be.

At some level, it doesn’t matter that I haven’t put in quality time with my high school friends for some time (some since high school). There is something powerful that we share. When you grow up with people you know them on a substantially deep level. It is a familiarity that still eludes friends I have made since-in college and as an adult. There are things you can only know about someone from being in the house in which they grew up, meeting their family, seeing them through the teenage years. As such, the friends I made in high school will always have a certain intuitive familiarity to me that I have yet to find elsewhere in my experience.

It’s been quite a long day, and although I have much more to say on this business, I think I will save it until the wedding festivities have begun in earnest. And, of course, I’m not yet thinking about all the work waiting for me on the other side of the wedding. And I’m trying hard not to think about my world in Boston. For the time being, home is a strangely familiar place, full of old friends gathered to celebrate life, and that makes me happy.

Dis-integration, Dis-Orientation

music: Digable Planets- The Blowout Comb

Sunday night is always a slower time, one that allows a brief examination of the week previous and a foreshadowing of the week to come. This week, time has moved unusually and as such, it’s hard to sit down now on Sunday night and process just what has happened over the past couple of days. Still, at this late hour, I feel the need to do just that. Much has happened this weekend, and much more is to happen this coming week, and I would like to pause now to gather my thoughts as much as possible before I am thrown into motion and am forced to adjust to an extreme shift in place and perspective. This is less about insight and more about getting things out there, putting them down on paper (well…), externalizing it all with the hope that I’ll feel better about all this business once it’s out. We shall see.

This weekend was turbulent. Friday was a behemoth 20-hour day that left me spent and ill. I forgot to bring my new migraine meds to school with me on Friday and didn’t get back to my apartment until 8:45pm, so I skipped my dose and as a result had a substantial headache on Saturday. I’m beginning to think that these headaches I get are not spontaneous; rather they are all due to some sort of drug or chemical that I am purging, and that if I clean out my system entirely and keep it that way, I’d stop getting headaches. Saturday was miserable-there is really nothing worse in this world than waking up with a headache. I took one of the PRN migraine meds on Saturday morning because I wasn’t in the mood to deal with the pain and promptly got knocked the fuck out for a couple hours. I woke up with tension and pressure, but less pain. And groggy. I’m quickly becoming very opposed to these drugs, but in keeping with my plan I’ll give the daily ones the full month and use the others increasingly sparingly.

There were strange to-do’s this weekend in the social realm, none of which were tainted by headaches. Friday was the holiday party for the high school in which I’m interning. Quite a scene-teachers really let loose when they can. I think that the more taxing a job is on one’s soul, the more one drinks. Teachers can pound booze, but not quite as much as the unlucky few who work with the mentally indigent. That was followed by a world class funk show at the Middle East, which was so loud that I suspect it contributed to my headaches the next day. By 1:00 AM on Friday, I’d been up and running for almost 20 hours and had to cut out early and get horizontal. Saturday night was a small and friendly potluck style dinner party at Ch.’s house with TAC friends. It was a different crowd than I usually run with within TAC, a lot lower key, relaxed, mature? and I was glad for it. These days I’ve been more in the mood to share a nice extended dinner with a friend than go out and rage. Yet another indicator of how I’m quickly becoming an old curmudgeon.

I meant to knock off a paper over the weekend, but only got halfway through. it’s the only thing standing between me and break (if it could be called that, with a term paper to write and a unit to plan), and I managed to squander enough time on dumb shit like organizing my music collection and that sort of thing to not even get a full draft out. I have until Thursday technically. Fine. Buy-in is so low for this class that the only way I’ll be halfway interested in what I am writing is to write a subersive critique of the course’s themes. They can’t expect simple regurgitation at the graduate level. They just can’t. But I think they are. I won’t play those reindeer games this time. We’ll see how it goes over.

This week is going to be a tough one-there’s more that I want to do than I have time for. I fly to Milwaukee on Friday, and besides Reuben’s wedding next weekend and the trip North for New Year’s, I’m not looking forward to being there for so long a time. After not being in college for a couple years, the college-esque schedule this time of year grinds on all the wrong nerves. In my discomfort, I see indicators of exactly what I need to confront, but perhaps it’s not entirely about making my peace with Milwaukee and my family. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m in my mid-20’s, and that any extended length of time spent in the house I grew up in will be stressful. On top of that all, my impending birthday is sure to guarantee a substantial affective downswing. I’m thinking that it’s already started. I’ll have plenty of schoolwork to keep me occupied. Wonderful.

But I can’t think of Milwaukee quite yet. I have a lot to do here in Boston. I feel like I haven’t given things here their due attention since I’ve come back from Thanksgiving and it’s frustrating. I want to have time for friends, I want to really buckle down on what is left of my schoolwork, I want to tie up all these loose ends that I have dangling seemingly everywhere and none of it is happening. I’m trying as best I can, but it’s just not happening. I have this sense of urgency to cram all this stuff in before I leave on Friday, but I don’t see it all happening. Hopefully I’ll check enough off the list to be able to leave for two weeks with a certain peace of mind. Maybe I’ll give up sleeping for a while.

It would be one thing to go into winter break with no academic obligations, but Harvard decided to have exams after the break. I thought there were supposed to be smart people here.

It started snowing again this afternoon, then turned to rain about four hours ago. The streets are a mess. somehow it’s so appropriate. The more I sit here and stare at this computer screen, the more foul my mood becomes. The more time I spend in the apartment, the more foul my mood becomes. And because it started to snow, I didn’t go to the library like I was planning and I’ve been sitting in my apartment staring at this computer screen for a good long while. Plus it’s much later than I wanted it to be. Foul.

This entry is disjoint enough-time to get unconscious. I don’t think anything else productive can come from being awake right now, and sleep will be most welcome. The one possible upside to these meds is that I’ve been having some pretty surreal and memorable dreams, which entertaining. Sort of.

Windfall

music: Phil & Friends- 4/16/99, San Francisco, CA

It seems like aeons ago that I was working a 9-5 job at Children’s Hospital. It was only about 6 months ago in realtime; my last day was the first Friday in May of this year. Quite amazing to think how much has been done in the six months since. But I was reminded of the old job this week in the most pleasant of ways: I received a check for about $400 in the mail from Children’s out of the clear blue. I called the old office, and was told that this was my “holiday bonus.” Since I was on the payroll for a part of this fiscal year, I was entitled to the bonus. And like magic, $400 falls into my lap. Positive.

I think that part of it will go towards an external hard drive. A nice big one. With that purchase, I could back up all the important stuff on my computer, but perhaps more importantly, I’ll have room for archives of the music I’ve been amassing from places like archive.org and I’ll have room to keep a complete copy of DJ 1ey’s oggified music library, almost doubling the volume of my own collection. Whatever is left over might be enough for a somewhat nice ambient microphone, which will be needed to record the Northwoods Jam Sessions of ‘03 and ‘04, and despite my anti-establishment instincts, some holiday presents. I sort of wish that instead of a check, Children’s just forwarded me one of these.. it would make these decisions a lot easier.

Blunted On Reality

music: Vida Blue- Vida Blue

This week has been one of moodiness and indifference. Which is strange, because all signs should point to me being very invested, very present, very actively concerned with the day-to-day happenings of these days in the thick of December. By all measures, this is Crunch Time. Strangely, though, I don’t feel it.

School has been gaining momentum in the past couple of weeks. Things are wrapping up for the semester, although finals are officially not until mid-January. Nevertheless, I am feeling the final push towards tying off some of the threads I’ve been following in my classwork. I know as a declarative fact that things are due, and I put effort towards ensuring their completion, but my heart is not in it-my emotions are elsewhere. It gets done. It gets handed in. The quality of my products are no different than they were before, but I’m less invested in them. Usually I’ll feel some anxiety over getting assignments done at this stage in the semester, and that anxiety will push me towards completion, and I’ll be that much more efficient about it. That isn’t happening right now, and that’s ok. It’s a neat trick, unfortunately neat in this case, and I’m not sure how or why I’m doing it.

I think it’s partly that I’m less invested in the world of HGSE than I have been since I started in June, that I’m thinking about things other than school, but I suspect that the real reason I’m uninvested in the day-to-day is more complicated. It’s not just school; I’m checked out in many realms right now.

The difference between episodic and declarative representation is most salient here. I know that, but I’m not really knowing through the first-person experiential frame, even though I’m experiencing. It feels like I’ve lost the ability to think hard, and yet, by all outward appearances, the content of this weblog entry is most likely no different in quality than the others. (I think. Please verify.) Very strange, given the immediate circumstances of my life: serious demands placed on my by school, a trip home in just over a week for one of my oldest friends’ weddings, the challenge of traversing this city as it lays under two feet of snow, a gratifying social network here. But instead, I find myself moody, detached, uninvested. There is struggle, however, there is no progress. I know stuff is happening, I’m just not feeling it as intensely. I’ve been there before, and as such know enough to know that this is heading towards very bad, if not already there. The trap of such a mindset is that while you know it is very bad, you really are indifferent about it.

One big problem is that I’m stripped of my means of exercise with all this snow around. I would love to do some hard biking just to sweat a little, breathe hard, clear my head out. I’m getting stir crazy, and it isn’t even January. This is trouble. Maybe there’s some intramural basketball league happening somewhere.

One possibility for all this is that I’ve entered my Holiday Season funk, which happens every year. With all the imposed obligations, the interpersonal imperatives, the economic nagging, and my birthday, this time of year leaves me in a very bad mood. But because my mood is more indifferent and flat than bad, I think something else is at work.

I’ve been in this sort of funk for just over a week, I think, which implicates a possible culprit, a small 5 second ritual in which I’ve been engaging for the past week. The pill popping is not to be overlooked. This might not be the entire story, but I suspect the migraine meds I’ve started taking are a big reason why this week has been not-so-slightly askew. In exchange for less pain, I gain a blunted reality. It’s a Faustian deal after all; the easy solution is not without its catch. This mental disinvestement may be overcome by sheer will. it may not. I’ve been ever-so-slightly removed from my reality since around 6pm today (forgot about the soup that was cooking on the stove, misplaced my wallet and keys, forgot about an errand I had to run, was slightly lightheaded all the while, just realized i I havent’ watered my plants in over 4 days), and yet, I managed to work through it and get things done for school, go through the motions without much outward indication that things aren’t clicking as they should. But no headaches. Whether or not this is a fair tradeoff is something for me to think about. The experiment continues. But the trick is, this is something for me to think about on a level that, given my mental state for the past week, really isn’t possible.

Winter Has Arrived

music: Pink Floyd- Wish You Were Here

It started snowing here in Boston last night around 10:00pm, and it’s still going, not to let up until late tomorrow night. We’ve gotten 17 or so inches thus far, and it seems that we are only half done. Cars are plowed in, stores are closed, civilization is slowed to a more reasonable level. And schoolchildren (and teachers!!) are screaming injustice everywhere that this didn’t happen on a Tuesday or Wednesday.

Lots of people I talk to think snow is fun or pretty or something like that. Clearly they didn’t grow up in Wisconsin. Snow, to me, is pretty until I inevitably have to shovel it. Snow is fun as long as I don’t have anything to do or anywhere to be. But the minute I have something to do, snow gets in the way. Which is a funny way of looking at it, snow being a natural occurrence, indifferent to the fact that I am there, or that a whole city is there. And being in a city full of people who do not make plans according to the weather, snow has really thrown a wrench into things. People, in their infinite genius that progress and technology has brought them, wage war with the snow, investing millions in clearing the streets. People panic about how they don’t have enough food to last the storm when their pantries are full, and better yet, if they will have rented enough movies to last through the storm. People assume that they will be able to get from here to there just as easily, and are plain wrong. I don’t think it’s impatience, or even a sense of entitlement; I think it’s that most people, especially people who live in cities, place humanity at the top of the natural order of things, refusing to accept the fact that we are subordinate to the greater forces of nature at work on the planet. People that live outside of cities, generally, aren’t so disillusioned.

Personally speaking, snow sets off the hibernation instinct: don’t go anywhere, relax, curl up, be still. I had a great moment at about 2:00 AM last night sitting next to the window in my bedroom with a mug of tea watching the snow fall outside, all being stark and white. Somehow, because of this “setback,” things become a little more sane. Life slows down to human speed (walking, no cars), people aren’t as wasteful in their energies or actions, but if you’re really lucky, you can go sledding.

Two days of continuous snowing is one hell of a way to start the winter. Boston is not a city equipped to handle this sort of thing well, and it’s kind of nice to watch things try to work around almost two feet of thick white stuff covering everything and not really succeed. I think the secret is nowing the limits of possibility, trying not to do too much. Even the mighty metropolis must bend to the demands of all this snow. I’m inconvienced, I’m annoyed, I’m slowed down, and I’m glad for it. Now if only the power would go out, we could really get down to what this sort of thing is all about.

Pill Popping

music: Altitude Music- 1/28/03

I enlisted a new ally in my battle against headaches this week. After a quick trip to the University Health Services, I came out armed with a little orange vial of very small pills, which, taken once a day, should prevent migraines for as long as I wish to remain on the pills.

The drug is called Propanolol, slang being “beta-blocker.” Its main effect and use is to reduce blood pressure via vasodilation, which has therapeutic effects for conditions related to hypertension, angina, even tremor and heart attack. Since migraine is believed to be related to swollen blood vessels in the cranium, it works for migraines as well. The recommended beginning dose is 40 mg BID, I am starting out taking 10mg only once a day. Today is day two, and so far, no headaches. Which might not be saying much.

I won’t say that I’m not a little bit relieved at such a potentially simple solution to this extraordinarily painful problem that I’ve had for the better part of my life, now that I think about it (and i’m able to think about it, having no headache). There is, of course, a big ‘but’ here. The first is that if I decide to stick with the beta-blocker, I will be chained to a pill-popping regiment indefinitely. Which really, really sucks. But for the time being, I’m willing to give it a shot. I’ve decided to make a science project out of the experience, subjecting myself to an ABAB design in terms of the intervention of taking a pill. Too bad I don’t have a fellow migraine sufferer who is taking placebo pills unknowingly…regardless, my plan is to try the beta-blocker for a month, then discontinue them for a month and reinstate them during the third month, all the while keeping meticulous notes on the presence of migraines, as well as any potential triggers I may have encountered. My rough baseline mean is 1-2 migraines per two week period, usually occurring in the afternoon/evening, and usually on consecutive days. At the end of the three months I will be in a better position to make a decision about the drug.

This, luckily, is not the only weapon supplied to me by the good doctors of UHS. I also have a PRN pill called Maxalt-MLT that I may take if the migraines defeat the first line of pharmacological defense. I’m not planning on relying on these, but it’s nice to have in the arsenal. And yet, there’s something more psychologically appealing about taking a pill as needed, as in, when I actually have a headache, instead of every day regardless of whether I have a headache or not.

It surprised me how quickly the doctor was willing to prescribe, and how little effort it took on my part to secure a prescription. The clinical procedure was nothing more than me describing symptoms and history of my headaches for about 10 minutes, and I walked out with some drugs. It worries me a little more than slightly that health care has come down to that, although I could be speaking from my psychologist sensibilities. This is a personal trial of my faith in science, to some extent.

I am left thinking that I could still control the maintaining conditions of my migraines, even though recent episodes have proved them quite idiopathic. I’m still resistant to this idea of pill popping, but for the time being, in the name of science, I’m willing to give it a shot. More to come as the data pours in.

On Phish's 20th Anniversary- Reactions

music: Phish- 1/4/03, Hampton, VA

The following is edited down from an email I sent to AJM following the show. The show, by all accounts, was nothing if not extraordinary in its regularity; it was a very typical phish show through and through with some extraordinary playing, especially in the second set. but don’t take my word for it, if you’re that interested, give it a listen yourself. What I really have to say about this band as it relates to me extends far beyond the scope of this one show, although, given, it was an important milestone in the band’s career. This one is worth its $13 as a document of four guys and twenty years…

At the end of the day, it was a phish show just like every other phish show: the pre-show excitement the cheers as the lights went down, the expectation, the hope that they would play that ONE song, the big moments, the lights, the wedge, a bunch of white kids getting down. nothing uncharacteristically special, really, no cheap frills, but solid music and a good time. A phish show. You know exactly what it was like without being there by now. it was a positive night on many fronts. big props to E.M. for straight up miracling tmo. it was a beautiful gesture on her part taken on my nagging request.

Tonight’s mantra was “everything works out at a phish show.” It does. My sister A. and former camper/fellow phishstorian C. had tickets exactly two rows behind me. serindipity. There was a guy with a shirt in front of me and tmo during the second set and on the back it said “volker.” Almost eerie. I paid a straight $40 for the ticket (not even service charge!), tmo for free. saw Davi and Spicer of Happy Phamily fame. Saw zzyzx at a distance? (who, i’m sure, still has sparkles in his beard, loves his mother and loves phish.)

A phish show is a very comfortable place, a known quantity. a very, very nice place to visit, especially when the caravan rolls through my hometown. And the nice thing is that it always brings people together.

But enough blubbering-onto the music.

First set, I observed, was dictated by written setlist taped to Trey’s cabinet. Interesting to say the least, but it lacked that spontenaiety that really sets the great apart from the good. There were good moments in Yamar with a Fishman lead, and the jam out of Piper. I thought i heard Dave’s Energy Guide towards the end (one for the true dorque). They just weren’t warm enough for Hood when they brought it out to start things off, but it was a good indicator. You know it’s that sort of show when two set-closer songs open the show. People still cheer for the Everglades line in Water in the Sky (you being water, me being sky, if you will remember 1/2/03). It’s little things like that which bind the Phish Nation.

We were way up in the balcony for the first set, almost facing the left side of the stage. Way out of the sound cone, sound was terrible. Second set brought a welcome change of perspective: we chilled with tmo, Davi, Spicer, and Darren Pageside, eight rows off the floor. We got a good crowd going in that aisle-lots of knowledgeable phish dorques who really knew the score. One dude got more pumped up about The Wedge than anything else on the night. It was beautiful. Everything works out at a phish show. And the music of that second set, the music…

Second set was phish at their improvisational finest. They stretched different corners of songs that normally lay unexplored. I will go on record to say that the Maze from tonight is best i’ve heard. It’s a must-listen. Highlight of the show, if you could believe it. Heavy type II exploration with some nice melodic lines, experimentation between Trey and Page (see yamar from 4/4/98 island tour for similar stuff), but still big, big payoff at the end. A perfectly timed Maze orgasm. Jam out of rock & roll was noteworthy. Extensive exploration. the set was an ass-kicker between the jam into Weekapaug and Tweeprise (third song??!?!?!?!) and Frankenstein (there was a flicker of the remotest of possibilities of gamehendge in the Kung chant-Trey was doing these slow-mo gestures much like yoga under strobe lights during Kung and the segment stretched for about 4-5 minutes w/some on-stage conferencing. Whatever. Conjecture). Having all that energy worked out right away provided for strange flow in the set and it turned into an emotional rollercoaster. The segues between Rock & Roll and Weekapaug; Boogie on and Cities were a bit forced by Trey.

From my notebook as they started Tthe Wedge: “seems appropriate, given the jam in our barn soon.”

the Maze, the Maze, the Maze.

There was also a highly reflective element to the second set: with songs like All of these Dreams (sage advice from phish for us?) and Waste (Trey’s awkward stab at thanking the fans? Or prompt to ask the question: “waste of time?”). Bug was a throwaway musically, but was a good indicator of the band’s attitude towards this hyped up event, this somewhat arbirtrary marker in time. To the heady music fan, not much to chew on. but to the quasi-academic phish scholar, the Bug provides a wealth of substance.

gems: MAZE!!, jam out of Piper, Rock & roll>Weekapaug.

Walk out music was the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s. “it was 20 years ago today…” clever folks.

So how to sum it up? It was a phish show. Once the lights go down and the music starts, the world is a familiar, happy place. what else can i say?

On Phish's 20th Anniversary- Raw Data

More on this later when I’m not so tired. It was a good night. It was a good event. In the meantime, the raw data. I Am Happy.

Phish - 12/2/03 - Fleet Center - Boston, MA

Encore: Bug