david taus

Missa's Requiem

music: Ray LaMontagne- ‘Till The Sun Turns Black

At the age of 24, I made the decision to enroll in a teacher training program whose goal was to prepare intelligent, qualified, driven adults for a career in teaching in the inner cities of the United States. I thought at the time that this would be my task for the rest of the time I walked the earth as a competent adult, that I was to work in the service of those who needed it most, that I was to play a hand in achieving social equity, that I was to battle ignorance and injustice on the front lines. I dug into the task with pluck and resolve, and emerged battle-weary 12 months later with a small piece of paper saying I was now qualified and prepared to fight such a fight.

I realized quickly that my approach to teaching in public inner city high schools demanded a certain degree of martyrdom from me. In exchange for doing the work necessary to achieve progress on the front lines, I gave up significant parts of myself. David took a backseat to his teacher alter-ego Missa Toss, who ran the show for 10 months out of the year. Missa Toss achieved things during his two years in Boston and received many high compliments from pretty impressive people and places, but it all came with a heavy personal price. David was left with nothing. David found himself being given Friday nights after a full week of Missa Toss hammering and blasting, being hammered and blasted. All David could do for those two years was put his pillow over his head and hide in the darkness until the unconsciousness of sleep took the pain away.

Somehow this was tolerable to me. I justified my own suffering by the thought of my students; how because of the work I’ve done for them they will be given some sliver on an opportunity that I had growing up, that somehow my endless hours and incredible sacrifices would give them that little edge that would help boost them into a position of opportunity in their life. And those students would make it, some of them at least, and they would find ways to achieve certain degrees of power themselves and then throw themselves into changing the system that had beaten me and countless others into acquiescence, a system that was designed in many ways to keep them down, keep them pacified, keep them poor and disadvantaged. This hope is what sustained me through countless weekends lost to grading and planning and worrying, and hundreds of accumulated free hours spent resorting the insides of my own head in quiet and darkness. By all measures, Missa Toss made me miserable and I did nothing to rectify the situation for a very long time.

Halfway through my 27th year, over three years after I pledged myself to the service of urban America’s youth, I sent Missa Toss into early retirement. I turned my back on my job and life in Boston, packed my things, and drove clear across the country. I reflect now that I drove as far away as I could from my life as Missa Toss. I landed in San Francisco, took a job that felt more like a vacation than work, and immediately felt the difference in my own life. I was told by those close to me that I sounded and looked much healthier than I have in years. I indeed felt better than I had in years. David had his life back, and was enjoying the hell out of it. My first year in San Francisco was one of my best years to date.

However, the lesson was not learned and that part of me that allowed for Missa Toss to exist was not yet quiet. Because of financial pressures, job market pressures, pressures of professional obligation, and internal pressure to not give up on such an important cause so easily, I found myself last spring poking and prodding at Missa Toss to see if he was really dead. Through a series of tough decisions and unexpected twists, I ended up taking a teaching job for this fall, fully believing that this time, it would be different. I believed that this time, because I had two years experience and because of some structural and pedagogical differences with the school, I could find a way to compromise Missa Toss’s relentless drive with David’s basic human needs.

I was wrong on all counts. I quickly fell right back into Missa’s old patterns and practices, and realized within days that this would once again be David’s undoing. Once again my physical and mental health suffered, once again I allowed myself to believe that Missa’s fight was worth the personal sacrifice. Once again I was martyring myself. It was someone else, someone who at the time cared more for me than I cared for myself, who had the empathy and love to point out to me how damaging it all was. Only six weeks after starting again, I began to plan my exit. The second attempt was not working, the lesson was not learned the first time, and I was realizing how much I’d tried to deceive myself into believing it would work.

I began to write this in the middle of December, almost two months after I snapped into admitting that my personal health is more important than the battle for America’s urban teenagers, and all the while I, and my relationship with this wonderful person who cares so much about me, are in need of rebuilding.

Just before my winter holiday, I gave notice to my principal that I would be leaving teaching at the end of the semester in January. I spent a great deal of time reading back some of the things I wrote as Missa Toss from years past, and was struck at how much I suffered under Missa’s direction. I spent a good amount of energy thinking about what my life has become, and am not at all satisfied or happy with my current predicament, but have been too intertwined with Missa’s work to do anything about it. Everyone in my proximate life has, to some degree, given up on me because of Missa Toss. I don’t blame them; Missa leaves no time for himself, let alone other people. Missa is unfair to himself and those close to him. Missa has slowly been wearing me down to nothing. It is for these reasons that I have decided to leave teaching, and with it, bury Missa Toss for good.

Tomorrow will be my last day in the classroom. Tomorrow afternoon I will turn in my semester grades, hand over my keys, box up my personal belongings, and turn my back on Missa Toss after four very hard years of much struggle and little progress. I, as an individual human being, am experiencing a strange mixture of emotions, including relief, disappointment, anticipation, and deflation. The price I have been paying for fighting what amounts to most days as a losing battle is not worth it. I am excited to be able to soon get to things that have been waiting in the wings for over four years. I am hopeful to re-establish contact with my friends nearby. I am praying that I can mend my relationship with those I’ve hurt in the interim. But I am also feeling quite defeated, feeling like I’ve failed in my work to a large degree, feeling quite guilty that those that believed in me and counted on me to do this important work are being let down. I think: if someone like me, who is qualified and intelligent and in all ways cut out to do this important work, if I am unwilling to do this, then where does that leave our society? I worry greatly about the future, and about the inequity that exists in our world. I worry greatly about people growing up and not being able to contribute productively and positively to the world. I know, though, that I can’t begin to address these problems if I am myself not an effective person. It’s because of this that I have to leave, however shamefully and reluctantly. I know that I have to find a way to take care of myself first, and then worry about the rest of humanity, and I can’t take care of myself as Missa Toss. If I can’t take care of myself, I surely can’t take care of the kids I’ve promised to serve.

The kids…again I am amazed by them. As I leaf through some of the parting words they left for me, I reflect on how frustrating they are, how needy they are, how immature, bullheaded, volatile, nasty, selfish, irresponsible they are, how needy, scorned, protective, resilient, damaged they are, and in the end how compassionate, thoughtful, empathetic, supportive they are of their teacher. For all their setbacks, struggles, and faults the kids I taught are good people. And in the end, that’s all I want for them: to be good people.

So this is Missa’s requiem. He is slipping quietly into obscurity, with very little fanfare or ceremony. He is not finishing what he has begun. He is admitting defeat at the hands of the system he worked so hard to serve, not able to cope with the crush of humanity that passes through his life at school every day. He is leaving me worn out, defeated, underfed, underslept, and depressed. But I am still here, ready to start rebuilding my own life, excited about the infinite possibilities and directions I might take, anxious about what the next short while will look like for David. With Missa Toss out of the way I will able to find the time to take care of myself, and by extension, those other things and people I care about.

This time of year carries with it the most darkness, but also the knowledge that light is ahead. It has been gray and raining all week, but there is hope for sunshine in the near future. I have been crying most of this week, but I am keeping faith that the struggle now will ultimately point towards healing. I reflect on some of the moments in my life when I knew that afterwards everything would be different — my last days at camp, my last weeks of college, my final visits with my grandmother before she died — and I know that this week carries equal gravity. By the end of tomorrow it will be done. Missa Toss is dead; long live David. The future is wide open, brimming with possibilities, and for the first time in years I’m excited for it to come.

'Tis The Season

music: Sigur Ros- Hauf/Heim

There is something about this time of year that tears at me, rubs me raw, makes me very unhappy on several levels. I’ve spent the past week or so in an irritable, discontent headspace that has colored this so-called vacation in unsavory ways. I’ve been discouraged, restless, exasperated. Full of energy, but without direction or purpose. Craving solitude, but quite lonely. That I have had the chance to catch up on sleep and have had the time to feed myself properly, and that I know that my affect inevitably dips during the final weeks of the calendar year have been my saving graces.

Why does this happen? What is it about the so-called “Holidays” that drive me to wish myself a million miles away from my own life? This year is not an isolated event, not by any stretch. There is something intrinsically…depressing about this stretch of time, and as I sit in the middle of it for the 29th time I can’t say it’s gotten any easier to wade through the murky waters that are the Holidays. This year I spent a good deal of time trying to dissect the subject with the hopes that I could arrive at a meaningful cause for such a downturn in my flow.

First and foremost, to my analysis, is my birthday on the 24th of the month. There are the mini-explosions of existential meltdown that accompany me turning one year older, and those steady reminders of my limited time on this planet do not really cheer me up. I should be thankful on my birthday: thankful for my health, that I have made it through another year, thankful that I have had opportunities most people do not have and have enjoyed relative good fortune, thankful for my mother who allowed herself to be sliced open such that I could breathe air for myself and bask in the light of the world, thankful thankful thankful. Instead I find myself quite the opposite: discouraged. Discouraged that youth is quickly becoming a thing to be spoken of in the past tense, and that whatever divine clock that keeps track of the rest of my days as David Taus is moving inexorably towards zero. Because of the date on which I was born, my birthday is overshadowed by someone else’s birthday — most people have heard of him; he was nailed to a cross about 2000 years ago — and because of this other guy and the special brand of spirituality he preached the country decides to whip itself into an economic frenzy, buying buying buying consuming consuming consuming consuming. This generally happens to coincide with travel to family far away or exotic vacation spots, so as a result most everybody I’d like to spend my birthday with is elsewhere, predisposed with the great American spirituality of capitalism. I’d like to have the option to drown myself in some degree of consumerism, to at least take myself out to a moderately nice dinner on my birthday, but in the greatest of ironies I find the rest of the world has closed for business on December 24th. I am really left to myself on my birthday, and try as I might to see that solitude as a gift, I struggle mightily.

Secondly, and hardly coincidently, is Christmas. If I were someone who celebrated the holiday, or even had the option to be part of the culture that celebrates it, I might see it slightly differently, but I’m not so sure. As it is, Christmas is the party that I am not invited to, but everyone else is And the whole universe reeks of Christmas: decorations in the store windows, muzak in the elevators, sweaters and velvet stocking caps on the populous. Christmas becomes part of the common greeting between strangers, becomes the reason to do this and that, becomes the excuse to do this and that. It’s inescapable, and from my vantage point on the outside, its existence and role in the country’s fabric is largely one of economics. Christmas is pitched as that other guy’s birthday (not me, the other guy from 2000 years ago), but the funny thing is that all scholarly analysis tells us that he was born in the spring, and in a different city from what the holiday purports. Furthermore, the jolly fat man in the red suit, his entourage of reindeer, and the presents he drops has a connection with the foundations of Christianity that is tenuous at best. And the kicker, even in the age of environmental awareness, is that celebrants of this spiritual occasion take it upon themselves to cut down upwards of 30 million trees (remnants of a pagan solstice rite appropriated by Christian missionaries) and put them out on the curb a week later. What is left of Christmas, then, is buying, giving, consuming, expecting. I wouldn’t want part of it even if I had the option, but just being surrounded so completely by Christmas is enough.

Beyond that, the natural rhythms of the planet are screaming “Hibernate!” to most large mammals this time of year. It is the coldest time of year, the time with the least amount of daylight, and in many places the time when the first snows hit. My instincts have most definitely been to crawl under my blankets and wait it out.

And this year certain specifics have made my December quite difficult. I have every hope that these circumstances will work themselves out in January (more on this late-breaking story as it develops), but the hurdle between now and January is to wait out the Holidays, which make for a period of stasis in all my efforts to rectify what has been dragging me down for the past couple months. So I keep to myself, weather the onslaught of consumerism, phototropism, existentialism. It’s been difficult, and especially so because I never really had the chance to solidify New Years plans that I am excited about. Those close to me who I would choose to share my last day of the year with, are far away, already committed to something I am not a part of. The drop-back plan, which is turning out to have incredible amounts of potential, is a pilgrimage to Yosemite. It is an attempt to contact that which inspired me to come out this way in the first place, an alternative to the inevitably mediocre party I might attend in the city with one-offs and acquaintances, and a means by which I can take stock of all that has happened in 2007 and clear some mental cobwebs for the start of 2008.

2008. I welcome it grandly. It will prove to be a most interesting year, full of incredible transitions and potentially some big decisions that will divert my life’s stream in significant ways. But not yet; I first have to get through The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year. With this much struggle, I expect some really significant progress.

It's A School Night

music: Miles Davis- Kind of Blue

In June of 2006, Missa Toss hung ‘em up. Two hard years as a schoolteacher in Boston Public Schools was about all he had in him. David left Missa Toss be, and drove clear across the country. By himself. Now it’s the end of August in 2007, about 14 or so months after MIssa Toss said goodbye, and he realizes that it wasn’t goodbye after all. Tomorrow Missa Toss rises from the ashes and takes on a new school, a new city, a new group of kids, a new set of challenges. Missa be mad forcin’ it.

I myself am surprised at my decision making here. To be absolutely and perfectly clear, I am quite excited to be getting back into the classroom. There are so many good things to be said about teaching high school that I often take them all for granted. But there are also enormous challenges, herculean struggles, impossibly high mountains to climb. Teaching takes its toll on all fronts, especially the more sensitive, personal fronts. And after this past amazing year of movement and growth, after many who have been close to me as Missa Toss have said that I look and feel and act measurably better than I did when I was teaching, going back into it can seem like completely lunacy. Maybe it is.

Last March, when I realized that my current gig as a Naturalist in the Marin Headlands was not sustainable nor personally challenging to the extent I needed it to be, I began to consider other professional options. Resumes were e-splattered all over the Bay Area (because one thing is for sure: I’m nowhere near done here), and of the 30-odd probes into sectors ranging from education to nonprofit to consulting, not even a second look from any institution outside high schools. It’s like that in a city like San Francisco, I suppose, with thousands upon thousands of overeducated, overqualified, upwardly mobile young people all vying for the same 15 jobs on Craigslist. This significant reality check crystallized certain sentiments, though, namely that teaching (and more specifically public urban high school teaching) is what I’ve been trained to do more than anything else, it’s something I’ve been told I’m good at, and more importantly, it’s something I enjoy. That the David on paper could only appeal to that for which his resume was groomed made things much simpler and much more clear. And so by no large surprise, I’m back to exactly where I started.

But Missa Toss has come out of retirement to entirely different circumstances. The school I’m in now is a drastically different place: much more progressive in terms of pedagogy, much more collaborative, much more young, energetic, motivated, intelligent. Instead of planning for ten classes a week from scratch on my own, I am co-planning for three classes a week and working from precedent. Instead of traditional drill-and-kill tactics, I’m encouraged to think creatively about assessment and demonstration of understanding. I’ve been in PD for the past three weeks, and for the first time I feel like I’m being treated like a professional. All this, of course, is the backdrop to the real work that hasn’t even started yet. When 8:00 hits tomorrow morning and the kids are in their seats, expectant and restless, everything changes. No doubt it will be hard work. No doubt I will sweat, bleed, and cry over these kids like I did the last group in Boston. But given the perspective gained from a year away and the years I have under my belt already, I think I’ll manage much better. Beyond the job, I’m in a much more healthy place mentally, socially, and physically and I’m quite sure that I will spend far fewer weekend nights staring at the insides of my room by myself.

I’m apprehensive. That much is certain. I’m determined to put David ahead of MIssa Toss this time around, but I also know how David and Missa Toss have this tendency to work themselves into the ground for the things in which they believe. There will be some serious adjustment, and some long hours, and some days where there is nothing I’ll be able to do but come home and faceplant into my pillows. But I’m also expecting moments of exhiliration, transcendence even. Missa Toss is much more grounded, sure of what he’s able to do and how he’s going to do it, and because of this new context is all fired up. There will be time enough for all that in the coming months, but for now it’s time to get horizontal. It’s a school night, after all.

Transitions

music: Top Shelf- “The Thunder Sessions” 6/21/2007

Something is keeping me awake deep into the night on this Independence Day and I’m not able to put my finger on exactly what it is. I’ve been in a reflective phase for the past couple weeks, more so than usual, and tonight i’ve thinking about how and where I’ve spent July 4th in recent years. Last year I was the sole occupant of a hostel in Cuyahoga Valley National Park, sleeping alone in a room meant for 12, with the Camry parked outside filled to the brim with all my worldly possessions. The year before that I flying through fireworks on an airplane headed for Sydney, Australia. Three years ago I was camped out at the High Sierra Music Festival. I could keep tracing back: celebrations on the Charles River in Boston, the shores of Lake Amy Belle, all the way back to an olive green convertible in Fox Point, WI dressed in my little league uniform and eating ice cream for breakfast. The larger point is that for whatever reason, right now I’m currently very aware of how things have changed around me over the course of the last 28 years. I can’t say for certain how I have changed (although I know I have); I have no perspective on myself. But from where I sit right now, using the not-so-arbitrary temporal marker of our nation’s birthday, I can see very clearly just how much the world around me has changed.

Where I sit right now is, of course, in front of a laptop screen. This is a reset, a homebase, something that has not changed a great deal over the years, and a quick scroll through this little weblog I’ve been pounding out for the past four years will stand as ample evidence. In terms of blogging I’ve been diligent. I’ve just done some digging myself, and find it remarkable that I can track most of the environmental changes I’ve undergone in the past four years right here. Reading posts from months past, like any proper historical document, take me back to a time long gone, a time where I was living in a very different place, struggling with very different things. In reading back some of the first entries here I’m reminded that I started this weblog in the summer of 2003 as a way to keep my writing sharp, to allow communication between the people in my life and the contents of my mind, and more practically, to chronicle my journey through graduate school and my career teaching. Now, four years later, I’m still practicing this reflective exercise in completely different environmental circumstances and this now familiar exercise, as a result, has changed.

These are days full of transition, days demanding some mental energy and processing. I recently took a trip back to Boston to watch my former students graduate, visit friends, and revisit a former phase of life (most of which can be read about here). The trip was indeed overwhelming, mostly in positive ways, because it brought transition into such dramatic focus for me. Like the haunting story “A Christmas Carol” (another horribly reflective day for me, incidently), I was reminded of my recent past, and my present by contrast. The future remains a bit more elusive.

These changes, these thoughts, haven’t been shared here as of late. I’ve been conscious of it. That the gnomes toiling endlessly in the underground bunkers of Anize HQ can’t seem to get blog comments working without spammers blasting us results in a monologue of sorts, which is less interesting to me. Moreover, Anizers across the board are much less prolific than we were in years past. But there has been a more personal shift. That I took the year off from classroom teaching (and that I moved clear across the country) might start to explain the dip in blogging over the past year. My time in California has been one of the most extroverted years of my life, a rediscovering of myself as a social creature, which might start to explain why I don’t feel the need to check in with myself and this computer screen on such a regular basis anymore. But more than that, I think I am beginning to reconsider the byline written directly above. This year has not been without its struggles, but since moving out to San Francisco I have not struggled nearly as much as I have in years past. Or maybe I have struggled, and haven’t experienced it as such a struggle. Regardless, despite the lack of perceived struggle, I can say that I have progressed in amazing ways. Frederick Douglass isn’t to be thrown out completely here, but I’m addressing the rest of the world in a fundamentally different way than I was in the summer of 2003.

Right now I find myself once again at a pivot point. It’s not nearly as dramatic a pivot point as July of 2006, or July of 2004, or July of 2003 (read all about it) but it’s a point worth documenting here at the very least. I’ve been out in California for about a year now, and it’s been a year without a winter. If I care to look up past the familiar soft white glow in front of me I’d realize that I live in a different room, in a different building, with different roommates, in a different city. This has been a year of meeting new wonderful people, hiking camp counselor style in a National Park, not making a lot of money, making music I’m starting to be more and more proud of, and reconnecting with old friends in anew context. I have technically had a job for the past year but I feel like I’ve been on vacation since moving out here. The time has flown, and blissfully so for the most part. But this July, instead of heading off on some foolish adventure as I have done for the past three years, I’ve elected to push the wanderlust aside and stick around with no real agenda. With such a gap in activity, and with a lot of my people cleared out (or clearing out) on adventures of their own, my month with not much to do is becoming a reframing and repositioning. Once August hits my life in San Francisco will shift again, possibly in dramatic ways: MIssa Toss will come out of early retirement. But even Missa Toss has his transitions to work through, and things will not look the same as they once did. That I’m determined to see through. So because of all this, and despite my original purposes for writing here, The ritual of sitting down in front of my computer and documenting my thoughts for public viewing will go through a couple changes as well. They already have.

I’m not signing off. The documentarian in me wouldn’t allow it, and I find this to be an incredibly valuable outlet when I need it. But like everything else around me, things here are changing. Maybe that’s why I’ve kept myself up far too late tonight: to remember that things are in transition, that I’ve grown quite different, possibly away, from the person who started this weblog four summers ago, and that I need to take a moment and recognize just that.

Further Down The Asphalt River

music: Cowboy Junkies- The Trinity Sessions

It’s always amazed me how well the roads in this country get you to where you need to go. We should thank Ike for the larger veins and arteries that push our metal and rubber cells to and fro, but roads have been sponsored by all levels of our society, from the Feds down to the private citizens. The fact that there is continuous pavement between my house in San Francisco and my old house in Boston is quite an engineering accomplishment. but the real achievements in human ingenuity are those roads built through otherwise untouched and hostile landscapes. We can and should give thanks to those large sections of unpaved land such as the stretch of the Sierras in California, the tundras of Alaska, and the sandstone chasms of the Southwest, but we have to keep in mind that the only reason most of us has had the opportunity to take in such wonders is because of industrial America’s paved vascular tissue.

Just a week ago DJ 1ey and I pushed forth into the wild tangle of concrete and managed to navigate ourselves to Boulder, CO for an amazing wedding and reunion (and an AnizeCon of sorts now that I stop and think about those present). We then put the Camry back into the Utah backcountry, properly hiking the Needles section of Canyonlands after our first attempt in the spring of 2005, and putting some time into the oft-overlooked wonders found in the Escalante Grand Staircase. The continuous pavement then wound us through deserts, valleys, salt flats, and mountain passes until we ended up right where we started. What good would all those roads be, after all, if they didn’t take you to the edge of somewhere where there are no roads?

(There is much to say about Utah and what we found there, but there’s another place and time for that. Suffice it to say that we are already plotting our return: the Paria Wilderness Area, Hole-in-the-Rock Road, and the Maze are next up.)

What is more amazing to me is that the web of roads don’t just take you where you need to go, they’ll take you pretty much anywhere you want to go. Roads, from the seriously big Eisenhower arteries to the unpaved one lane country capillaries, have and will taken me and millions (billions?) of other humans places we couldn’t imagine, and places we could very well imagine, no matter how far away. I remember thinking about the magnitude of it all while driving last July: given the sheer number of intersections and possible turns, what would the improbability be of starting at 12 Curtis in Somerville, MA and ending up in San Francisco just on random chance? Infinitesimal. But you really could go anywhere.

Most of the time I’m disdainful of all those roads, especially when I rely on their currents while traveling. I’ve read too much Abbey, and grown self-righteous riding my bike around town, I think. I’m too conscious of those dead dinosaurs in my gas tank. But I have to recognize my own hypocricy. Without the road, there wouldn’t be a journey.

The staggering number of roads out there, and therefore number of traveling possibilities, reminds me that there are far more paths to choose than I would consider under normal circumstances. Upon returning from my motorized paddle up and down a few asphalt tributaries I fell into some serious changes back home: the ending of my job as a naturalist in the Golden Gate National Rec Area, the exciting and uncertain future of the band poised to either break out or fall on its face, the prospect of a couple free months which with to make music, explore, hike, surf, read, sleep, and indulge, and the highly likely return of missa toss at summer’s end. These are things keeping my hands full and keeping me up late. Sometimes life takes a couple months to reach a significant juncture, and sometimes almost every day is filled with groundbreaking, river-diverting events. Now is one of those transitory times, somewhere in between a routine-laden spring in the field and a blissful summer. No doubt the road and I will have a few reckonings before Labor Day hits, but for now I’d do myself good to be reminded just how much the river climbs, tumbles, and bends.

And, of course, know that my travels will not go as planned.

Statement of Purpose

music: Something for Rockets- Something for Rockets

The dust has finally settled. I’m squarely entrenched in a quasi-normal living situation that falls squarely within the parameters of 21st century American social norms. Despite the various ideations and fantasies that have floated through my mind in the past four months, I’m not backpacking the Far East or South America, hiking a seriously long trail (as if the HST-JMT stroll were a short one…), squatting in converted warehouses or industrial buildings, or anything else that deviates too far from what is good and reasonable. No, despite the infinite possibilities, despite the steps I carefully took to ensure that I could really truly honestly do whatever I wanted, I played it safe. I’m now paying rent, receiving mail at a regular street address, buying groceries, paying bills. I have a job, I receive health and dental benefits, I own furniture. I am conscious of my allotment of daytime minutes on my telephone and the number of miles until I need to change the oil in my car. I do my dishes. I separate recycling from food waste from other trash. I am located in a major metropolitan area, with coffee shops, bars, and various commercial chain stores within walking distance. There is a steady stream of email coming into and out of my computer. I have picked up, moved, and unpacked, and in the resetting of my life 3,100 miles to the West I have, more or less, held to the same basic operating rules and assumptions I left behind. And now that the dust has settled, and I am able to survey the foundations I’ve laid here in San Francisco, I realize I’ve played it safe.

I’m sure that from some people’s viewpoint driving alone across the country with all your worldly posessions packed into a Toyota Camry is an enormous leap away from playing it safe. To me it was standard operating procedure. If anything, it was an appetizer, a small taste of what could be. If there ever were a time in my life to stray from societal norms it would be now: I am young, independent, unencumbered, relatively free of responsibilities, have a bit of money saved up…and look what I’ve gone and done. Got a job, a lease (albeit month-to-month), bills to pay, the whole domestic bit. And two weeks ago, once the dust began to settle in earnest, I started to think about going back to school.

Applying to grad school can be a full-time job, and I began to realze that applying to Ph.D. programs would prove much more involved, more intense, more specific and delicate than applying for a Masters was. It would be a minimum of four years, would involve a stipend in exchange for teaching undergraduates or assisting with research, it would culminate in my designing and conducting original reseach and scholarly work, contributing real and unique knowledge to the world. It would be an enormous commitment, as well as an enormous encumberence. Doctoral work and instruction at the post-secondary level is something that I want to do at some point in my life, but over the past couple days I realized that right now is not the time for it. I have always behaved well within the bounds of normal and expected action. I have played society’s game, and by most measures I have played it well: respectable colleges, well-paying jobs, a sparkling credit history, and the like. I have had a vague-yet-concrete roadmap of the likely path my life would take, born and cultivated in the suburbs of the Midwest and tempered in the intellectual soil of the Northeast, but there always has been an undercurrent of dissent, an interest in alternative living situations, a fascination with falling off the grid for a little bit.

After taking a small step in that direction this summer, and a small step back from that direction so far this fall, I have come to realize that jumping back into graduate study right now would be a step away from the momentum I’ve been building since rolling out of Boston and walking through the Sierras for a month. That I have resettled in a big city and almost immediately resumed paying rent and seeking employment is enough. I’ve taken an enormous pay cut for the sake of extra free time (and opportunities to spend my days outside in a National Park!) and pay about $500 per month more in rent than I have to in order to have access to certain opportunities. There are reasons why I have chosen to do what I have done, however passive and automatic, but now, more than ever, I’m fighting not only to maintain a philosophy of freedom but also practice freedom. Now, if ever in my life, is the time for it. And because of this I made the decison today as I was driving back from Los Angeles not to apply to graduate school for the fall of 2007.

There are more practical, mundane, concrete reasons. One, my GRE scores could use a boost. Two, the deadline for applications is in three weeks and I don’t know if I could reasonably get my letters of recommendation back in time. Three, I haven’t adequately researched programs and, more importantly, professors whose research aligns with my interest. Four, on an even broader scale, I haven’t narrowed down exactly what I would want to study and make my profession for the rest of my academic life (potentially the rest of my natural life). I know generally which fields of study I want to dip into, and know that I want my doctoral work (and all work for that matter) to have real-life impact and application, but until I can succinctly state what it is I want to study and how I believe it can impact the world-at-large, I have little reason to apply to doctoral programs. This all began to creep out some time last week when I sat down in front of my computer and began to draft a generic Statement of Purpose.

The Statement of Purpose is perhaps the most personal part of the Graduate School application, and the hardest piece to include. Graduate study is not something you jump at uncertainly in the same way you do when you apply for college out of high school. In applying for my masters, I had to narrowly focus my interest and intents, and as I started to try to piece together a Statement of Purpose for doctoral work, I found that I could not do it. An outright statement of your intentions, desires, goals, and aspirations as a potential doctoral student is a very hard thing to do preemptively. It should demonstrate commitment, interest, tenacity intellectual prowess, and reflect one’s willingness to work very, very, very hard. I realized quickly that I could not claim to possess all of these qualities at the present moment, perhaps because I just removed myself from a professional situation in which many of these qualities were demanded of me in such high quantity that I was drained of them by last June.

So instead of writing a Statement of Purpose that I would submit to graduate schools, I instead find it much more appropriate at the present time to make a simple statement of purpose here and now. And here it is:

I want do do everything I can. And since I’ve focused so much on the intellectual for as far back as I can remember, I want to do something else for a while.

Formal academics funnel you into tighter and tighter spirals; as you move on in school, your field of study gets narrower and narrower. And this is not the direction I need to be moving right now. One of the hardest things about growing up was having to make choices about what I would study, what I would do with myself, because with each decision made there is also avenues not taken, opportunities lost, doors closed. I am very glad to have studied psychology and education, to have taught high school and done biological and psychological research, to have worked in outdoor education. It may turn out that I do some or all of these things again. But I would have also liked to seriously indulge in other fields: music, engineering, river guiding, creative writing, political philosophy, computer science, ecology, exploration, cultural anthropology, carpentry, ethnomusicology…

I still want to do it all. I still have not given into the idea that life is finite and time is limited and that I won’t ever accomplish everything I would like to accomplish. Like Siddhartha(novel) I believe we are necessarily bound to different sorts of experience on the path towards enlightenment: the intellectual realm is only one of many. With the exception of two turbulent years following college, I have been in school for my entire life. So instead of committing to the highest form of intellectual training I could imagine, I instead want to take the near future and do other things. I want to make music, begin to compose more, study jazz theory and push my guitar playing to the next level. I want to hike, meander and saunder through some of the most fantastic natural beauty available to humankind while it is still natural and beautiful. I want to spend time in the ocean I live so close to now, perhaps take up surfing or windsurfing or diving. I want to put more energy into my relationships with others. I want to open myself to possibilities, to not define myself by my job or my formal education. I want to struggle in new and exciting way such that I may progress in new and exciting ways. This involves certain risks, certain deviations from the roadmap I’ve supposedly internalized. This may upset certain sensibilities or value systems in certain people, but it’s not their life I’m living. This is Thoreau finally succeeding. This is the practice of freedom. For what it’s worth, I’m going to let the application deadline for graduate school come and go, opt out of the expected and known, risk a little, and give it my all to try to not let the dust settle on my life too much.

A Bohemian's Rhapsody

music: Grateful Dead- Europe ‘72 d.2

July 1, 2006 was a day long in the making for me. I’d been scheming about packing up everything I owned and driving from Boston all the way to the Pacific ocean since I returned from a three week trip in Dinosaur National Monument three summers ago, since I started graduate school, since I started this weblog. And now that it’s done, and now that I’m down from the high country and the long walk between Sequoia and Yosemite is behind me as well, I’m able to put two enormous checks on the life list. Life since July has been dynamic, challenging, rewarding, and vital. The place in which I find myself currently is completely staggering as well-there are warm, sunny days and cool, foggy nights, I zip around town on my bicycle, moving from the beach (5 minutes from my doorstep) to coffee shops, dinner parties, bocce tournaments in the park, and free concerts at very regular intervals. I am reconnecting with old and new friends, sometimes even running into friends I haven’t spoken to in over 5 years just by chance. And the ‘job’ i’ve taken is equally as appropriate: my office is a National Park and my duty is to take school groups around sharing an appreciation for the natural world and certain scientific knowledge. I am living a life low on obligation and responsibility, and high on hedonism and experience. I also am allowing myself to linger in transition, not make any large life decisions or movements (other than a solo cross country move, of course) and unencumber myself to enjoy life more and worry about it less. There is a little voice in my head that quietly reminds me from time to time that there are greater things to which I will eventually dedicate myself, but for the time being I’m having quite a time. I also think that certain decisions upcoming will be more permanent and have a greater impact on the trajectory of how I spend my time on this planet, so between a very serious and dedicated life of service as a teacher and those decisions yet-to-come, I’m finding my groove. Even my migraines have all but stopped.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

It is quite real, I must assure myself from time to time. But I am still enjoying a bit of a honeymoon period in which I have the flexibility and financial cushion to not buckle down out here and dig in. But there will be a point sometime soon where I’ll have to confront reality on a much more mundane scale, where I’ll have to start making enough money to support me and my few extravagances (which means actually working), where I’ll have to start making those tough decisions and stop acting from such a…selfish? standpoint. My time in San Francisco has been exclusively that of the wayward traveller, the hiker and adventurer. It just may be sustainable to do that but chances are greater that at some point the grind will catch up to me. But it hasn’t yet, and that’s just fine.

California is a place of extremes. The tallest mountain in the lower 48, the lowest and hottest valley, the largest trees in the world…oceans and volcanos, earthquakes and traffic, wide open spaces and multicultural centers…this is a place like no other. And it’s strange to think that I live here. Maybe this is one of the places where it’s OK to mingle fantasy with reality to a degree. It is noticably different from Boston and the East Coast, but how far will that carry? I’m curious to find out. I’m out here for the forseeable future, the pace and focus of my life has changed a great deal, and although I terribly miss some things about who I was a few months ago I am very glad for the change.

Open your eyes, look up to the skies, and see.

And on that note, I’ve noticed that my activity here has lessened as of late. It could be a function of this life shift, that maybe the weblog was meant to be a document of my thoughts during graduate school and teaching, and now that my environment is quite different this isn’t as immediately relevant to my day-to-day. Sometimes I feel like Bobby (with whom I apparently share a city now) about this whole business. While it’s good to keep in the practice of writing I find myself with less and less that is worth saying publicly (or less and less desire to say things publicly). Like my realtime experience, I think virtual Taus on the Internet might need some refocusing and adjusting. And like the currents i’m currently riding, I’ll wait to see what happens, what I’m feeling like in the near future, what will inevitably motivate me one way or another. But in the meantime I’m having fun with it and surely am not stressing over it.

Any way the wind blows, doesn’t really matter to me.

Adulthood has its Benefits

music: Townhall- Live From the Point, d.1

This morning I woke up and made myself a sandwich of doom for breakfast. It was so good that I made myself another one 5 minutes later.

The Exercise Paradox

music: King Sunny Ade- Juju Music

These are days of change, these spring days. The weather is turning. We now have a blessed extra hour of light at the end of the day instead of at the start. The school year is sliding into its homestretch. I can once again see a horizon and am completely dumbstruck as to how vast it is, how many possibilities there really are. Ultimate frisbee is starting up again. Music is plentiful and in full swing on three fronts: two electric and one acoustic. And despite all this, I don’t have much that needs to be said. These spring days are filled with routine and logistics, and bring a certain stasis to things.

I was sidelined for a good week and a half this past month with the second (and hopefully final) installment of periodontal work. It was better this time around-I think the dentist cut me up a little nicer than last time. Lesson learned: always go in for surgery in the morning when those with the knife are still fresh and alert. Doctors are people too. But a period of relative inactivity and reduced caloric intake left me fairly miserable for a short spell. It reminded me precisely how little exersice I’ve gotten this winter, how bad my cabin fever was getting, and how ready I was for the warmer months and all the adventures they are to contain.

We expect exercise to be a negative feedback system: the more we exert ourselves, the less energy we have and the less we want to exert ourselves. Exercise is, instead, a positive feedback system: exercise begets exercise. The tricky part is that not exercising is also a positive feedback system and it takes a good deal of willpower to break out of the dental-surgery-invalid state of complete apathy. But now that spring is here and my mouth has more or less healed, it is much easier to take steps towards getting my heart rate up and breaking a sweat. Now begins weekly ultimate games, biking to work in earnest, weekend trips to New Hampshire. Even stasis requires an upkeep, but it is slowly becoming untapped. The gears are once again turning. The blood is once again flowing, and I’m feeling much better about things. These spring days carry with them infinite possibility, but right now exercise is all I can do to work myself out of the tiresome winter paths I have worn.

Go Slow

music: Studio One Rockers

Imagine a small country where there are no stoplights and no fast-food chains. You can take school buses all the way from one side of the country to the other for $3. Shoes are a rare occurrence (and shoes mostly mean flip-flops) and cell phones are even more rare. What’s more, this tiny country has an astounding array of natural beauty: tropical desert islands, atolls and a barrier reef, rainforests and jungles, mountains complete with waterfalls and rivers and swimming holes, and caves that need exploration. The people, while most likely considered poor by most Americans’ standards, live a life rich with the stuff that matters: long meals with family and friends, morning full of sunshine burning off a layer of fog, music that evokes island breezes, and the valuable understanding that very few people, in fact, are out to get you and what’s more are woth talking to.

Imagine not. Welcome to Belize.

December was miserable. December is usually terrible, but this year December was miserable for a bunch of reasons. But luckily Reuben found himself with a teacherly break in between Christmas and New Year’s, and he and I skipped town for a week in Belize, leaving his wife and our sorry excuses for lives behind. Both of us have been living, breathing, eating (barely) and sleeping (even less) for our students and were very much looking forward to a week of time in which we did stuff for ourselves- the last time we took an extended trip together was four days in Yosemite back in 2004, and before that was a road trip through Canada in 1998. So after some nice days hanging out with old friends in DC we hopped a very early morning plane for Belize City. We touched down in the tiny airport a little after noon, and scooted out to the cayes with a quickness. Thus began a week bookended by lazy days on”Caye Caulker.”:http://www.gocayecaulker.com/ In the middle of the trip we based ourselves out of San Ignacio, adventure town up in the hills. We took day trips to some amazing places: two caves in which some beautiful geology was occurring and in which Mayan rituals were performed, and a trip to Tikal, the capital of the Mayan Empire (and site of the rebel base on the fourth moon of the planet Yavin). It was a week packed full, but barely stressful. We did a lot, we saw a lot, but we didn’t feel drained from it in the least.

There are a lot of tales to tell, but I think it’s best to let the photos to do most of the talking. Suffice it to say that the trip and the time with my old friend gave me a very necessary respite from a life in Boston I’m now ready to admit is far from healthy or good. What struck me most, though, is that the perspective on people should live is so refreshingly different once you leave the US. And despite some amenities that Americans have grown soft over, in some ways the quality of life is better for those people I met in Belize. We here have things like efficient cars (and plenty of them), fast food delivery, a mighty military and well-protected borders, liability waivers, prestigous universitites, enormous leaders in industry, wireless internet, an overwhelming selection of food and drink, reliable plumbing and electricity even, but I can’t help but think that by my count, We The People are far less happy on a basic level than the folks I met in Belize. There is something to be said for simplicity and moderation and modesty. Belize and its people (a highly diverse bunch) manage to enjoy themselves, get along famously, and live fulfilled, happy lives despite not havng a lot of the stuff Americans find so valuable. I’m a week removed from my trip to Central America and am quickly losing that perspective at the hands of this Babylon System, but it’s something I’d like to hold onto as long as I can.

My life is once again governed by the obligations of Missa Toss. But like any period after significant travel, I am trying to find a balance point between the job I signed on for here and the ideals I discovered out on the road. Belize tourist traps are full of shirts and stickers that say stuff like “UnBelizeAble!” and “You Better Belize It! but the one I think summed it up was found on Caye Caulker, a gem of an island in which the main modes of transportation are bicycle, golf cart, and sailboat. As you exited the water taxi you walked over a mosaic with a simple message: Go Slow. Yes, I. Can’t think of a better way to usher in the new year than remembering that, the simplest but most potent lesson learned from a tiny beautiful country on the other side of the Carribean Sea. There is change on the wind, and 2006 will prove to be a year full of change. Here’s to an excellent start to the year, and here’s to making sure to make time for what really matters.

More Childlike Insight

music: teenagers screaming in the hallway

So I have my arms full of books and papers and a mug of tea and i’m struggling to open the door. One of my students asks if I need any help. I issue a stock reply: “no, I can get it.” I’m thinking about something else. Meanwhile I still haven’t opened the door.

She looks at me, rolls her eyes. “Mister, why don’t you ever let anybody help you?”

Um.

I mean.

There are a million reasons that I give myself for choosing to live the way I do, and I believe strongly in most of those reasons. But she’s undeniably right.

These kids…honestly. Someone has to call me out; funny that it’s the people I work for.

Dura Mater

music: Jerry Garcia Band- 7/23/1977, Berkeley, CA

I have everything to say. and at the same time nothing at all. nothing that’s new and worthy of being cyber-inked, anyhow. It’s all been said before here, in one way or another, and I’m trying to make a point not to indulge in redundancy.

These are strange days, indeed. A lot has been happening. But at the same time nothing at all. In the same way the movement of a rat through a maze is tracked relative to a certain starting point, i have been a flurry of activity, but my net movement has been zero. No, perhaps I’ve been inching imperceptibly towards something new. Perhaps. I’ve conditioned myself for deep introspection in order to make myself more aware of such small movements, but right now, in the latest session of navel contemplation, I realize that I’ve forsaken my own training.

I’ve always been very comfortable swimming around the contents of my own head. The essay that got me into college was about how I made a point of taking an hour or so every night, steeping some tea, and tending my mental garden in some way. Right now I have a mug of tea by my side, I have a decent chunk of time before I send myself off to bed, and I have a good amount of mental dirt to till and aerate. Roots haven’t been taking as of late in my cranial terrarium.

The point is, I think, that I create routines which allow me opportunities to meditate and reflect on what is happening in my life. I have always strongly believed in exercises such as this, that I could do nothing better for myself than to close the door to my room at the end of a given day and take some time to muck around in my thoughts. Most of the time I believe it to be very helpful. I can step back from the daily bombardment of information, idea, and experience, pick out the things that are worth keeping, and try to make sense of them. Over the past 10 or so years I have made some headway; parts of the mental garden are well-tended. But there are also bramble patches and rocky soil, and it seems that no matter how I try to dig into these spots there is no untangling them. Even after all this time. 10 or so years-worth of nightly quiet head time and probably thousands of mugs of tea. A whole lot of struggle, and some progress.

I no longer sit end-to-end on the couch in my basement room in Milwaukee, nor do I sit out on the fire escape of my college dorm. The impulse is still there, but the routine has changed. This here weblog is, of course, the latest incarnation of my nightly efforts to sift through the contents of my mind. Its contents are carefully selected and censored to a degree, but the core purpose remains and is evident, I think. But as of late my engagement with this medium, and with it, my commitment to the nightly routine of introspection, has dropped off a bit. Things are no more simple or manageable. Certainly not. But through this recursive process of mind-tending I have recently hit on a larger truth, one that is logically impossible given the closed nature of the system, but one that has happened nonetheless: in digging through the insides of my mind I’ll never get farther than the inside of my skull. Through my well-intentioned conditioning I’ve started to reduce myself to a brain in a jar. And because of my conditioning I’ve grown accustomed to thinking (thinking…of course thinking) that Truth lay deep in my own gyri and sulci.

I am older than I was when I started this little practice of introspection. Mind-tending has turned into headbanging as of late and I have clung to the more objective perspective enough to know that I no longer benefit as much from the inner mental exploration as I once did. I hear Erikson mocking me, his epigenetic cycles giving me a sound i-told-you-so’ing. The truth is out there, of course, not in here. The everything I have to say, in this light, is hollow. A lot has been happening, true indeed. But after enough intellectual digestion, a lot becomes nothing at all.

Quite contrary. How does my garden grow?

I think it’s time to crack the terrarium and let the rain in.

Childlike Insight

music: The Flaming Lips- Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

I was walking back into school today from a quick trip out for lunch and I stop to say hi to a student I had last year. He asks:

“So why didn’t you bike today?”

I thought it was going to rain and I told him so. (although I just realized that I haven’t gotten on my bike since I knocked into a minivan making a wild right turn two weeks back…)

“What about the windchill? You still would bike in the cold?”

I show him my jacket.

“You always do things the hard way, Mister. Why don’t you do things the easy way some time?”

um.

I mean.

There are a million reasons that I give myself for choosing to live the way I do, and I believe strongly in most of those reasons. But he’s undeniably right.

Back to work.

On Time, Money, and Value

music: Pink Floyd- Dark Side of the Moon

It is less curious and more sombering that money is the gauge by which we measure worth. Everything, it seems, has a monetary value. It’s our adaptive system that is able to measure and quantify everything from the availability of food we eat (apples: $.89/lb) to the intangible value on one-of-a-kind collectible items (priceless) to the importance of one’s work (doctors make more money than garbagemen, who incidently make more money than teachers). Money is precious-there is no doubt about it. We’ve been turning in our hamster wheels since we were old enough to walk because of the need to accumulate this stuff in order to maintain the ability to keep running on our rodent treadmills a little longer.

For the first time in my life I’m making money to the point where it accumulates. Money has afforded me a home and assured me of food on a daily basis, and I can’t take that for granted. This excess of money has directly informed my life experiences (see travels), and even afforded me some small luxuries in the meantime, and for all that I’m eternally thankful. However, money has its price. The price of course is not measurable in a monetary sense, because if it were I’d imagine some grand calculus would just deduct that price from the money I do receive. Instead, we pay for our money in time.

This is not the place to get into the evils of a system that requires you to work for it in order to eat. Suffice it to say that the lack of basic survival value bestowed to anyone living in the developed world is upsetting. But this is the place — the time rather — to slip into a quarterlife crisis of a reasonably high degree: the one most precious resource given to us as living beings costs nothing, is being used at an alarming rate, is non-renewable (short of the invention of the flux capacitor), and is being seized from me.

What gives? It’s been a horribly discouraging weekend time-wise, and a rough couple of days mental health-wise. Friday was payday (read: some sort of palty compensation for choosing to spend my time in a way that causes my physical and mental health to suffer, restricts my personal freedom, and is sometimes downright unpleasant). I came home exhausted, laid down to take a nap, and woke up at 4:30am, completely missing out on what plans I had. Saturday’s plans also fell by the wayside, so I spent the day on modern-living upkeep and grinding through stacks of paper for work. The red grading pen was ablaze until about 1am, when I decided to treat myself to a couple hours of unconsciousness before pounding paper again on Sunday. The weekend was spent either working or sleeping because I was so exhausted from working. The crazy part is that I like my job, but weekends like this one call into question the overall worth of this work I’m doing. I believe in it, yes, but when it cuts into time that should be mine everything falls apart. Time is something I need to be selfish with, or more selfish with at least. It hasn’t been three weeks and I’ve once again lost myself. I would have less problems giving my money to work instead of my weekends Which, come to think of, I do anyway.

Aesop Rock weighs in on the issue.

——

This summer I took a dayhike up the Na Pali coast on the island of Kaua’i. The traditional dayhike route keeps people close to the ocean coast and reveals spectacular views of the Pacific, the reefs below, and Na Pali’s cliffs. After making good time to the first beach on the trail I decided to take a side trip because I had the time. I made the push inland and followed a poorly marked trail up one of the valleys towards a remote waterfall. At that point in the day I was the only hiker out there. The jungle was dripping from the morning’s rain, and everything smelled of ripe guava and coconut. Foliage was pretty dense, and besides the trail and river at the valley’s center there weren’t many indications of human use. After about 30 minutes or so of serious hiking the trail opened up into a shaded bamboo grove, and perched on top of a rock in the middle of the grove, almost crouching like an animal, was a thin, incredibly tanned man. He was shirtless and shoeless, his eyes twinkled, and his beard was enormous. He smiled placidly and greeted me with an aloha, asking for food and pakalolo. I was dumbfounded. I gave him a granola bar, and tried to get my bearings, thinking I’d just stumbled into a faerie tale. After about a minute of what I thought would be appropriate small talk I pushed on towards the waterfall, head spinning. The bamboo grove disappeared behind me, jungle proper resumed, and I was left wondering whether I hallucinated the whole thing. I made it up the the waterfall eventually (and an incredible waterfall it was…) and between swimming and hiking thought of a million things I would have liked to say to the man/elf back in the bamboo grove. I got my chance-on the way back I passed through the bamboo grove, still no other humans in sight, and he was perched exactly where I left him. We dined on cheese and pita and shared stories. He said his name was “Yahveh,” and he’s been living out in the jungle for over three years, subsisting on wild fruits (over 12 varieties, he says) and the kindness of strangers. He said he hadn’t been out of the jungle in 8 months. I asked him what he did with all the time he had, and he didn’t answer as much as hold his hands up and look around.

——

I left Yahveh and the jungles of the Na Pali coast with a new understanding of wealth and time, one which is haunting me tonight as I sit in Boston at the end of an absolutely miserable weekend. Yahveh, of course, is a rarity, an anomaly, an extreme case. But I realize: could I be on the other end of that spectrum? Have I sold my one most precious nonrenewable resource out to the system that keeps me docile and obedient and too obligated and exhausted to do anything for myself anymore?

The fourth of four points that I outlined as my quest for life some years ago is “spend time on what is important.” What is important is a relative term, I guess, but I’d like to refocus on things that are of primary importance. Spending time to make money is important in a sense, but it is of instrumental importance. On the back end of a weekend like this I can only hope that personal philosophy is feasible in this current frame of reality. Because regardless of what I think, hope, or believe, that clock which is marking time by my bed will ring in a few hours, dictating exactly how I will be using the time given to me.

It's All Downhill From Here

music: Louis Armstrong- When the Saints Go Marching In

Midsummer Night. The Summer Solstice. The days start getting shorter starting tomorrow. And I haven’t even started.

Walk The Path

music: Townes Van Zandt- Live at the Old Quarter

I caught myself trying to do nine things at once today: laundry, troubleshooting the electronic crackle in my guitar amp, purging unused clothes from my drawers, pulling down three concerts from archive.org, boiling ravioli for dinner, fixing a zipper, checking my bank statement against my receipts, unloading the dish rack, and worst of all, making a list of all the things I had to do tonight (check about the table hockey game I ordered, go grocery shopping, write a quiz that the kids are taking tomorrow, write a rent check and drop it off, call a guitar technician I know about amp repair, refill migraine prescription).

Ridiculous.

This is the time of year when things gain momentum. School is sliding into its final days. I’m beginning to think about summer. The warmer weather (whenever it comes) catalyzes all life’s reactions. There’s a lot to get done and a short time in which to do it all.

Some people are able to handle having thirty things going at once; I can handle it as well but not happily. I’m the type to order my obligations by relative importance and then run down the list, checking them off one by one. It’s a sign of my mental health when I crave order and productivity enough to start up with the lists, but these days lists grow long and untended. And even though I work my way through them they seem to grow longer such that I never seem to make much headway.

In the midst of all this personal entropy I started to reorganize the cookware cabinet because it was pissing me off how the lesser-used stuff ended up in the front and the big mixing bowls were balanced on top of the smaller ones. I stopped about 30 seconds into the exercise because the ravioli was done and the shows finished downloading and I resigned myself to the fact that in three or so days things would be in a similar state of chaos.

In doing nine things at once I don’t really get any one thing done well. This life of mine has me turning in my hamster wheel something fierce.

Part of the crush I experienced today was because I skipped town to go hiking in the Green Mountains this weekend. The trip to the backcountry afforded me some time and space to meditate and ruminate, to let my mind process so many backed-up thoughts. In high school I made a point to take about an hour before bed every night to sit with a cup of tea and just think-let my mind wander here and there, let it delve into corners of my psyche that needed attention-but there just isn’t time for that sort of thing anymore. Quiet unstructured thinking time has become an extravagance. Hiking, however, provides me with that opportunity again. Hiking itself is a meditation for me-an amount of physical exertion mixed with a self-sufficient philosophy put to practice and a very, very long path to walk as slow as I please. There is no thrill to hiking the way there is to rock climbing or whitewater paddling; you just walk. You walk the path and think. Sometimes after struggling uphill you catch a nice view, but there is no opportunity or reason to do more than walk. Spending time walking through the wilderness gives me that space to let my mind grind and digest all the stuff that it needs to.

It usually takes about three days to acclimate to the backcountry lifestyle, to clear my head of the bombarding demands of regular life, to have my ears stop their city-noise-cancelling ring and be able to actually listen, to get used to sleeping on the ground, to drop into a calm and focused and crystalline mental state. By the third morning of the weekend I was approaching this goal but had to cut off the exercise and come back to Boston. I spent a good deal of yesterday nursing an incredible migraine and spent most of today mopping up all those little details of post-post-modern living that I left scattered last Friday.

This is a time of transition, which doesn’t make things any easier. But my transitions are more internal and seasonally routine than others. I spent my time in the mountains with two friends: one from Boston who won’t be here much longer, one an old roommate from college who I don’t see nearly enough. We three had a positive time, but in our conversations and in my own meditations while hiking I was reminded how much is in transition right now across the board. Jojo is moving to a new and unfamiliar city for a boy. Evan just graduated law school. Each had their own reasons and needs to be up in the mountains and meditate, perhaps more reason than my pedestrian lists of errands, but from my perspective it was good to spend some time with my friends. They are two examples of this flux in my extended circle: another college roommate just received his M.D., and another is off to become a Broadway actor. My sister just shed the majority of her material possessions and is now making her way out of the deserts of Arizona to start her adult life. Things are afoot at home as well- one roommate has already moved out, with at least two more on the way out by summer’s end. What of the countless other individual lives out there swinging through transitions of all kinds this time of year?

We all walk some sort of path, but most of the time we’re so distracted by computers and dirty clothes and bank statements and boiling ravioli to realize we are — right now — in the middle of our journeys. Given the chance to simplify and literally walk the path, the more basic terms of our journey comes into focus for a brief moment. I walk up and down mountains and canyons with 50 lbs on my back, in part, to work myself into this perspective. (That and the chance to catch a view of some fantastic scenery.) The rest of my time on the path is spent oblivious that there is a journey beyond what has to get done for today or tomorrow. And here again, late into Tuesday night, a good hour and a half after I would have liked to be in bed, I’m scrambling, trying to go nine directions at once, not keeping up with my own lists, trying to make these microtransitions as smoothly as possible, stumbling over myself, stretching for that mental place I cultivated nightly in high school and daily on-trail, and trying to remember the lesson from this past weekend in the woods: all I have to do is walk.

Babyface

music: Portishead- PNYC

I woke up this morning, stumbled into the bathroom, and shaved off my beard. It had been growing since I rolled out of Milwaukee last June. To add to the effect (and because I fumbled the clippers a little too much), I went out and got my hair cut short. I’ve lost four or five years of street cred. My face is raw. I don’t quite look like myself. This will take some getting used to.

Saving Daylight

music: Phish, 4/4/1998, Providence, RI

(The clock is now working against me. I downed two jade liquid-filled capsules about 3 minutes ago which means I have about 27 more minutes until I’m involuntarily horizontal and drooling all over myself. I’m looking forward to the cold medicine stupor.)

We attribute significance to the dates of the Gregorian calendar, numbers which are assigned loosely to the turning of the heavens. We could be much more in alignment with the spinning of the Earth of the phases of the moon, but the dates we have are close enough for ritual. I find that I rely heavily on the meaning I attribute to certain dates, perhaps moreso than most. We all signify certain events with dates: July 4th, September 11th, the last Thursday in November, and so on. This weekend is a big one for me: the first weekend in April is when we Spring Ahead.

The extra (extra?? more like a repaid debt of 60 minutes from late October of the previous year) hour of daylight has always signified a turning point in my life. For one, it means that spring is hear in earnest, that snow is pretty much done, and that we can all start to come out of our burrows, shake the darkness from our underused muscles, and warm our faces in actual sunlight. It means that I am entering the homestretch of the academic year. It somehow makes the universe much more possible to navigate. Spring Ahead, for me, is a marker that I’ve made it through another cold winter, and that better days are around the corner.

I’ve had an especially difficult and dark eight months. They say that it’s like that your first year of teaching, and I’m banking on it getting easier. It had better get easier, damnit. I’ve been in a steady habit of letting out and then dropping my sails over the past eight or so months as to not capsize in Missa Toss’s maelstrom. And as a result, almost all of my personal voyages have been nipped in the bud, boats left in their harbors to float in the eddies of my mind. Every time I talk with my mother she asks what is new with me, and every time I falter, unable to think of anything that is new with me, and I say ‘nothing,’ and I’m telling the truth. I’ve spent more than a good amount of time by myself. I’ve found myself staring into absolutely nothing and allowing my mind to run wild, splashing disjoint images and memories up against its insides. By all measures my mental health has slipped significantly in the past eight months. Still, the music playing in the background (Phish over the first weekend of April, 1998: an island of sanity in a far worse maelstrom) reminds me that seven years ago the condition of my mind was far, far worse.

April of 1998 is a story for another time. So, now, to this evening.

(I’ve exceeded my allotted cold-medicine time limit and my head is growing lighter and lighter as the viral C-clamps at my temples release a bit. Waking is currently a slippery business, but perhaps it should be so.)

Perhaps I need a good stumble down the rabbit-hole, a dip into the Dreaming, and ultimately a re-emergence on the other side of things when the daylight lasts an hour longer in the evenings. Despite the grey and the incessant rain, my head being full of mucus and snot, and this weekend being a complete waste of my time, I feel positive motion on the horizon. Tomorrow I’ll wake up, stumble around a bit in cold-medicine aftermath, and when my hands are steady enough I’ll shave my beard off. Then this coming week: the beginning of Spring League Ultimate, the addition of a keyboardist to the band, and a potential visit from my two college roommates.. Then hiking in Utah, only two weeks away. And the biggest dangling carrot: Australia/Hawaii this summer. Now close enough to start making solid plans, outfitting myself, and getting very, very excited about it.

Franklin intended to save daylight in his crazy scheme of putting an hour’s time on loan between October and April, but the result in my reality is much more momentous, much more saturated with symbolic meaning. What I attribute to the first week of April is not unlike what major religions attribute to their Spring holidays: a rebirth, a new sprig of hope. No, I am not actually saving daylight in this displacement of Gregorian time. Instead, I think the daylight is saving me.

From the Archives: Backstage at the David Show

music: Buddy Guy- Feels Like Rain

It’s not that nothing has been happening, and it certainly is not that I’ve been mentally stagnant. It’s the end of March and things are in transition, often moving faster than that which I can keep pace. The snow’s melted, the days have lengthened, the trees have even begun to perk up. Things are in motion in several directions at the 1-2, I’m back on my bike, music is coming along nicely, I’ve been getting out more. Daylight Savings in one week, Utah in three, summer vacation in about 15. Stuff has been happening and I certainly have been thinking, but I, uncharacteristly, have not had the desire to ruminate on it or document much of it. It’s not that nothing has been happening; it’s that time is sliding past me almost too quickly.

I happened upon an email I shot off a couple months back as I was looking for an old message about tax preparation. The underlying question was something like this: if my life were a performance (well…arguably…um…never mind), and this weblog is a representation of my public self, then what would it look like backstage? It seems to be a nice summary of the state of things these days. I’m told I’m pretty good at summarizing things.

12/28/04
this funny image is materializing: backstage at the david show. i think you’d find a bunch of people drinking herbal tea and talking about camping gear, someone picking at a guitar in the corner, a small group reading books in beanbag chairs, two people rooting through the dumpster out back to see if there is anything usable, someone cooking and someone else doing their dishes before they are done with them, at least three people staring precisely into nowhere, a trash can and bucket percussion jam session, three people throwing a frisbee the length of the room to everyone else’s annoyance, someone operating a smoothie machine and a deep fryer, two people mixing chemicals and pouring them on stuff to see what happens, someone consulting a map, a group of people fast asleep and drooling on themselves and the furniture, someone keeping things organized with the help of a giant whiteboard, and a team of chimpanzees dutifully typing on laptops as to transcribe all such events onto anize.org for the world to read.

His Answer Came in Action

music: Recordings from the Biosphere (with Matt and Sebastian)- 2/18/05

Another week of vacation from school is upon me and my goals this time around are modest: resurrect some of that which I lost to Missa Toss over the past six months. I knew going into this nine day stretch that some sort of ritual was appropriate to mark the reclaiming of my own life that was to take place, and in the days before the vacation proper I considered doing a three-day fast to help clear the cobwebs and to create some mental space from which a more healthy, balanced perspective could take place. The topics of hunger and the inescapable need for food have been rattling around in my head for the past couple weeks, and the idea of a fast appealed to me as a way to manage both my accumulating emotional and visceral clutter. As the vacation hit, though, I realized that I did not need to empty out; instead, I needed to fill up. Enough of my time has been spent in personal deprivation that a physical acting out of that deprivation was not the proper means of making the most of this time given to me. No, instead, I thought to see what I could to to fill time with things of substance. My eating habits are poor enough during the work week.

If I had the inclination, I could easily fill my time from now until the end of break with work for school. I’ll have to dip into it at some point-lessons must be planned for the week after this and an entire curriculum in psychology must be outlined for next year-but for the time being I’m content to do things for myself. And even though break has only been dented by this past weekend, it is of significant substance. Time is being filled with goodness, mostly with that infinitely difficult but unspeakably positive thing I’ve been working towards and pushing on since I returned from my trip across the country: music.

Friday night, by all personal measures, was a watershed moment. I connected with two guys from Craigslist, a bassist and a drummer, and got down to it for about two and a half hours in the 1-2 basement music studio. We threw around some original ideas (I’m re-listening to the 30-minute straight improv we opened things with now), a couple Dead covers, a couple Phish covers, and some other assorted works. It was the first time I got to put the room downstairs to good use, and it was also the first time I got to put the newly-tuned and tweaked Gibson through the motions. Both earned their keep and then some-things came out better than I ever could have hoped for. Considering that it was our first time playing together it was downright incredible now that I’m listening to it again. Peet, a man who knows his music and takes it seriously, said that he’s paid good money to hear music much worse. It occurred to me afterwards that this was possibly the first electric jam session I’ve had on guitar…ever? It legitimized a lot for me: all that time spent noodling in my bedroom playing along to CDs, all that work put into recording demo tracks, all that money thrown into the new Gibson. It also made me glad I dropped some bills on mixers and microphones-we got a great sounding recording out of the session. We three are going to make a habit out of it and hope to eventually bring a keyboardist into the mix. Friday night saw a big goal of mine for this year come to fruition. I couldn’t be happier about it and am already itching to have another go at it.

I’m still staying true to my roots on the music front. I’m working on some more structured singer-songwriter type stuff on acoustic with Jono, a guy who contacted me about playing music a couple weeks back. We met up this afternoon, ran a few of his tunes including some covers, some of my originals and some of his. We’re shooting for an open-mic at the Middle East tomorrow night. It isn’t perfect yet, but it sounds good enough to take out there and let hang in the breeze for a little bit. Another goal of mine to be realized: playing out. My musical horizons are expanding by leaps and bounds given this short time in February and the best part is that these recent aural explosions are by no means limited or isolated incidents; they are beginnings.

Music, no matter how good it can be, is not the sum total of anyone’s existence. This week saw, by my standards, a staggering amount of social movement. C. and I had our weekly Thursday night dinner for the first time in a couple weeks and it was good to catch up with her. We came up with a great hairbrained scheme: I supply the music, and she’s going to make us Hammer Pants. (That’s word, because you know…) I also got a chance to see M. twice this week, a monumental feat considering I haven’t seen her since last September. Jono invited me out for the time honored tradition of drinking beer and then throwing really sharp pointy things last night. And tonight we had a dinner gathering at the 1-2 that blossomed from an offhand comment to Peet this morning into a way cool get-together. TiMO and JZ came back to the 1-2 from dogsitting, Jono stuck around after running through songs and convinced Sam to join us, Matt and Gina came up from downstairs, and Jojo made the trek up from Central Square. We had a good hour or two in the kitchen full of frying, boiling, slicing, talking, eating, drinking…even a good grease fire in the oven. We then did a good amount of lounging and laughing in the common room while we waited for our digestive systems to do their thing. It was a simply beautiful (and beautifully simple) Sunday night at the 1-2. It was a study in what is necessary this break: food. I do not need to be emptied, assuming a passive stance towards my surroundings. Instead, I need to be forceful and purposeful in my actions, to indulge in and enjoy food of all kinds, and as the song goes, share it with many friends. There are seven days left in which I have a lot to accomplish here in Boston. This vacation isn’t about leaving, and that’s important. It’s tough work resurrecting one’s social life after over a year of neglect, but I’m already beginning to taste the rewards.

The Circle Game

music: “One Last Vesper” Cassette

We were enjoying a typical Sunday night at the 1-2 earlier: sitting around the kitchen table, listening to The Playground, and tearing through a couple artichokes and lemon-butter sauce when this song came on that really twisted my head around. It’s an old folk tune called The Circle Game done by Joni Mitchell and assorted others, a song I know incredibly well but haven’t heard in years. We used to sing it in music class in grade school, and it was the first song I ever learned on guitar (which was actually my mother’s ukelale). But one of the most vivid memories I have of “The Circle Game” is a performance of the song by a fellow leadership trainee and old friend Chris Dallman at Camp Minikani a summer evening long ago. Hearing the song for the first time in so long opened a floodgate of memories and I’ve been spending the rest of the evening picking through them, as well as old pictures, journal entries, and cassettes.

I’m caught up in my immediate reality more than I ever have been. My fond memories of past years usually consist of the past couple years, maybe college. College seems like it happened in another lifetime. I all but forget that I lived a life in Wisconsin for 18 or so years, and it was a life full of events and places and people. Of course I know that I did live in Wisconsin, and that I was a kid once (declarative), but I forgot what it was like (episodic). I had not forgotten the fact that I had been in high school once, but I had forgotten what it was like to be in high school myself. Upon hearing that song on the radio the feeling of it all, the physical and mental sensation of what it was like to be a child, came rushing back. It was incredible. I flipped through old photos, yes, actual photographs on kodak paper; I put in old cassette tapes (remember those?) that I wore down in the late 80’s and early 90’s. I took a whirlwind tour of myself as a child, and even with the primed sense memory it seemed frighteningly distant. ‘That was then, this is now,’ you can say, and yes, but there is something tragic about no longer being young like that. I realized I miss the child’s eye, the struggle with questions and ideas encountered for the first time, the complete amazement at experiencing things for the first time, the struggle to become a competent, educated, experienced human being. Part of why I thought the National Parks I visited this summer were so spectacular was because they made me feel like a child experiencing Nature for the first time again. It was wonderful. I miss that feeling.

Out of all the corners of my childhood that I visited tonight, I found myself gravitating towards camp. To those that have been there, two anize’ers included, Camp Minikani is a phenomenon that doesn’t need to be explained. To everyone else, it can’t be explained. I have camp to thank for a lot. I find myself in a profession that stems directly from my experiences as a counselor there. I point to camp as one of the primary reasons why I have such an affinity for the natural world. I am reminded almost daily of how camp has shaped my core values and philosophies. And as “The Circle Game” reminded me, camp is mostly responsible for my wanting to play guitar. To remember so clearly what it was like to be a child at camp is overwhelming. Much of that feeling has been lost in the six years I have been away from camp. And since there is no way to go home again, I can only hope to take whatever I found there and somehow find a way to make it work, here, now, as an adult, in inner-city Boston.

The end of every day at camp is marked by a vesper, a quiet time where cabins of children lie in bunk beds, blinking in candlelight, and exchange their thoughts on the universe. It generally starts with a song and a simple question: “What was your best part of the day?” Vesper, to me, was always my best part of the day. The song has continued to the present date, but the question is one that I’ve unfortunately ceased to ask myself, but one I should revisit more often. But vesper has ceased to happen. I try to sit at the end of the day with a cup of tea and process stuff, but it isn’t the same. Were I to have time at the end of the day to discuss the universe under candlelight with friends even once a month…it seems, though, that vesper is not something that happens in the adult world. Perhaps because adult life requires that sort of interpersonal exploration less. I would still welcome it. For my part, though, I have colored pieces of cloth hanging on my wall to remind me, a guitar that made its performance debut over the crackles of campfire and chirp of crickets, and presently a candle lit, a candle that probably hasn’t been lit since my last summer spent in Wisconsin, a candle approximately the shape and size of a dixie cup, a candle with flecks of Crayola scattered throughout the wax, a candle with a small rock embedded in its bottom. To those familiar, it doesn’t need explaining. Remembering where this candle came from, and more importantly that I came from the same place, was my best part of the day. Childhood. I miss it terribly.

Years move by and now the boy is twenty
though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There’ll be new dreams
maybe better dreams
and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through

Seeking Recalibration

music: The Be Good Tanyas- Chinatown

Dead of winter in New England. Boston hunkers down for the onslaught of cold white, spends a week paralyzed, and slowly re-emerges from underneath the piles and piles and piles and piles of now filthy snow. It warms a little, some melts, and piles of opaque liquid fill crevices and potholes citywide. Weather reports indicate a fresh dose of celestial solvents tonight, due to grace our cobblestone and concrete for the next two days…

The past couple of weeks have allowed me a lot of head time and have elucidated some incredible challenges, neither of which have made me too happy. I can fully expect to dip into a dark mood for a week or two every year at some point, and I think that this past stretch of time was it for me. I think I’m coming out from under the covers, or starting to at least, or am just sufficiently distracted by work again to not think too much about the state of things in my own three pounds of gyri and sulci. This time around the normal morose mood was accompanied by a fairly healthy existential crisis recalled from years past: I remember being very young, five or six maybe, and lying in bed staring at the shadows my night light cast on the opposite wall which looked remarkably like E.T. and fully realizing what my mortality means. I remember sobbing uncontrolably back then until i passed into sleep, knowing that I was going to die one day, depart from this universe forever, for-ever, and there was nothing I could do about it. For some reason that incredible dread popped back up these past few weeks in fairly acute spurts. It didn’t quite reduce me to tears this time around, but it did in some ways paralyze me, forced me to call into question exactly what I am doing with the short time given to me in this universe.

We humans don’t function on this level of perspective most of the time. We can’t; it’s too overwhelming, nothing would ever happen if we did. It makes us too insignificant and unimportant and we all would like to believe that we count for something in this universe. So we end up distracting ourselves for the majority of our lives: getting educated, studying something outside ourselves (except for those precious few who wear black and smoke cigarettes and probably speak French and study this exact thread of thought), taking up hobbies, observing the world around us and marveling at how cool that thing over there is, experiencing things, creating things, consuming things. Anything to bring us to that human scale of perspective. Anything to keep our minds on the journey and off the destination, concentration on our feet and off the horizon. Anything to make the traveling as positive as possible. But traveling might not be easy with so many stops along the way. Because when you stop, when you catch your breath, you take in how much you’ve done and how much you have to go, you gain some larger perspective of the landscape and if you’re lucky some clarity, and you re-orient in hopes of improving your journey. You remove yourself form your human scale of perspective and glimpse upon the universe itself, far to vast for you to ever have a hope in understanding it, let alone making a scratch in it.

I’ve struggled with this sort of perspective, on-and-off, for the past couple of weeks. I’ve felt a sense of urgency to make something out of the immediate time given to me and was generally unsatisfied with how I spent it. My creative output was lacked quality. My daily energies were directed towards inconsequential and meaningless things. I would indulge in distractions and just grow frustrated that I was doing so, Despite my efforts to organize the tea cabinet, straighten out the common room, put all my dirty clothes in the laundry bag, eat regular healthy meals, and get on a decent sleep schedule, entropy is gaining the upper hand.

It doesn’t help that work has been especially rough these past two weeks. I gave my midterm exam and pounded out semester grades for my students and things are not looking good. On top of that I’ve had to play more security guard, therapist, and corrections officer than educator this week which siphons the life out of me and into these newer, fresher, more damaged vessels that can’t seem to fill up with anything no matter what they do. Here’s the existential dilemma again, this time once-removed: never mind my own existence, I am now playing a part in shaping sixty-three precious and brief lives with all the potential in the world and not nearly enough resources or personal perspctive to see it through. I can almost comfort myself in the fact that they are, for the most part, distracted by the cotton-candy nuances of modern living, but that may just crush my soul even more. I’m seeing some of these souls slip into conditions that will all but ensure hardship and suffering for the rest of their mortal existences and there’s not much I can do about it. And to make matters worse, I realize that I might be inadvertently contributing to it. Shudder, wretch. This week was a painful reminder of how much I’m up against, and as I stated in the final days of my training for this life of service, I can’t possibly hope to accomplish everything I want to accomplish.

My perspective is off. Reality is quite overwhelming. I’m not making good use of the time that’s given to me. I’ve realized that yes, This Is It, and from there seeds begin to germinate, but also in that realization I’ve grown very disappointed with where I find myself in the more immediate sense. I have a week of vacation from work coming up at the end of the month and I’m determined to use it as an opportunity to recalibrate. It will hopefully involve some degree of social interaction that don’t involve alcohol, some plan to readjust to more global priorities with my students, some degree of musical output, and some time spent with the natural world. I’m also thinking about doing a fast to clear out and reset. Time is the secret weapon, but ultimately, time is also the enemy. What actually transpires remains to be seen. Know that your travels might not go as planned.

I took to restringing my guitar last night, switching to Ernie Ball .10’s from the D’Addario flatwound .11’s just to see how things sounded under a different winding. the new strings went on fine, but when it came time to tune things were not agreeing with one another. The intonation was off and i couldn’t seem to make the thing play a major chord cleanly no matter where I fretted. I spent a while with screwdriver and bridge trying to bring things into harmony but the Gibson wasn’t having it. The tension is different now with the new gague strings, as is the string scale after all the tinkering. Whatever the reason, the sounds evoked clashed. Frequencies grated against one another, things didn’t click into synch. This wonderful tool of expression I own wasn’t able to resonate cleanly. After about half an hour I got frustrated, gave up, put the guitar away, and thought with mortal resignation, with understanding as clear as a blanket of new snow, “exactly.”

Snow Days

music: Jane’s Addiction- Nothing’s Shocking

This has been a week. We had Monday and Tuesday off due the blizzard. Wednesday we went back to school as it snowed even more, and there were hardly any students there. The district superintendant said post facto that he should have closed school on Wednesday, and as some sort of compensation he and the mayor closed school for the rest of the week. We’ll have to make this up at the end of June, which means school until July basically, but I’m trying not to think about that now. So now it’s Thursday, and I’m looking another four day weekend in the face. My inital instinct was to jump online and look for last-minute websaver flights to places better than here. Colorado…$300…Florida…$260…Paris…$240…nah. It would be a little too impulsive and gratuitous to jump a flight for the weekend. Instead I booked tickets to Utah for April vacation. April 15-24: Arches, Canyonlands, Bryce, Zion. Throw tmo (now TiMO?) and the 1ey in the mix, and possible (probable) weekend visit from the Boulder satellite office reps AJM and Parker. That alone is enough to keep my spirits high and hope alive through the dark winter months and all this snow; the south of Utah is one of the coolest places I’ve ever been. Coolest as in best. It’s important to make the distinction these days.

But back to more immediate matters: here I have four days with which to do something, and what’s more I have very little work obligation. I’m already planned out about two weeks ahead of the end of midterm exams. So four days. And like last weekend, like winter break, I’m not quite sure of what to do with myself. I haven’t really had the opportunity to think about my own life that much this year and the two times I did I sort of froze, overwhelmed with the potentials and unfruitful in pursuing the actuals. There are really so many possibilities when work constraints are removed, even temporarily, that I don’t know where to begin. Flight-length trips are out for this weekend, that much I know. Then what? Hang around here, finish up a song I’ve been working on, possibly take in a concert, try to dig up friends here and salvage what I can of my former social life? Or go? More and more I feel like I gotta go. There are friends I haven’t seen for a long time that I’d like to visit in New York City. But I hate New York City.

All this indecision given such a golden opportunity points to a larger problem: lack of movement. Mr. Taus (normally pronounced ‘missa toss’) has been putting in his time and things are good, if not progressing, on that front. I’ve been granted permanent status after less than one year (usually takes three, I guess) and it looks like I’ll get to teach psychology next year. Two big plusses. Fine. Good for missa. Meanwhile, in a house across town, my personal inertia has failed me. Friction and outside forces have slowed David’s life to a near standstill and from here it feels like and incredible amount of force is needed to get things kickstarted again. Pile that on top of the hibernation instinct that comes with all this snow and less daylight and winter and I end up spending time holed up working on music-a song, ironically, about how hard it is to get out of bed in the morning. And typing about it here.

It feels like I’m waiting for something. But what? One of my posts to a craigslist musician ad to come through? The music room downstairs to be insulated and soundproofed? Spring break? The end of the school year? A move to the West Coast? A doctoral program? My childhood was rife with placing these markers in front of me. I could start going here and there once I could drive. I’d be able to do such-and-such once I was in college. Or I’d be able to start this or that once I saved up this much money or got a new job. Now I’m out of college, out of grad school even, with a job and bills and a guitar and a car and a pile of stuff that I own and if I’m lucky 40 more years until I retire. And more recently, a realization: this is it. This. Is. It. This is where I’ve arrived and this is what I’ve got to make work for me, and if I can’t figure out what to do with four days of free time then this is going to be a long and unpleasant 40 years.

It’s approaching noon on Thursday. The insides of my head are ticking. I need to do something this weekend as a demonstration of my own freedom at the very least. The immediate world is under almost four feet of snow, my personal spheres have all but frozen in place, but look! Here is some time. Here is some room for movement. Time to stretch a little.

In Which Our Hero Reluctantly Acquiesces to Reality

music: New Monsoon- 5/22/04, Harper’s Ferry, Boston, MA

Of all the things I’ve tried in my life, writing good music is one of the hardest. I’m not yet sure if it’s good or bad that songwriting is so difficult, but I’ve been trying to develop the seed of an idea planted some time last month and it’s not going anywhere. Glad to have gotten all that sappy campfire type stuff documented over the course of this past week, but now that I want to move on with it I am stymied. Held up by an infinitely frustrating lack of creativity on-demand. Winter break was the time to push on that and now winter break is over and all that stuff I do for myself will have to take a backseat to 65 teenagers.

Whether or not he’s had enough, David has to make way. Here comes Mr. Taus, ready (or not) for action when that buzzer rings at 6:00 AM. Mere minutes away. I’ve successfully whittled down the things that need David’s attention to grocery shopping (a seemingly unsolvable problem), a therm-a-rest that doesn’t stay inflated, and some screwy intonation issues on the Gibson. Doesn’t help that I’m starting to get sick either. So it goes. The week out of time has ended; back to the way things normally are. I’m due for a good long think on how to 1) extract the most amount of pleasure from my daily activities as I can and 2) maintain space and time for myself in the midst of it all but for now the prudent thing to do is to sleep hard, deep, and furious. And Mr. Taus is nothing if not prudent.

Get Me Outta This City

music: Tori Amos- Tales from the Choirgirl Hotel

Winter break is probably past its halfway point and I’m still in Boston. But there are plans afoot to get out of here. I’ve, however, had my hands full here. Three solid days of work on music, and almost exactly one year to the day of my first concerted effort at recording the resultant EP is nearing completion. I’ve pasted together a rough mix of all six tracks. While there is still a bit of patching and mastering and normalizing and stitching together, the infrastructure is in place and the bulk of the work is done. Pushing this project into its final stages was a big goal of mine for this break and it’s good to have something to show for all the time I’ve spent messing around with instruments, computers, mixers, and microphones. While I’d ideally like to rework sections of most of the tunes I have to draw the line sometime soon. This EP is not meant for public consumption on a commercial level-it is more a document for myself and my co-writer as well as something handy to give to people I might play with in the future. Many of the tunes push towards the sappy guy-with-guitar campfire cheese about nature and the open road. It’s to be expected considering I drove across the country this summer with a guitar, but in the larger scheme I’m not looking to make that sort of music. It was what we had to work with this summer, and it is what came out. Now that it’s down on an EP, it’s time to move on to a more full electric sound. More than anything else it feels good to get the six tracks of the Rivers and Roads EP out of my head and onto disc. I’m rollin’ on.

Get me out of this city…

Such a simple line, such a powerful sentiment. It’s a proclamation of discontent I’ve voiced on more than one occasion, and as luck would have it, my good friends happened to paste it into a song, the song that really made the rest of this music thing possible. With the penning of Gato Negro worlds opened up for me. Yes, I’m reaching, and perhaps even making good time. But after three solid days of work on music in my isolation chamber/recording studio/bedroom, I’m ready to actually get outta this city. An impromptu midnight trip to the Arboretum tonight was a nice appetizer, but I’m thirsty for more.

Last minute audible, made earlier this evening: Philadelphia for New Year’s with friends from my childhood. It will be great to see them, and it will also be good to hit the asphalt and drift for a couple days. I’ve been a little too boxed in here. I saddle up in THW-455 some time tomorrow and set out for points South on the current of the mighty I-95. And now I’ll have a soundtrack, one conceived primarily during travels in the same car, to keep me company on the quick pop down to the city of Brotherly Love.

My faculties for language slip at three in the morning. More from the road. I’m rollin’ on…

Another Tick on the Odometer (and other cynicisms)

music: Brad Mehldau- Largo

Winter break is finally here. No school for a week and change, and given this monstrous gift of time I’m left dumbfounded as to what to do with it. I’ve been on the school clock so much this year that I’m not really sure how to use this time now that it’s completely mine. I’m paralyzed by possibility. I think I can now understand why prisoners don’t bother running away after a certain point, even if they know they can get away with it.

The past two days have been me simmering in my own depleted brain juices. December 24th and 25th are two of my least favorite days of the year, days I usually find myself in dark, brooding places, lost deep inside my own head. I definitely spent a good deal of time kicking around in my head for the past two days, none of it all that productive. The 24th is the designated day when I add a year onto my age, despite my getting older at a constant rate every day of the year. My birthday has been more a source of pissiness and foul moods than anything else-the bigger deal it is made the more unpleasant I tend to become. Last year’s birthday was more of a milestone occasion because, again, of those arbitrary numbers we attach to them that are still somehow meaningful. This year I was content to let it slide under the radar and it did for the most part. I fielded calls from family, finished the book I’ve been reading since this summer. A beautiful work about terminally ill children in inner-city LA, but a very heavy sombering one, which probably didn’t help things. Peet and I upheld our mini-tradition of going to The Sunset for beer and fried fare and then watching Lord of the Rings. There is comfort in familiarity, routines can be the best treatment for melancholy. I managed to avoid any really awful headwork this year and sort of slid through the day glazed and liquid. Just as well. I know I’m getting older. It’s going to happen anyway. No reason to celebrate that.

Today was a wasted day for me because I don’t celebrate Christmas and from my perspective the universe vacates for a day. It’s funny how people treat the holiday in this country: originally a pagan solstice rite, appropriated for reasons lost to the masses. I think it’s nice to have something to look forward to in the darkest days of the year (which is probably by design); the economic tie-in I could do without. And is there any religion left in Christmas, or is it just another Thanksgiving for Christians? Why cut down perfectly healthy trees? Jesus was born in the spring…regardless, the country more or less shuts down and I usually do too. I rooted through my stuff and filled a garbage bag and box with books, clothes, and bedding and took it to Goodwill, glad to be redistributing some of the stuff I don’t use. I spent a good chunk of the evening remixing some of the music I’ve recorded over the course of the past four months in hopes of assembling an EP before the new year. I paced around the apartment. I opened the fridge multiple times to find nothing new in it. I tried unsuccessfully to start a new book. I thought about all this obligation people place on themselves surrounding the exchange of gifts, and felt guilty that a few people had gotten me something and I hadn’t even thought about getting them anything. I wrote furiously for a while. I’m writing furiously again.

At least the 24th and 25th are over now. Every year I feel like I’m forced into a corner with myself for these two days and I wrestle hard. Sometimes I’ll have bouts of nostalgia in between rounds and feel the need to step back and marvel at all the things that have happened in the past 365 days before jumping in the ring again. None of that this year. This year was anesthetized with the shock of actually having time to myself. I’m still somewhat in shock; I find myself wandering about the house wondering how I could best spend my time, making mental lists of projects and errands that I don’t get to because I get distracted. I’m completely unfocused and generally useless to myself. A whole winter break of this can’t be good. I have to make something of this week, and badly. Usually I have big New Year’s plans and that structure usually helps me through things, but this year there is nothing. The past two days were going to be downers, given, but now that I’m through them, I can bounce back from the birthday/Christmas dip, get a good night’s sleep, keep the annual existential crisis to a minimum, and start making good use of all this time I’ve been given. Hopefully.

Stewing in the Wee Hours

music: Fruit Bats- Mouthfuls

(just working some stuff out here…)

1:15 in the morning. Just woke up aftet an icepick-in-the-temple migraine; still a little sedated from the migraine medicine, but fully awake. I used to thrive on times like these; now all I can think about is how my sleep cycle is all messed up.

Two days until Thanksgiving break and it can’t come soon enough. To any students out there: I guarantee the days before vacation are harder on teachers than they are on you. I’ll be heading to Milwaukee on Wednesday afternoon and all the craziness therein but at this point I welcome and embrace it. I was talking to another first-year teacher at school today who said something the lines of “I just need to be somewhere where I’m someone else for a while.” Pretty much. I don’t even live in this city these days, I just find myself here having to navigate its convoluted streets. All my thoughts are focused on getting out of Boston in some capacity: Thanksgiving back home, last minute super-saver flights to some exotic location for Christmas Break, Spring vacation in some National Parks out West, Australia and New Zealand next summer…how all these excursions will be funded is another question. Point is, though, that I’m not doing a good job of living my own life right now. Even on my own time I find myself plunging into frivolous matter and fluff content. The instinct is flight: to physically remove myself from this current reality. Then, of course, things will improve. Or not. But at least I’d have some time in which I would once again confront the contents of my own head, have the space to set some decent personal goals for myself, and have the energy to see them through.

I wake up every morning and check the weather on the internet.

It’s funny-being awake and somewhat functional at this time of night (hardly late by my past life’s standards) gives me some agency over my own life again. I’m misbehaving here being up at 1:15 AM, and it feels ok. Until about five hours from now when reality smacks me around. Part of all this mess is that I realize more and more I’m never going to be able to reclaim the carefree state of my own younger years, which moves farther away every second. This trip is one-way; there is no backtracking. So, then, onward.

Freedom and flexibility of time is a big issue here. I don’t hate my job — I probably love it too much — but it just sucks me dry. 12 months of work crammed into ten. tmo is a believer in control over one’s time, even valuing that over money, and I’d tend to agree at times like this. Perhaps self-employment is the solution…but then a whole cache of technical issues such as taxes and insurance. To be master of one’s own fate is a tough task. Society has me in a chokehold.

Enough. This sort of thinking is inevitably self-defeating. The best thing to do is, like always, do the best I can with what I’ve got. I’m tempted to fold ‘em, move, and start over, but I’m not convinced that such drastic, sweeping changes will solve anything. What is more important and realistic is a shift in mindset here. A reclaiming of my own life. Things like this become more clear and reachable at 1:15 in the morning.

Fighting Entropy with Six Strings

music: Grateful Dead- 6/10/73, Washington, D.C.

Life is an uphill struggle against the degradation of the universe. This plane of existence, the ancients tell us, began in chaos, and ever since the Great Clock was wound, this universe has been busy falling to pieces. On a more human scale this unfortunate phenomenon shakes out in various familiar and unpleasant ways: various batteries need charging, the dishes need to be washed, email sorted and replied to, boxes in the basement need to be pushed into newer and better piles, bike brakes need to be tightened, food needs to be purchased and consumed. The list goes on and on. We are constantly creating out order out of a rapidly unraveling existence. Do not be fooled: we are Sisyphus hauling his rock uphill for an eternity. We will never reach the point of equilibrium with the forces of entropy. The best we can do is hope that our efforts hold entropy at bay for a while, possibly delay the inevitable unravelling for just a little longer.

I consider it a mark of good mental health for myself when I have things organized and put away. I’ve been working on paring down my material possessions (save books and music) in order to make my personal labor debt with the universe as small as I can. Still, I find myself cleaning, sorting, and organizing on a weekly basis. I don’t have time or energy enough to tackle the tasks during the week these days, so usually things get backed up to the weekend. The weekend is the time, then, to straighten out my life. I couldn’t even list what I did today, but I felt like I spent the entire day checking errands and small tasks off my list. It shouldn’t be surprising that the list is still impossibly long at the end of the day.

This weekend, though, was easier on the soul than others. I think that the extra hour helped in some way. But more than that, I think that the secret to my success this weekend had a lot to do with my new Gibson. I played a healthy amount of music this weekend, and with others. And it made all the difference.

Saturday was a day of friends and parties. I split early from a really nice party in JP (full of teachers and Outward Bound types) to rendezvous with Duncan and work some stuff out on the guitar. We’d been talking abstractly about playing music and finally got the chance to sit down and make it happen. Out to Arlington, then, late night on Saturday, to let some of the crap holding us back during the week work itself out in the form of sound. It was our first go-round, but it was good. We hit a nice tone of conversation, at points we even hit flow. Save some gear upgrades, this little collaboration can go places. I’m psyched to start playing more with Duncan, possibly bringing two or three more into the mix and making a legitimate band out of it. Then earlier tonight, a quick acoustic jam with roommate Matt. We’re coming at the guitar from slightly different directions, but we can still dig in and get something out of the experience. In both cases the music did more than hold entropy off, the act of plucking and picking that slab of wood and metal created order where there was none, made something out of nothing. I suppose that is the task of an instrument-to allow a human to exceed the limits of his own innate capabilities.

It’s Sunday night now, the end of another long week and another climb up over the weekend. I’ve cleaned, cooked, ordered, sorted, and (most importantly) created enough to feel settled. Monday will bring its accelerated rate of decline to my world, and entropy will once again gain the upper hand by the end of the week. We are Sisyphus, yes, but the creative art of making music will somehow lighten our load.

Just Passing Through

music: Godspeed You Black Emperor!- Lift Your Skinny Fists like Antennas to Heaven (d.2)

Through some incredible miracle of the natural order, a set of atoms and molecules combine in such a way to yield an independently functioning entity. Life is spawned against all galactic odds. While the majority of these bundles of molecules and chemical interactions never achieve more than the most basic instinctual and involuntary functions, a very select elite amass enough of the right kinds of chemical interactions and structural complexity to be called sentient. We lucky few, we 6.33 billion sentient biengs on this watery ball of rock, have been blessed with perhaps the most potent and complicated of all gifts in the known catalog of matter: awareness of our own life. If we are lucky, the precarious combination of molecules sustains our corporeal shells for 70 or 80 years, although rarely is our machinery able to carry us past 90 years. Our lives are defined by this limit, by the very certain and unwavering truth that one day in the future those processes which sustain our bodies will stop working. All of us know this, yet most of us refuse to believe it. Especially when it threatens us, our loved ones, and those we know. But in the end, of course, there is no getting around death. In its finality and absoluteness, death is perhaps the only thing that can properly define life.

Our consciousness is a blessing and a curse; we know from the beginning of our own self-awareness that we are working against a carefully veiled clock. That ultimately, no matter how important we are in life, how highly we measure on the human scale of greatness, we will end up worm food. Existentialism 101. I can remember one autumn night 20 or so years ago when the conditions of my own mortality hit me, I can remember crying and crying and mom asking what was wrong and me saying “i’m gonna die” and her growing worried thinking it was something that was to happen much much sooner than i was picturing. I, as well as the majority of humanity I’d imagine, doesn’t think in such severe terms all the time. Which is great. It helps us get on with our daily business, it allows us to pretend that we are somehow excused from the cycle of life on Planet Earth, that we serve a greater purpose. But as the lucky recipients of such a wonderous combination of chemicals and matter, we forget that we as humans are just passing through. On the times that we are confronted with death, things snap back into a more objectively proper perspective for a minute or two. If we are fortunate enough to have experienced that inexplicable series of chemical reactions we call love with regard to the departed, then things get painful on top of being unbearable.

My grandmother died on Saturday. She was 82. Her time was up, her clock had run down to zero. The time she borrowed on this material plane was full of experience, and me being her grandson much of this experience informed my own. But the natural order is a cruel master in its consistency; grandsons and grandmothers do not trump the cycling of nature. Her molecules were called to disband, serve a new purpose. She got 82 years, and in that time got her money’s worth. She was old, she was sick. It was her time. I can not complain, nor can I argue, but on this very real human level, it still hurts.

I made the trip to Milwaukee for Grandma’s funeral service and came back on Monday. The service itself was a modest one, simple and without frills. Appropriately. A roomful of Grandma’s family members, friends, and acquaintances gathered to pay respects and to share memories with each other. There was little fanfare, little broadcasting, little superflousness to the arrangement. Mom gave an incredible testimonial to Grandma’s life, one that I could only hope to approach had I that kind of time with Grandma, there was hugging, hand-shaking, and “i’m sorry-ing.” Even fewer went to Grandma’s apartment, the small corner of the universe she quietly occupied for over 30 years, and spent time. The scene was, in truth, odd and unsettling- for a gathering at Grandma’s apartment everything was askew. The table was facing the wrong direction; chairs were lined up in rows. Tables were set out on the driveway. Paper cups and paper plates. Strange food. Relatives I’d never met. The place was full of people, most familiar, most related, but things were not ok. The guest of honor, the social linchpin to the entire gathering, was missing. Her things were still there just as she left them-her perfume, her stacks of bills, refridgerator full of leftovers. Being in some version of Grandma’s apartment, having her presence gone but not fully vacated, was perhaps the hardest part. I had a day full of crying. I was glad to spend time with my family, my aunts and cousins, but that our last gathering in Grandma’s apartment was this one did not fit.

I am still shocked by the permanence of it all, the scope of finality surrounding death. I would like to think that although the physical vessel of Grandma has given out and been broken, some intact and pure essence of the lady floats somewhere, unencumbered by such faulty designs as the human body. As a matter of faith, though, I’m not sure I believe in such lofty things. What I do believe is that I, along with a handful of other souls, carry pieces of Grandma with us. I will always hear that voice ringing in my ears: “David, you have been given a great mind and it is your obligation to use it!” No small task, but this was no small lady. In the end of Grandma’s life, I reaffirm all those lessons and make them my own. And strangely, but not so strangely, my own life comes into sharper focus. I have been living closer to my own skin for the past couple of days, fully and vitally aware of my own human condition, that despite frequent tune-ups and oil changes I am not built to operate for more than 60 more years, and that although on even the planetary scale our singlular lives do not amount to much, on the human scale this synergy of molecules and reactions we call life is the most precious thing in the universe.

Mighty Wings

music: Pink Floyd- Is There Anybody Out There?

I will be flying back to Milwaukee tomorrow. It was a last-minute decision. The flight was booked last night in the wee hours. We’ve been told that despite finishing her latest bout of therapies and treatments, Grandma L. doesn’t have much longer.

I will save my thoughts on Grandma’s life for a later date. For now it’s enough to try to wrap my head around the current situation. The sequence of events that lead to where we find ourselves was a quick one; not three months ago Grandma was doing well, quite lucid and mentally sharp. I’m afraid that at this point she isn’t all there, not able to carry on conversations, not really able to form words and vocalize them. She is still able to understand what people are saying, and since there still is the possibility for some communication I decided to visit her sooner than later. Two days in Milwaukee to spend with Grandma. This, in all likelihood, will be the last time I will get to spend with Grandma, and knowing that going into this weekend visit frames the events to come in a very peculiar, fatalistic way.

But what else is there to do? I will go, I will visit, I will hope that she acknowledges my presence in some way, I will hope even harder that she will be able to say something to me. And most of all, I will have to say something to her. What do you say to someone when you know it will be the last time you will ever see them? Especially when that someone is your grandmother? There is no easy answer. There’s probably not even a good answer. But I will go, and I will see what comes out. A big chunk of the family will be there, and we together will see what comes out of these final days with Grandma.

My cousin nailed it exactly when I said that I couldn’t be disappointed with Grandma’s life; she simply said that no matter what it will be hard to say goodbye. That, however, is exactly the task set before me for this weekend. In some ways, it will be a gesture lost to an opiate haze, and I will be forced to be content with the sum total of my interactions with Grandma for the past 25 years. We humans tend to rush in at the last minute in a fit of desperation, trying to squeeze out a little more…something when we know the end is near, but in truth the greatest measurement of how you have expressed yourself to someone else is your average day-to-day interaction with them. Should I have called more? Should I have visited more? It’s a moot point now. In spite of a school year looming near and a pile of work needing my attention, I prioritize. To Milwaukee. To Grandma. Tomorrow. My eyes are already running.

Preparing for Re-Entry

music: Grateful Dead- 4/11/78

Been back in Boston for some time now, but I haven’t. My head has still been drifting in and out of the summertime revelry of the open road. I’ve not yet washed myself of that travellin’ dirt and grime. I’ve not yet settled into anything comfortable here in Boston; I’m still sleeping on couches and (if possible) out on the back porch in my sleeping bag. I’m still living out of milk crates. I’m still quite mobile, even though I’ve been fairly stationary for the past couple of days. I’m still not really answerable to the world-at-large; I still am doing pretty much exactly as I please. But that’s quickly coming to a grinding halt and I’m being forced to become a real person again. It was inevitable, I know, but it still is rough. This summer was just that good-so good that I’m not yet fully willing to trade the vagabond’s lifestyle for something closer to a normal stable life.

Today was the first day of orientation for new teachers. We didn’t really have to do anything but show up and listen, and still it was rough. I came home with a migraine the likes of which I haven’t experienced for some time, probably last May, and I can’t help but think it is tied to going back to work. And things aren’t even that stressful yet. I’m still moving at a West Coast pace, proceeding through my days here with a detached calm, hoping to hold onto that for as long as possible. There was so much that was appealing out there as far as lifestyle…makes me wonder why I’m still out here. But there are reasons. There are friends. There is work. And as my friend M. reminded me the other day, people out here seem to be more driven, more motivated to do something with themselves. Which is good and bad, I guess, but I can appreciate the tenacity in pursuit. It’s a fast-moving train, and I’m about to jump on. This week is about taking that running start.

I finally get to move into my room tomorrow. While I don’t mind living out of a bag when I’m travelling, the couchsurfing thing has reached its limit here. Setting up my own space will go a long way towards allowing me to deal with the rest of it all out here. I’m looking forward to doing some unpacking and reorganizing, putting everything back in its place, setting up a homebase of operations. The structure my room will provide will prove invaluable in the next couple of weeks; there is some turbulence on the way.

Superhero Utility Belt

music: Eva Cassidy- Live from Blues Alley

My old roommate Liz made up a song about me. It was to the tune of that old bubblegum pop 1950’s song “It’s in his kiss” and the only line she worked out is “it’s in his bag/that’s where it is!” She, apparently was impressed with all the things I carry around with me. Someday I should do a complete buttpack inventory and post it, but for today it’s enough to know that I have two 6’ lengths of 4 mm p-cord stashed away in the bag.

I was at The Gut working out some plans for this week and whipping out a final round of cover letters when a fellow member of the TAC program comes up looking like they are about to ask a favor. Turns out some professor’s kid dropped their toy Superman in the pit that lines the building and couldn’t get it out. My friend couldn’t find the security guard to open the basement door to the outside in that pit. The problem with just jumping down there is that you can’t easily get out of it- the pitch is about 75-80 degrees off the horizontal and there’s nothing to hold onto as you climb. But my friend’s thought process went something like this: oh, Taus is like a mountain climber, he can get down there to get that kid’s toy. Sure, sure.

I whipped out my two lengths of p-cord and tied them together with a fisherman’s (note: different from the fisherman’s taught to tie up sails at Minikani) and did a double-eight to anchor one end of the rope on a railing. Then a quick descent, a gathering of the kid’s toy, and no problems coming back up because of the rope. In the bag.

(This is a great site on knots, by the way.)

No, I never was a boy scout. Better. I was a camp counselor. And if you are a camp counselor, you are nothing without your stocked buttpack. Over the years I’ve refined the practice to better suit urban travel and navigation, but the old reliable items still come through in the clutch. I guess I’m infamous among those that know me for my stocked buttpack. 1ey and tmo as well. They like to call it my man-purse, which is fine. But it’s really my superhero utility belt.

Springing

music: Olu Dara- In the World

Been two weeks since I last wrote here. Doesn’t feel like two weeks. Things have been hectic.

Spring has officially coated Boston in a warm bath of anticipation. Summer is within reach, and for me that means the end of grad school and student teaching, the bestowing of the title “Master of Education,” a new job (for which I’ll be paid!), moving, and the light at the end of the tunnel: six weeks or so of relatively unstructured travelling.

But not yet.

The past two weeks have, essentially, been a process of me cranking up a machine: tightening springs, oiling joints, preparing for that day in the not-so-distant future that I will set the machine called summer in motion and finally be free from all the pressure and obligation of this past year. It will be most welcome. So I’ve been busy. I’ve been working (in a very loose sense) on my final portfolio submissions for grad school, interviewing for jobs, adjusting unit and lesson plans and whipping up curriculum, putting paperwork through to assume a full-time substitute teaching job after my grad program ends, tying off the last little bits of Live Live as a radio show, negotiating living situations for next fall, and beginning to plan for my cross-country trip this summer. I’ve somehow managed two overnight campouts in the past two weeks, a brief trip to Brooklyn, a night at Murphy’s, and a concert downtown. Plus, I took it upon myself to do my own taxes. No large feat in the grand scheme of things, but quite time consuming. It will all be worth it in a couple weeks when I get my refund. Uncle Sam pays for David’s summer vacation.

I feel like I’ve been slacking this week. It’s been BPS’s spring break, and I’ve been sleeping late and not working much. I’ve caught a brief stomach bug and am tied to the bathroom today, which is why I have time, thought space, and proximity to a computer enough to finally blog. But I’ve worked myself out of the working habit. The summer machine is kicking in prematurely, and all that potential energy is leaking out. I think that’s why it’s called “spring break.”

Two weeks ago was a tough week. I was dealing with the closing of Live Live, the faults of rushed lesson planning, an insurmountable accumulated sleep debt, and some terrible gray rainy weather. This past week has been much better. The sun and warm weather have finally hit. I’ve managed to relax a bit. It has been nice to not be productive but now that I have to snap back into the gruelling schedule I realize that I have grown soft. Tanned and rested, but soft. I will be returning to the grad student’s lifestyle soon, and will be dragging my feet despite myself. I can feel the migraines returning already.

There is not that much time standing in between me and the summer. The spring in my cranked up mind is already starting to uncoil and release some of its energy. The trick now will be to sustain some sort of work ethic over the next eight weeks. and re-wind enough to make it through the end of June. I’m already looking into July, but there are still two months that will be quite full that need attention and effort. I only hope I can manage to keep myself together for that much longer.

Taking Care

music: Altitude Music- 3/10/04

We received a certain piece of advice from one of our TEP directors at the start of the year: “if three people tell you you’re sick, lie down.” I’m not listening. Not to worry my mom too much, but a good number of people have said “David, you’ve lost some weight.” (no, it’s genetic) Or “David, you look exhausted.” Or some freshman at school, god bless them, say stuff like: “Mr. Taus, you look pretty beat.” You have to appreciate the honesty at some level, i suppose. But I refuse to listen. I’m eating enough. I’m not exhausted. I’m doing this fine. And for the most part I am doing this fine, but the pace I’ve set for myself is not sustainable. I’ve only begun to admit my own mortality as of late and allow myself some time for R&R.

It’s a painful schedule: up at 6:30 every morning, all day at high school. If I have classes at Harvard I leave around 3:30; if not, I’m leaving around 5:30 or 6:00pm helping kids or grading papers. Then usually straight home to my own schoolwork-some of the last hoops I’m going to have to jump through in this Master’s/certification program. Add a recent angle to the Live Live project, a bunch of horrific roommates, and a crisis at the radio station that could very well shut us down for good and I’m not one with much spare time. Oh-and some new ideas I have for songs that aren’t being acutalized. And friends. Remember them? I sort of do. I wonder if they remember me.

So I’ve started to realize that this is a lifestyle that is really difficult. I’ve been able to maintain it to some extent and have been somewhat successful at getting most of the stuff done but it’s beginning to take its toll on my mental well-being. As a counter-measure, I’ve started to take time for myself when I can get it. That usually means an hour nap when I get home from school, allowing myself to eat meals on the run more, especially when I don’t have time to cook (which is all the time), including more meat in my diet (efficient source of protein and energy), and letting some things slide that really should get some of my attention were there time. I’m moderately successful. I’m eating better, but I’m still exhausted. And I can count on a migraine about every two weeks to keep me sidelined and force me to take things slow. Still not managing much time for friends though. That’s the next step: re-including fun social things in my week. Visits with friends. Checking out music (something I haven’t done much of, I realize, since the 1ey took off for parts unknown). Allowing some time to gather myself and just breathe in the mornings and before bed. I’m getting better. I went to Murphy’s for a special night of Geoff Scott’s Altitude Music (listening to it right now…sweet stuff) and furthered some ideas that tmo and I have had regarding the future of Live Live.

Stress will be there. Stress will always be there. On the whole, I think I’m dealing with it fairly well. Consider the following: The radio station is in a tailspin, scheduled to wreck on May 1st. Only a miracle will save ABFree at this point. There’s only so much I can do though, and even if I had the time to do it 40 hours a week, I don’t think I’d want to given the other people involved. The curriculum we’re using at school is entirely self-generated, and out of my content area. I find myself talking and teaching stuff that I really don’t know all that well. Pieces of the end-of-grad-program portfolio, a final statement on msyelf as a teacher, are due with increasing frequency. I’m not sleeping much. I haven’t seen friends in a long, long time. And now, on top of that all, I’m beginning to look for a job for the fall.

Small bites. This was the big lesson I learned during my solo travels in Europe. It’s good to keep in mind here. Putting blinders on anything farther away than a week or two (except the job hunt) might be the thing that saves me. That and more sleep. Speaking of, g’night.

�YLE B�YLE

music: MMW- 2/16/01 Tokyo, Japan

Been some time. Howdy.

It’s not that things have been slow. Just the opposite in fact. I’ve been doin’ some hard travelin’, you see, and since the second week of this fine month I’ve been moving all around the country at full tilt with not a moment to pause and gather my thoughts. Thus, there is much to write about and no time to write about it all. I’ve been doin’ some hard thinkin’ as well.

As far as summaries go, here’s what I’ve been up to in loose order since the beginning of the month: teaching teaching teaching, throwing together some classwork for classes of my own, setting up a system to record stuff at murphy’s, editing some tracks recorded at murphy’s, popping down to NYC for the long weekend, popping out to CO to visit colleagues and family, see the mountains, and deliver lectures. Then back to Boston to re-organize things after travelling, distribute libations, sift some through some audio and photo, begin some work in earnest on songwriting, begin the job hunt, teaching, teaching, teaching, forge ahead on the Live Live front, try to have some fun, and hope to keep everything to 18 hours/day so there is time for sleep. Whew.

The past two or so weeks have been packed with substance outside of my own realm: the rebellion in Haiti, the hostile takeover of the Muppets, the beginnings of baseball season, and the like. I’ve had some good thoughts about this and that but haven’t had the time to document them. So many times I’ve said to myself: “that is the seed of a great blog entry.” So many times, however, it has dissipated into the ether. Things are moving fast-too fast to type it all out on a semi-nightly basis. The archivist in me is sad about that, the delusional narcissist in me is upset that adoring throngs haven’t had the chance to read about much, but the rest of me has been too busy to notice. I’m being stretched and pulled here and there and am spreading myself pretty thin these days. All over the place. Here and there. A mishmash. So-so. In short (and in Turkish, of all things): Ş�YLE B�YLE. Which, to the best of my knowledge, is pronounced “surly burly” except you have to imitate the Swedish chef and have a little phlegm caught in the back of your throat when you are saying it. We learned that one this morning in a TEP workshop. Pretty much sums things up.

I have bitten off far too much than I can chew, but I’m surprisingly calm about it. I think I’m learning to live comfortably with transition. More to the point: I think I’m learning that transition is a fluid thing, a matter of degree, and that I will never have the luxury of only thinking about one thing at a time. So the torch-juggling, plate-spinning, unicycle-riding, animal-balloon-making sideshow continues. All things considered, it’s going pretty well. Teaching continues to be challenging and rewarding, the radio show is stable enough to still be worth doing, I’m beginning to get more serious about writing some music, I’m trying to spend as much time as I can out of the house and with friends (largely unsuccessful), I’m digging into this archiving project at murphy’s, I’m beginning to think about both jobs for next year and plans for the summer, and all the while I’m musing about a girl in Brooklyn. The days are getting noticably longer, the weather noticably warmer, and as a result of that and the past two weeks I’m settling with not settling for a bit. Ş�YLE B�YLE.

Space To Breathe

music: Altitude Music- 1/13/04

Today begins my February break, and my first real week off since September. This afternoon I finished my third week of student teaching, handed in the first piece to my final portfolio, tied up a bunch of loose ends, and took a very satisfying nap. In a couple of minutes I’m going to jump in the car and head off for NYC for a long weekend. I’m going to return mid-week, get my hands dirty setting up and editing down the murphy’s music archives, prep for a guest lecture on the music industry at UC-Boulder, and then spend four days out in Colorado with a cast of characters, AJM included. It doesn’t seem like I’m going to slow down over this break, just shift focus a little here and there. But damnit, I’m going to sleep in.

I can’t remember ever needing a break this much. I’ve punished myself the past couple of weeks. Teaching itself is taking up 10 hours a day with all the planning and grading. It would take up longer if I let it, but the classes Harvard-side cut me short sometimes. As does my ability to stay awake and productive. One late night (which happens every Tuesday, of course) throws my schedule completely out of whack and I usually can’t get back on track until the weekend rolls around. Coursework has picked up substantially for some reason; It’s sort of unexplainable. And stuff around music, those things I do in for fun in my “spare time,” has picked up momentum lately as well. There aren’t enough hours in the day. This week, as evidenced, burnt me out. I got very frustrated, very negative. Now that I have made it through this week and moreover accomplished all that I set out to do, I’m feeling better about all this pressure.

I’m fully aware that all of this is self-imposed. Of all the things to know about David Taus, one of the most important is that nobody is harder on David than David. And moreover, David has the unfortunate ability to deny himself himself for periods of time if the situation demands it. That was what happened for the past couple of weeks. Everything pivoted around that 105 minute block that I was in front of the classroom every afternoon. My sleep suffered, my eating habits were abyssmal, and my waking hours were spent in work. I was as efficient as I could be, as close to an educational automaton as is humanly possible. My body couldn’t take it; I got sick. I got lots of migraines. Things were not positive.

But I made it through. This is a week of recuperation, this is a time where I can spend indulging in myself a little bit, thinking about the things I want to think about, doing the things I want to do. Thank goodness. Time to build up the mental and physical energy stores, because on the other end of this week the schedule resumes. And the job search begins in earnest on top of that. For now, though, I breathe a little, sleep a little, eat a lot, and take things slow and easy. Thank goodness.

Hoist the Main

music: Beck- Sea Change

Exams are finally over after over a month of drawn-out anguish. I made the mistake of relaxing for a little bit this weekend and inertia has carried me into sickness. The NyQuill should leave me drooling all over myself in a matter of minutes, but before I drop off I want to quickly process some of my thoughts on the past couple of days. Things are pivoting. Changes are afoot and I’m quite happy about them all.

My full-on student teaching began today. I am now responsible for a class of kids and I love it. There was so much that was familiar about the opening day experience; I was working through emotions pretty much identical to those I experienced on the porch of Cabin 10 in the summer of 1997. Opening day is opening day, no matter if it is at camp or school. Things went smoothly. My class was almost too mellow and quiet for comfort. I suppose I should enjoy that while I still can. They seem like a good group and I’m excited about going in every day to work with them. Simpler than that, too: I’m excited about going in every day. My graduate education becomes more practical now and I’m going to assume a more regular work schedule. I’ll have to wake up at 6:30 every morning, but it’s good.

Live Live is up and running again. It’s something I really have not paid much attention to over the past couple months, but it’s good to be pushing those fronts again. I’m sending out emails to bands due to play in Boston in the near future, asking for interviews, all that. The fact that I’m scheduled to be a guest lecturer in a University course about Live Live has spurred me to some sort of action with the program. That, and I fear the station will not renew its lease in April and will go under. Another lesson from camp: go out with a bang.

Up North is finished and is en route to AJM and The Doctor. My path as an original creator of music has begun in earnest with that little CD sampler of our time Up North, and I’m excited to pursue some musical ideas I’ve been sitting on with what limited time I may have .

1ey left today for Ecuador. He’s been gone from Boston for some time, but this was the big push. I spoke with him briefly last night and he sounds excited and a little nervous. Appropriately so. While he packed for his grand journey, a good collection of us listened to the music he left behind as we shared a wonderful Sunday night at 12 Curtis: myself, JoJo, tmo, Peet, and others modestly celebrated friendship and good times with quesadillas, beer, laughter, all with the 1ey’s music in the background. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to see my friends at the 1-2. Hopefully with a more normal schedule I’ll get to spend some more quality time with them.

And on top of all that, I’m having an absolutely positive time making new friends out of old friends. Unexpected, improbable, maybe even wildly rediculous, but completely wonderful.

It’s funny: usually this time of year is marked by a certain stagnation and hibernation. Usually people are biding their time until things warm up a bit, weathering the winter, riding out the cold snap. But I seem to be getting somewhere with a quickness these days. There’s a strong wind blowing for me right now, and I’m doing all I can to catch it and ride it fast and far.

Librarian's Son

music: Nick Drake- Pink Moon

I’va always had a propensity to organize, document, and catalog things in my life. I think about my binders of baseball cards meticulously organized by team alphebetically, and players within each team alphabetically, the books I just won’t get rid of, my box of college work…the list (a well-organized list, to be sure) goes on. I think I get it from mom, who has made a career out of doing just that. There’s something genetic at work: collect and save.

It’s not stuff that I’m after. That was a big hump to get over, but I’ve been in the process of shedding extraneous material possessions over the past couple of years. It’s a good practice, but something rubs me the wrong way every time I discard that pencil box I’ve been carrying around for all these years. I’ve learned to do it anyway. This past December saw a purging of epic proportions back in Milwaukee. But what remained was carefully orgainzed and cataloged. Old work, old pictures, items that capture a very specific place and time. I’m glad that I have them around still-they trigger memories that otherwise would have gotten lost in the cognitive shuffle.

I think the goal in all this organizing and cataloging of artifacts from my past is the attempt to capture my thoughts and position in the world at that very moment. There have been several ways in which I documented my thoughts over the years, some more successful than others. I have kept various notebooks of various sizes, some reserved for late night broodings and others pocket sized for quick and regular access. I have shoeboxes full of old pictures. Here in Boston, the pictures date back to about 1983. I carried a dictophone for the better part of two years and have cassette tapes full of sound clips: ambient noise, street performers, confesstion-style testimonials, snippets of conversations. And I suppose that the final link in this chain of documenting my thoughts is this here weblog.

One thing I’ve never been too good at is taking pictures. Mom does it with religious fervor when the kids are in town; Grandma D. also is quite a shutterbug. It’s always been such a hassle, though. And expensive. As a result, I don’t have many pictures that I have taken myself, and those pictures I do have leave gaping holes in the fossil record of my past. Yet, I enjoy looking at old pictures and using photography as a medium of documentation. It is accessible, distributable, and the like. I take pictures of funny things, though: I think I have a picture of every room I have lived in since sophomore year of college (they all look surprisingly similar).

I’m not entirely sure why, but I spent my birthday money on a digital camera. It arrived today, and now, for the first time in years, I have a camera again. I got it because I knew that I would have to do some documenation for teaching in the near future, as well as some press work for the recently revived Live Live website, but other than that, I’m not sure how I will go about documenting my life with the thing. Taking pictures feels almost unnatural to me, like writing with my right hand. I don’t like how cameras intrude into the natural flow of an activity. Given my genetic inheritance, I’ll probably get over that at some point. Especially now that I have this tool of documentation.

I’m still not quite adept at handling the thing and getting quality results. Again I am reminded: I may know a thing or two, but I’m no 1ey The genius of digital is that I don’t have to worry about wasting film and can experiment as much as I please.

I think that the process of organizing and cataloging, and even collecting, has become that much easier now that we can use computers to do it. Not only does it make things like alphebetizing by hand completely obsolete, it is also makes tangible objects obsolete. That I can fit hundreds of thousands of pictures and sound clips onto this computer without sacrificing physical space is a feat, something that might just make the process of documenting my thoughts that much more viable.

Some pictures from inside my room: January 21, 2004
Guitar and Books
Flower
Whiteboard
Buttpack

Re-Sharpening

music: Godspeed You Black Emperor!- f#a#oo

I woke up this morning in a basement hide-a-bed in Milwaukee, and am now sitting in my apartment in Boston. I spent the last hour or two putting everything away from my sojourn to the homelands of the midwest and now, by all measures, I’m back. My break is over and everything is pretty much just as I left it, ready to be picked up and worked through. Breaks are cruel in this regard.

I spent a good deal of time organizing and sorting and getting from here to there with the least amount of friction possible. Mom, as always, was indespensible on the Milwaukee end, and tmo was a lifesaver on the Boston end. I brought back my drumset which made things a little trickier than usual, but I miraculously didn’t have to pay extra for any of the oversized and overweight boxes. Between a rolling cart and tmo’s truck, the drums found their way safely to 9 Lothrop and will see good use there under the care of our newly engaged friends, along with OGD, Jeff, and the dog called Sam. They couldn’t have a better home. I guess anything beats them collecting dust in the attic as they have been doing for the past 2 years. But time for music will become a luxury in the next few months.

Now that everything is back in its proper place I can take a minute to glimpse at the state of things here and now, and it does look like I’m standing under a tsunami. I have to finish researching the solitude paper, finish planning a unit on water for my teaching, and write two essays on cognitive theory between the 20th and 23rd of this month. I inherit my own chemistry classroom on the 26th. I realize that right now is the moment of calm before the mad rush; once things are set in motion, I don’t see them slowing down until June when I graduate. And here I am, already thinking about the summer and beyond. I’m getting ahead of myself. There are promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

Taking a break was nice, but it really killed any momentum that I had as far as school was concerned. I hit a nice pace here and had figured out a decent and somewhat sane schedule, but no more. Milwaukee has made me soft. After spending two weeks in revelry and sleep, having meals cooked for me, driving everywhere, enjoying the quiet and the open space, I got soft. I lost some sort of edge that the hustle and bustle, the crowdedness, the intensity of Boston and the East coast keeps sharp. The two places are indeed different, and it is only when I slip between worlds that I see just how different they are. Although I sometimes would have it otherwise, I am glad to be out here, caught up in this chaos and din, being pushed into action and productivity. Things in the midwest move such that I’m not sure I would have the momentum to accomplish all the things I’m setting out to do here. Tonight, though, it’s more of a struggle to work with such pressures after I’ve been free of them for the better part of two weeks. I have gone soft, out of shape. It’s been quite a nice time spending my day how I most would like to spend it, but here, back in the real world, I have promises to keep. The post-travelling ritual of putting everything back in its place today has given me some degree of focus; tomorrow the workout resumes in earnest.

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.

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.

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.

Digging In The Dirt

music: Keith Jarrett- The Koln Concert

We are now officially in the “holiday season,” I guess. Cut away all the economics and this is a time of year to celebrate family and life, to share and give. As is appropriate, I had Thanksgiving dinner tonight with my family in Milwaukee. That, however, doesn’t really say anything interesting on its own. Some thoughts must be unpacked here…

Family. It’s become a tricky word for me. it convolutes things slightly this time of year, and on this Thanksgiving night especially.

Partially because of my protests to our family’s previous Thanksgiving plans, we held Thanksgiving dinner at the house I grew up in tonight, as we have for the past three years. The six Taus/Edelmans were of course in attendance, as were my dad’s side of the family: Grandma L., Aunt L., and the J’s. This is practically the only time of year where I have the chance to see my two cousins and we all find ourselves in the same location. Grandma is beaming because she has all her grandchildren in one place, and we are happy for it as well. It is important to me to stay in touch with my dad’s side of my family; I’m glad that we have Thanksgiving together, because there is little opportunity for me to get some face time in with them otherwise these days.

Tonight’s cast of characters, my family, provided for some intruiging human chemistry. While everybody is smiles and hugs, I still don’t feel 100% good about the whole event. My spirit was restless tonight, my senses a bit on edge. I’m not all that surprised, though, being caught squarely in the middle of such a family gathering. I’ve felt this way for the past couple Thanksgivings, and it has everything to do with the trickiness the concept of family here. Rich, Ari, and Jessie moved in over eight years ago, and I have come to accept them as part of my nuclear family, but I don’t think that attempts to mix them in smoothly with my dad’s side of the family will ever really work. Mom has a heart of gold to try to engineer such a feat, and everyone plays their part as best they can, but things just don’t click. They can’t. They shouldn’t. Family is indeed a tricky word, and will continue to be. This being a holiday to celebrate such institutions, I spent some time tonight digging through the earth in order to better examine my roots. I tried some meditating on my own family, my place in it, and how to best frame those other people with whom I share my life.

It’s nobody’s fault, really, but being in Milwaukee can’t help but be stressful for me. That’s why I’m not here all that much. As a result, I don’t get a lot of time in with family members and in many ways have relationships with them that don’t go far past their relation to me as family members, even though I know better. And then I think: do these people know me as anything other than “son”, “brother”, “cousin”, etc? It’s hard to say, but I’d guess probably not. (That, I think, is one of the biggest reasons why I’m doing this Blog in the first place.) Maybe it is because family is such a tricky concept that we all relate via perceived family role prototypes. Were it not my own family, my own experience, it would make a fascinating psychological study in interpersonal dynamics. But that’s not my goal here. I want to make it my goal to come to understand those people in my family as something other than family members. If that makes any sense.

After my sisters went out to see friends, I opted out of a high school night out, and mom and Rich went to bed, I spent about two hours paging through old photo books. It started with my parents’ baby books, and carried all the way through when my sister was born. The pictures I found myself staring at the most were the ones of my parents in high school, college, and in young adulthood. These were my parents as very real people, free of the roles of “mom” or “dad”, with a good amount of youth in them and a very unknown future ahead of them. There were pictures of dad with his high school girlfriend (not mom) and pictures of mom looking very 1960’s teenager with her brother and sister, who I only know as “aunt” and “uncle”. There were pictures of my mom picking out vegetables at Haymarket in Boston, and pictures of my dad hanging out with some friends in his apartment. There were pictures of the two of them taking trips to Maine, marriage even then a distant concept. There were a couple pictures of mom with her housemates sitting on the stoop. There were pictures of dad in cap and gown at his graduation from Harvard. Then there were pictures of their wedding, and with that, things started to drift closer to my own story. But still, their lives were full of detail in their own right. I wasn’t even a thought then-these two people who became my parents eventually had a wealth of life expreience before I came into being.

The pictures eventually turn to topics more familiar: my birth, my early years, my sister’s birth. I have memories of the rest of the story, but my memories, I realize, are quite biased towards my own perspective. And as a consequence, so is my story. The point here is, though, that my story is not their story at all. Even in the years after 1978, my parents lived their own lives and experienced things beyond their roles as “mom” and “dad”. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to fully understand that part of them because I am their son. Family is a tricky word.

I don’t have the opportunity to ask dad about his life, his individuality, although his and my family members could help fill in some of the missing pieces. From what I do know about his story I think I would have really enjoyed getting to know that part of him that was not just “dad”. Mom is still here, but I still don’t have a good grasp on who that young woman in the pictures is. There is a picture of mom in a hospital bed with me as a newborn, all wrinkled and red and puffy, she holding me and staring at me in that classic mother-newborn way. I sat there tonight wondering how in the world the young lady in the pictures and the woman who picked me up from the airport yesterday could be the same person, and moreover, how that person is the same as the teenager in pictures before. (I might add that I have trouble integrating my own past into my self-concept: was I really that wide-eyed three-year-old in corduroy overalls? Was I really that wrinkled, puffy newborn? It doesn’t connect easily for me, even back here in Milwaukee.)

I think the trick is to realize that they are not the same person-mom’s story and life is still unfolding and she is changing along with it. But she is not the only one. I am now six feet and skinny and almost twenty five years old, hardly the little infant in those pictures. But there is some connection between those people in the pictures and this family today and every time I come home I am reminded of that. It’s easier to forget out there, far away from my first home, far away from my roots. It’s easy to forget, but it’s important to remember. That, above all else, is what Thanksgiving was about for me this year. It makes me sad that such an activity is riddled with complications and obfuscations, but that is the way my story has played itself out. Moreover, it is the way my family members’ stories have gone as well But there is much more than that.

Family is indeed a tricky word, and that won’t change, but it’s what I have been given. And for what it is, to the best of my ability, I should give thanks.

Holding Patterns

music: Muddy Waters- The London Muddy Waters Sessions

These past couple days have been extraordinarily noneventful. With Thanksgiving weekend impending, I mentally checked out earlier than I should have and have been piddling around, tidying up obscure and relatively nonimportant corners of my life because I couldn’t really think of anything else better to do and I didn’t have the energy and motivation to dive into school at full speed. I’m lucky in that I can set the academic cruise control for short amounts of time without getting myself into trouble. I’ve spent a lot of time by myself this past week, mostly doing schoolwork so I wouldn’t have to take a lot home over the break. I banged out a paper, which I think turned out fairly well, but it could be a little too light on references for an empirical work. I started to collect sources for my term paper in my Environmentalism class. The topic is quite apt, considering this week: the relaionship between solitude and the wilderness and how it plays out in different historical contexts. Focus will be on Thoreau, Muir, Abbey, and McCandliss (Krakauer’s “Into The Wild”), although I suppose I could go as far back as Moses on Sinai and as recent as my own excursion out West this past May. It’s going to be a doozy of a paper: 35+ pages. And other work on top of that. When Thanksgiving ends, I slide into Finals period at Harvard (which lasts until the end of January), and will have to negotiate an on-site high school internship all the while. It will be a trial. I’m not really worried about finishing it. But I’m definitely not looking forward to it.

I think it’s high time to get the hell outta Dodge for a little bit. I will find myself in Milwaukee tomorrow afternoon, and will spend a good four days mucking about in my past. It’s always a very emotionally charged time. There are things tied up in the Milwaukee package that are very good, and things that are not good at all. Much like my own past, I suppose. As a result, I’m always both excited and anxious about going home. It’s a trial in many ways, it really is. It is my home, and yet, I no longer have a place of my own there. There is so much history there that I can’t help but confront spectres from the past as well as celebrate personal and shared history. Thanksgiving break is about the perfect time to be home: 4 days. This winter I’ll be home for about two weeks between Christmas and New Year’s, probably the longest I’ve been in Milwaukee in some years, and I’m not quite sure how I’ll handle that stretch as of yet. I do know that I’ll have plenty of work to take home, and some business to attend to up North over New Year’s.

But for now, I’m glad to be making the voyage to Milwaukee. Things are in a strange stasis in Boston right now, and I could use a shift of perspective. And a break from the routine. It will be good and important to see family and friends, to reconnect with where I came from. More thoughts to come, I’m sure, as the weekend progresses.

Burning the Midnight Oil (pt. 4)

music: The New Deal- gone gone gone

I don’t know what it is about working late at night, but I always put out better stuff. That my mental dead time during the day is from about 4pm-8pm is going to be a pain in the ass for years to come. No matter while I’m in grad school, I’ll just give another Friday night to paper writing. I banged out a pretty good rough draft tonight, although there is much tweaking for tomorrow and Sunday (my notes to myself: “add references; add a critique of Piaget; cut by 250 words). It’s really not that bad. I’m not complaining, especially now that I have my Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout and some really nice late night groove thanks to the latest Homegrown radio promotions mailing. The new The New Deal (eh?) CD is really an acnievement. As was Piaget’s theory. My paper? Gettin’ there.

I also spent the idle minutes burning out a lot of the music that’s been sitting on my computer, so on top of the six or so CDs I got through Live Live this week I have 15 more CDs that are freshly burned and more in the works. I ran out of binder space about a month ago so now I just have music accumulating on hard drives and spindles. I really should take a hint. My stuff is totally unorganized, but oooh, so much music. You can have worse problems.

But the music is not just something to collect and accumulate; thanks to some dialogue with my colleague out west, I have some renewed energy in making music of my own. Despite my downstairs neighbor not being a fan (a story for another time). As tmo said one snowy night in Syracuse a couple of seasons back, it is time to start singing my own song. Once I figure out how to upload some of my little creations here I will, but suffice it to say that my own music making is progressing. Slowly, sure, but given the time and energy constraints, fairly well.

A mellow, productive Friday at home leaves me in good shape for the rest of the weekend. I’ll work through this paper at a semi-leisurely pace now, and have time to see friends. Pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving feast/party at Lothrop with the Boston family tomorrow night, hopefully connecting with M. at some point, and catch up with tmo somewhere in there. Maybe even some time in the out-of-doors. And a trip home very, very soon. I’ve been doing this thing here so intensely I nearly forgot that there’s much, much more out there. but in the meantime, I push forward into the night…

On The Horizon

music: Eric Clapton- Unplugged

Last week was an off-week on many fronts. The obvious biggest factor was the 1ey’s departure from Boston. I’ve been taking it harder than I thought I would, but can seek solace in those wonderful people that are still here. the 12 Curtis crew (JoJo and tmo) is indespensible and I wish I could spend more time over there. Hell, I wish I lived there. Instead, I’m here. The apartment had an off-week as well, full of heated messages on the dry-erase board in the front hall and subsequent passive-aggressive nonsense. The functionality of the setup here approached the tipping point when balanced with the stress of “group” dynamics last week. It’s like that when the phone bills from July-November come close to $2000. (That was one big reason why I switched to cell phone.) No joke. We had a house meeting last night and vented a bunch, so the pressure has diminished some. There’s some good points, some bad points, but it all works out.

Veteran’s day, a blessing upon first glance, really threw things out of whack as far as weekly rhythm and scheduling. I’m having trouble finding time when I’m able to sit myself down in the library and really get down to work. Reading is taking twice as long as it should; I’m really picking apart texts far too carefully. It’s fine for short-term comprehension, but there’s no way I can retain all of it, or even most of it, which is really what matters. I’m starting to think about new study strategies. It’s also that I’m getting antsy with all the learning about teaching. Do or Do Not. Clear Your Mind of Questions. Your Weapons, You Will Not Need Them. And all that.

I was also sufferning from some pretty substantial headaches last week. I was taken out of commission on Wed. night, and I had one all Thursday night as well, although I still managed to spend some good quality time with M. at the Someday and on a nice walk through Tufts campus. Things just don’t seem to get stale for a second with us. It was a really nice evening, except for the whole it-feels-like-someone’s-swing-an-icepick-in-your-eye-cavity thing. I’m going to see a doctor about the migraines on Monday, and yes, it’s very much to the point of me looking for the little pill I can take for it, which is highly uncharacteristic of me. I just don’t have the time to waste burying my head into some cool pillows as often as I would need to with these headaches.

The weekend was pleasant enough: P-Rock was in town and we caught up, talked about NYE plans involving a cabin in Northern Wisconsin, and generally reinforced for each other that the camp family survives time and distance with ease and grace. I went to a party which a fellow TAC student managed to find a way to get school to cater the event by turning it into a student group, and I took home about 20 pounds of Blue Ribbon BBQ at the end of the night. It’s been feeding me ever since. We had another cigar and scotch gathering on Sunday, which was overly decadent (and appropriately so). And I paid about three dollars for a bag of dirt, as I was repotting some of my plants. 20 pounds of meat for free, three dollars for a bag of dirt. Rediculous.

So clearly things are moving, possibly even progressing, but I’m not really motivated by the immediate these days. It gets to be like that around Thanksgiving. Especially so after last week, which for some reason sucked horribly. I’m looking up and out at things in the near future as motivation: the end of some of these classes, the beginning of the real work of teaching, going to WI for thanksgiving and then a nice stretch in December during which Reuben gets married (!!!) and I reunite with long lost friends to relax a little far away from civilization and record some original music over New Year’s. The time of year is approaching where it’s very common to connect with old friends, celebrate community and family, and (if you can cut through all the economic bullshit), celebrate the spirit of giving. As such, it’s a very stressful time of year and I know that I’m bound to work myself into a funk at some point.

But it’s not about the day-to-day right now. I’m looking more at landscapes, larger patterns, and rituals that celebrate relationships: Thanksgiving, NYE in Wabeno, weddings, road trips to see music with a solid group of friends, even leisurely late-night strolls through city streets and a new friend’s thoughts. Grad school has really forced me to keep my eyes down, staring at my feet and maybe even the next few steps. It’s a welcome reprieve to have many wonderful reasons to see the path ahead of me, examine the larger landscape, to rest my eyes on the horizon.

A Day Out Of Time

music: Grateful Dead- Dead Set

Today was a holiday, and to celebrate, I took the day to not do anything related to education, teaching, grad school, or any of that. There is such thing as too much of a good thing, and as good as this grad school endeavor is, there are other things. And I don’t let myself remember that too often.

Instead of working, I played my guitar, slept late, and today drove to Providence and back before a very satisfying nap, radio show, and Murphy’s. For some reason it’s been an extremely emotionally charged day and at the end of it i was feeling very misanthropic which is why I opted out of the Murphy’s after-party which is probably still going on. It’s nice to enjoy a quiet moment to cap off the day.

I woke up around 11:00 and felt the need to get out of Boston for a little bit. Providence was an impulsive trip, and classmate and fellow revolutionary M.McC. came along for the ride, enduring my nostalgia all the while. The highlight was that we met up with former roommate Stylz for lunch and a whopping 45 minutes of catching up. It was a really nice check-in for me, who hasn’t seen this guy I used to live with and see every day for no small time now. Stylz seems to be doing very well, making a go of acting, and moreover finding personal truth in the process. He described acting to me as a process of uncovering and revealing, as opposed to a make-believe or creation of the illusory, which is what I always considered it to be. An interesting notion to say the least; I am more comfortable with the whole enterprise when construed as such. And Stylz is getting a lot out of it. Despite the to-be-expected struggles, he seemed healthy, alive. A good, albeit brief, check-in. The Good Doctor P. was completely MIA and hasn’t returned my calls. He’s probably still on. So it goes in the world of medicine. We all have our albatross.

We did a brief walking tour of Brown and I got nostalgic for days long gone. It was raining out and there weren’t many people around, but still. The place still reeks of experiences I had; little corners of the most obscure parts of that campus hold powerful personal meaning. I called J. from in front of Middle Caswell and left a message. And wiped away a very, very small tear that was probably mistaken for a raindrop.

I was back in Boston by 5:00pm and got two hours of nap in. I crashed hard. Didn’t realize how deep my sleep debt had gotten, but now I feel a lot better. Actually, more rested than I have felt in months. Hardly a coincidence that it was on the first day that I didn’t do any thinking about school since September. I know I’m very hard on myself, but I often don’t realize exactly how hard. It felt good to take it easy for once today. And yet, I’ve got this guilt creeping in about not doing anything today. Tomorrow I’ll make up for it. We all have our albatross.

Murphy’s was excellent tonight. Even tmo was getting giddy; even A. was dancing. The past two weeks really have been exceptional. There’s good energy in that room consistently and the crowds have thinned out a little which is nice. The regulars were there tonight and most are at an after-party, but I thought it more important to do some processing and figure out why I was so emotionally extreme today. Not in a bad way, really, but it’s a fair summary of my moods over the past 24 hours. That, and I really wasn’t up for socializing as much as I was up for some late-night pensive thinking and reflection. It’s nice to take a moment from my day; this weblog is a tool that really allows me to do it effectively and I am thankful for that. But there is tomorrow to think of now: class, schoolwork, and judging from the house whiteboard my roommates are getting prickly about phone bills, bathroom use, the front door and other petty, nitpicky issues. It’s astounding how each wants something out of this living situation, but it’s always something completely selfish, and it’s never said explictly, just written on the whiteboard. So it looks like I’ll wake up to business as usual, but it was good to take a break from it all today. No, necessary. Thanksgiving will be most welcome when it hits in two weeks.

Braking; Breaking

music: The Motet- 12/13/01 Durango, CO

It’s a brilliant sunny day today, although the temperature is threatening to dip below 40. To think last weekend we had a 70 degree Saturday to enjoy. Autumn in New England at its finest. All around the city there are signs of winter preparation. The incoming cold is spurring people into action before it’s just plain uncomfortable to be outside. Things are already making noises about the winter and my bike is no exception.

My two-wheeler has been through the shop a good number of times since the summer. First was a full-out tune up that cost almost as much as the bike did new. Then, thanks to a pack of fine individuals who decided to cover my ride in laundry detergent and fire extinguisher and taco my rear wheel, I sunk another $100 or so into repairs. Things were humming along fairly well up until the weather started to turn towards winter, and then braking problems began.

The first incident was an acrobatic feat of slapstick proportions: i flipped my handlebars at the huge crosswalk in front of MIT on Mass Ave and had a crowd of students and japanese tourists gawking. My brakes had failed to engage, so I had given them an extra little squeeze and was sent flying. Five weeks later the scabs have given way to some scars worthy of a much cooler story.

The brakes have been problematic since. Three of the four are original parts, and after over two years, it’s almost to be expected that they stick. It still is frustrating. I spent some time working on the brakes after biting it but really didn’t get anywhere better than where I was. This past week or two I realized I was pedaling around with the brake pads touching the wheel, effectively doubling or tripling the physical work I had to do to get from here to there. The colder weather is making the brakes stick a little more every day and despite tweaking, adjusting, and decent amounts of lube it’s a constant struggle to get those things to pivot cleanly. I set them so they work fairly well, then when they heat up a bit due to friction, things start pivoting differently and the whole things gets thrown off. It also doesn’t help that my rear tire is out of true again. And it’s a brand new tire. Boston roads will do that.

All that being said, I like taking time to work on my bike. It’s a much needed reprieve from staring at pages upon pages of text all day.

Brakes will become even more essential as the winter rolls in. Things are not progressing from my end anymore; it’s about time to seek expert advice from the good people at Broadway Bikes. Winter’s coming on and my ride really needs to be, quite literally, a well-oiled machine. It’s time to equip my snowspeeder for cold weather warfare.

There And Back

music: Keith Jarrett- Vienna Concert

It’s a good thing when a body hits the bed tired, ready for sleep. There’s a sense of daily accomplishment in the feeling that you are going to collapse into a deep sleep at the end of the day. Today is one of those days. It’s almost as if I’m feeling the past three days catch up to me right now. I think that by all outward appearances, the past three days haven’t really been anything too out of the ordinary. But from where I lay right now, i’m feeling it all.

Thursday started at 8:00 in the morning with a graduate section of my environmentalism class. I proposed my final project topic and it went over well: a study of solitude as it relates to the wilderness. I re-read my journal entries tonight from my time in Colorado and Utah last May, I think about how I conduct my life and spend my time, and I realize that this issue is one of immediate and personal importance. It’s a worthy puzzle to solve, at least something with which to tinker for a while. Then classes droned on and on from 2pm-7pm, and I met my folks for dinner, who were stopping by en route to Ari’s parent’s weekend at Wesleyan. Mom presented me with a real treasure: a signed copy of Sandman: Endless Nights that she scraped together at the Wisconsin Library Convention the day previous. Big points on this one. We had a nice dinner in Chinatown, talked about a good, healthy range of topics. In the quest to re-meet mom and Rich and relate on a more adult plane, I’m pleased with the progress. Baby steps, but steps nonetheless.

Friday was Halloween, but you never could have guessed it. I hardly celebrated. I had a frustrating day at my high school internship site. In order to learn about “where our kids come from,” we took a little bus around Roxbury and Dorchester and looked at the neighborhood through the window. Then we went to JP and had lunch at Bella Luna. It was three blocks or so away from Bolster Street, where I spent a great deal of time living myself. So much for learning anything. Halloween night was spent writing papers. It’s a tough assignment to distill and elucidate your vision of the purpose of schooling, and even though I’m three drafts into something, I’m not quite happy with the results. It’s a big, hairy, ungainly topic, and quite hard to manage. I don’t think I’m doing a good job with it, but given the time constraings, all the other work that needs my attention, and the fact that I’m taking the class pass-fail, I don’t think I’ll be able to give this one much more. Sad, indeed: not enough doing it and way too much getting it done. I did manage an hour for a Halloween Happy Hour, but it was fairly uneventful. Such is Friday night in Grad School.

Strange dreams abounded Friday night. Two stood out, although I forget the bulk of what they were about. I never can seem to remember my dreams, save a very potent one once or twice a year. Last night they were very potent, but after using my brain so much today, I’ve pushed their memories out almost entirely. So it goes.

Today was an excellent day. I woke up early and worked some on the paper, then did some reading for my Environmentalism class, and then in order to celebrate the unusually warm day, went on a most excellent bike ride with M. to Lexington on the Minuteman Trail. We had a great trip, full of pizza, pumpkin muffins, wandering around Lexington, a belfry, and getting into some pretty impressive conversations all the while. I really do enjoy spending time with her. We biked back into town in darkness and quite silently, which was an excellent moment. Following, we checked in with the 1ey (due to leave town in one week!!) and tmo afterwards for a bit, and then I came back home to bang out a decent draft of the schooling paper. I had aspirations to make a late-night run to somewhere outside the city for some nighttime quietness, but at this rate, it looks as if I’m going to stay put and get some sleep. Tomorrow will be another day packed with activity.

So there’s a very rough outline of the past three days. I generally don’t write summaries of things done as much as I write meditations on certain topics, and I’m not sure why I felt the need to document this past Thurs, Fri, Sat. Maybe because they were rich with varied activity, packed full, and at the same time quite typical of the things I do these days. Maybe because I needed a second to pause and catch my breath before the slide down into this coming week begins. Maybe because I needed to stop writing so academically and dig around my own head for a couple minutes. Maybe all of the above. Maybe I should shut off the third eye for once and sleep. Yes, yes. I think that’s the best idea I’ve had all weekend.

Settling In, Falling Back

music: Ben Harper- Live from Mars d.2

Tonight is quite possibly my least favorite night of the year, and I have Ben Franklin to thank for it. The man was a genius, yes: I am grateful for things like bifocals, electricity, and the Declaration of Independence. But Ben, really, why mess around with such a terrible concept as daylight savings time?

The truth of the matter is that daylight savings time happens between April and October, and now we are on “normal” time. It really doesn’t make a difference; all it boils down to is that it now gets dark much earlier than it should. And at this lattitude, it’s quite possible for a body to go to work and come from work in darkness. Today is, for all intents and purposes, the beginning of the winter months in Boston. It’s a dastardly environmental cue that sets off the human hibernation instinct if ever there was one. And the funny part is that it’s a human invention. As are all our measurements of time, I suppose. It frustrates me that legal precendent dictates when i rise and sleep as opposed to the movements of celestial bodies and the amount of light. It’s a little disconcerting that congress has jurisdiction over time, and that tonight they decided to deprive us of an hour of daylight at the end of the day. Daylight is short enough as it is in the winter.

The difference, really, is trivial, considering how isolated we are from the fluctuations of natural phenomena such as daylight in our big, industrialized cities. It’s only when we get out of the glow of the streetlight that we realize the full impact of daylight savings. To celebrate the last long (long? 6:15 is long??) night of the year, I biked with new friend M. out to the Arboretum to enjoy the last moments of daylight before standard time once again takes over. We had an excellent time of it, both being outdoors-minded; we managed to linger on top of the big hill and watch the landscape darken to night. I was happy to be out of the city’s buzz as the earth grew quiet and dark (and cold), and felt lucky to share such a moment with M., whose affinity for such activities is most excellent and appreciated. Light or dark early or late, our time was quality this evening and made me happy.

Nevertheless, the sun now rises and sets “earlier.” There’s not much I can do about the situation, unfortunately. Keeping my watch one hour ahead of Eastern Standard Time wouldn’t really be that great of an idea. So I acquiesce. More than that, though, I enter “winter mode.” This time of year is one of burrowing deep into one’s home and surroundings, of less geographic exploration and more inner contemplation, of spending time insulated from the frigid outside, of big blankets and mugs of hot tea. Considering what is asked of me as far as grad school goes, this isn’t really a bad idea. The wanderlust is squelched for the time being, and I’m working on the final touches of a metaphorical nest that I’ll be in for the next 5 or 6 months. Somehow, due to this strange marker of time, I can give myself that much more permission to stay in and wander less. And in doing so, I lose a sense of possibility that only accompanies the summer months. For now, for the sake of grad school, that might be a good thing. And seeing as though I’ll have the rest of my summers off from here on out, I’ll bite the bullet now and hold out for those warm, lingering twilight hours that will inevitably come after this time issue springs ahead in April.

Ya-Hey!

music: Modereko- Solar Igniter

A bunch of us went apple picking last Saturday, which was positive, but then everyone thought it would be funny to take pictures of the guy from the midwest in his natural habitat.

Yes, those are my overalls. Yes, that’s straw in my mouth. No, that’s not my tractor. It was a pretty sweet tractor though. As tractors go.

Fronting The Essentials

music: Andy’s Friends- Manitou

I read Thoreau’s _Walden_ for a class last week. It’s the third time I read the thing through, and I think that it’s one of those desert-island texts that not only would be most appropriate content-wise for someone stranded on a desert island but would also provide one with a certain peace of mind and reinforce the choice to simplify. Or at the very least, there’s enough in there to occupy one’s thoughts for a great long while.

It’s funny reading Thoreau here and now, while I’m attending his alma mater, the place he looked at with no small amount of disdain, and so close to where he conducted his grand experiement in self-reliance. He was rife with contradictions, granted: he visited his hometown several times a week. He was eccentric, true, a bit of a crackpot. And even in the attainment of his most high and noble goals, he lacked certain life experiences that are themselves as valuable as any lesson that his book has to teach. Still, his philosophy is one of great inspiration to me and his story is alluring. The themes found in Walden have been haunting my consciousness this week and have really distracted me from schoolwork. I visited Walden briefly last month, but I’m thinking another visit is appropriate before it gets too cold. Good place to get some thinking done.

My responsibilities at this point are scattered across several domains and none have a direct bearing on the basics of survival. Such is the way of things in an urban society that embraces division and specialization of labor. I’m not sure I’m a fan of the system. One of the effects is that I’m very much isolated from my environment; the closest I come to feeling the seasons change are my bike rides from place to place. A bunch of people from my program went apple-picking this morning in Stow, MA, and as I was eating apples straight off the tree I was reminded of this alienation from the environment in that the food that I eat, for the most part, is bought from display stands under neon lights, is wrapped in plastic, boxed in airtight containers.

But dare I pull a Thoreau, move out to a pond somewhere and build a one-room shack, farm what I can? (Is there a pond suitable for this sort of a project anymore??) Dare I turn my back on the city, on all those kids I’m being trained to teach, say goodbye to my city-dwelling friends, take myself out of society for a season or two? Considering the personal investment in society I’m making right now, the idea seems ass-backwards. But It’s something I’ve pondered half-seriously for some time and will not be able to shake probably for the rest of my days.

Thoreau was definitely in my blood this week. I find myself currently craving a different sort of experience. It is not one that is necessarily bound by solitude; I think that I have spent enough time with myself over the years to know that including others in my activities is usually much better than going at it alone (which I’ve done a great deal of and still value). And I suppose it doesn’t have to be as drastic as uprooting from a community I’ve worked hard to contribute to. No, there’s no need to take the extreme path, even if such a thing were possible, even if I allowed myself such a selfish act. There are things I can do to work towards that Walden-state that is so appealing, even in the big city. But it’s tough.

This evening I was at a house party hosted by fellow TAC‘ers, which was fun. They are a good group, but about 3 hours into it, I realized that I just didn’t want to be there, that it wasn’t the kind of socializing I was seeking. So I left. And for the time being, I’m much happier to be here, now, writing, playing my guitar, sipping sleepytime tea, getting ready for bed. Tomorrow will be full of schoolwork, but right now is nice. Right now feels good. Are there people out there excited about spending a quiet night in, cooking and reading and sipping tea, walking slow loops around Walden Pond, slowing down, celebrating people instead of stuff, living simply? Are there people out there that would choose this sort of life over that of the big city, with all its sensory overload? That breed seems scarce out here. My hunch is that all these people had the sense to get out of the big city in the first place. Duh. Thoreau could have told me that.

Walk Slower, Read Closer

music: Martin Sexton- Black Sheep

Whomever said that the ends justify the means has never been hiking. Anyone who has strapped on a backpack and set foot to trail could tell you that it’s very, very rarely about getting anywhere. Instead, it’s about how you get there. I had the good fortune to spend my Monday on the trail in New Hampshire with 1ey, Duncan, Amy, OGD, and friend C., hauling ass at a reasonable speed for the top of Mt. Monadonock. Now that I’m back down, out of the woods, and back in the big city, I realize the whole process was rushed for the sake of reaching the top, then reaching the car. The situation was framed by extraordinary time constraints. Yes, I walked the trail and could be given credit for doing so, but while doing so there was not a lot of good time spent enjoying and learning from that particular experience.

Hiking is not about getting anywhere. It’s about process, how the getting is handled. Because, of course, the only thing waiting at the end of a hike is no more hiking. A strange paradox, but one that we learn over and over in many avenues of our lives. We work on something, work towards something, only in the end to have it not be something that requires our attention anymore. It’s a model based on negative reinforcement.

I’ve had a hand-wrenching time writing papers due this week. They are turning out to be concise little exercises in distilling vast amounts of information. I am pretty certain that I do not have nearly enough information to adequately address some of these topics I’ve been asked to tackle, and yet I am faced with the prospect of handing in some of my supposedly well-developed thoughts to the foremost authorities in the field. I am not allowed to remain agnostic here. And so, like my hike today, I am much to preoccupied with getting it done and really not enjoying or learning from the process of doing it. Hardly something exclusive to written assignments; I have been more worried about getting all the reading assignments done than concerned with actually getting something out of the readings since this whole graduate school ordeal began in June. This is the way it always has been with schools in my experience. I can’t help but wonder if this is an absolutely horrible way to go about things.

The hike today was actually a great time. It was only meant to be a day’s worth of walking in the woods with some friends, and in that, it fulfilled all my expectations. But taken in a larger sense, it made me realize how quickly we move from one thing to the next, how great a priority is placed on getting things done. As I forge through school assignments, I fight the urge to simply get things done as much as possible. I think that if I had it my way, I’d tend to linger more, walk slower, read closer, relish a little more in the process of becoming instead of moving as quickly as I can towards completed.

No Longer Holding Water

music: U2- The Joshua Tree

There is a theory that life on earth’s main purpose is to facilitate the transport of water from place to place. I, over the years, have done my part. When I stop to think about all the things I have that are designed around water, it’s a little staggering. Of course, I never do think about things in these terms unless something drastic effects my water-drinking habits. And this week, lightning struck twice.

I came home to find a note of alarm on the house whiteboard in the front hall. (that’s how we communicate in the apartement: a whiteboard. My roommates are chronic door-closers and would much prefer the non-confrontational and the non-interactionist approaches to group living. whatever) Someone had left the kettle on and then left the apartment. The entire outside of my tea kettle is burnt black, and the bottom has chipped through the outer coating. It’s still splintering. It’s pretty much done. To top that feat of general neglect, I found my tea kettle in the trash this morning. Apparently one of the people I have to share living space with took it upon themselves to throw out my stuff. How nice.

More importantly, though, my nalgene is gone. This was a special piece of plastic (and p-cord and duct tape); it had been, quite literally, all around the world with me. 5 years and going. But now it’s gone. I can’t for the life of me figure out where it went. I retraced my steps three times today, but the thing didn’t turn up. So I’ve enlisted the backup nalgene, which could very well become the primary nalgene. Then I’d have to get a second one, all squeaky clean with the logo and calibrations still on it. There’s something really wierd about that.

It’s just stuff, yes, but it’s stuff I interacted with on a daily basis many times. It’s stuff that facilitated my water consumption, a vital life process. And somehow, this makes a difference. Were my roommates to ruin, say, a frying pan of mine I don’t think I would have reacted as strongly. Had I lost a hat I wouldn’t have felt such a loss. But it was my tea kettle and my nalgene. Lost and ruined. All I can do is drink a toast of water to them. Toasts of tea will have to wait.

Lessons in Physiology

music: Fugees- The Score

At the most basic level of survival lies two very important energy-producing and energy-conserving physiological mechanims: eating and sleeping. These two simple acts are necessary for survival. Duh. Funny, then, that educated folks seem to forget about these two very basic biological prerequisites. Being a grad student can be quite unhealthy.

I do eat, and I do sleep. I eat enough so that I have enough energy to make it through the day. I sleep about 6 hours a night on average during the week; just enough to stay awake and generally alert through my daily obligations. however, as the day wears on (especially towards the end of the week), I am increasingly hungry and tired. Thursday nights have become studies in headache as of late, most likely due to not eating and not sleeping enough. And inevitably, about once every three weeks, my body finally lets me know that I’ve been a bad biological entity and I eat a lot of decent, nourishing food and sleep a good 10-12 hours.

It’s not that I don’t want to eat and sleep more regularly. I would really like nothing more. My schedule generally prevents it from happening. In between class work, intern hours, and studying, there is little-to-no time to cook. On top of that, my oh-so-glorious housemates don’t want to share food (but apparently have no qualms about eating my avocados and onions…) so there is little incentive for me to put into making a good meal because it’s just me who will be eating it. Plus, then, late nights and early mornings translate into less sleep than I would want otherwise. And despite my best intentions and hopes, I’ve yet to settle into a decent and suitable routine. It’s a glorious setup.

I’m trying hard not to piss and moan about it. I’m trying hard to get quality sleep, to eat decent food, to generally take care of myself. But time is short, and grad school is hard on the nerves, and I generally say to myself that there are more important things to worry about than the amount of sleep I get and what I’m eating or not eating. There’s books to read, papers to write, things to think about, great teaching to do. Strange, then, that basic physiological needs would be pushed down the list. Maslow would be disappointed in my decision making.

I was reading this afternoon, and once again had trouble concentrating on the book. Whcih was strange, because I was reading Thoreau’s Walden, a book I find wholly relevant and inspiring to my personal philosophy. Yet, I couldn’t concentrate on it. Yes, part of it was the fact that Ol’ Man Henry rambles worse than a schizophrenic, but I came to realize it was also that I hadn’t eaten enough breakfast and needed more food. Lord knows why I didn’t make the connection earlier in the school year…priorities were shifted and I set off in search for food. As I snacked upon a less-than-savory apple, I realized that the problem also is that generally speaking, I’m always hungry. There really is no way to solve the problem of hunger, as Auster so adeptly outlined it in the first story of The New York Trilogy.

But I am human. I have physiology that demands food and sleep. Even at the expense of schoolwork, it might be time to start taking care of myself a little bit more.

Books < People

music: Ladysmith Black Mambazo- Best Of

Once again, it’s 2am. But this time, I just woke up from a “nap” that started at 6pm. much needed. This has been one incredible week in terms of waking and working. Not that it is exceptional in any way, except that my decision-making has favored having some quality converstations with people instead of reading books. The books, I finally accepted, will be there waiting for whenever I have time to read them. The people won’t. And yes, the books all got read for this week (sort of). More importantly, though, I finally began to take some time for people instead of squirreling myself away in the corners of the library and losing all ties to social reality for the sake of highbrow theorizing about this and that.

The dinner at El Charro this past Sunday set the tone for the week. Instead of rushing home to delve into books I probably didn’t have the attention span to get into properly, I ate mexican, danced the mariachi chicken dance with Johanna, and enjoyed the company of many fine people, including the 5 alums of Chowdahaus. Good phone conversations with mom and Rich this week while sitting outside the library. Even talked with college roommates long lost briefly this week, which was great. Met a really great bunch of people via Live Live this week, once again validating why I bother to keep that project going. I decided, as a result, to hit up murphy’s instead of going right home afterwards and spent some good time with said people. Got home around 3 am, but all well worth it. Even last night, when I gave myself time to study in the library, I ended up chatting for about an hour with N., a fellow TAC‘er who’s spent some good time living in and travelling in the Far East and talking with some pretty mind-boggling people. Alas, books didn’t get read but my education was indeed expanded.

I’m in a History of Science course this semester. It’s fulfilling a science requirement, but it’s really a history of environmental politics and philosophy. The professor is great; he has a lot of great things to say and is very adept at saying them. I really, really like going to class to listen. I’m not too bothered that he called me out on not doing all the readings for the week. He understands what sort of workload I’m operating under, he knows I’m there to get as much as I can, and as a historian, he’s a big fan of story. That’s essentially what I’ve been doing this week: collecting story from people in my life as opposed to synthesizing story from crusty academic books. I sometimes feel like there’s not really time allotted to me to do that this year, but it’s important stuff to do. Living in the study carrells 24/7 is a good way to drive myself crazy. Seems to be a theme this week as I go about framing my world and budgeting time accordingly. It means much less sleep and a little less getting read, but the inclusion of people in my week this week has made getting through the days that much better.

Carrying Capacity

music: Rahsaan Roland Kirk- Bright Moments

It’s the start of grad school in earnest and that means the stress level goes up, the schedule fills up, and the free time goes away. I’m finding myself trying desperately to coordinate all the readings and assignments, although it seems that with each new first class I go to, more and more reading piles up. I had 500 pages dumped on me just today (although it isn’t due until after the weekend). And I still have one more first class to go.

In this paper-based system of ours, reading means weight. And it had gotten to the point that my trusty buttpack, my failsafe survival kit of the past four-odd years, was just too small. I made a tough decision last week and decided to relegate my buttpack to extracurricular missions exclusively. It just couldn’t fit all the grad school paper, although it still excels at managing all my other stuff. A little internet shopping, and the perfect solution was found. Don’t worry, buttpack, ol’ friend; the new bag is in the family.

Behold: the Mountainsmith Guide.

The big difference is that mine’s red and doesn’t look as awkward because it’s not full of packing peanuts. It holds a bunch of things quite adeptly. Big pocket for oversized items, small pocket for regular sized items, front pocket for loose small items. There’s even non-zippered pocket space in front with space enough for a bike helmet and a disc. Mesh side pockets that hold Nalgenes. Space for pens, space for small books, space for nomad and palm pilot.

It’s bittersweet, it is. That buttpack travelled far and wide and I’m oh-so accustomed to picking the thing up every morning as I head out. But now it is going to have to sit some days out. Granted tenure, promoted to Buttpack Emeritus, given a pension and retirement benefits. It will absolutely still be put to use, but its younger, larger (and cleaner) little cousin will be handling all school assignments. I guess this also means that my old red L.L. Bean backpack from high school is ready for the Great Lost & Found Box In The Sky. The new backpack will be outfitted properly: lexan spoon and chopsticks will be purchased shortly and will find its way into the front pockets. P-cord. Live Live flyers. Maybe a small spare flashlight. Perhaps a bandana or two. You know, the essentials. It will take some time to get set up properly.

And the best part? I got it on clearance from REI Outlet. $35 down from $80. Pack it up, pack it in, let me begin…

In Which Our Hero Grows Increasingly Restless

music: Grateful Dead- Reckoning

This week was our first hint at autumn. The night comes sooner, the temerature cools down to a very pleasant sleeping temperature, and school is definitely in session. Tomorrow marks the first for real day of school, that is, my regular fall schedule. On paper, I am sitting pretty. Interning at an actual high school (gasp!) on Tuesday and Friday, and classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday (none of which start before noon). I’ve crossed the homework threshold and am re-gaining my reading stamina and tolerance for equal doses of scientific journal article and esoteric theory. Tomorrow starts a regular routine into which I can settle, hunker down, and prepare for the cold New England winter months.

This week, in many ways, has been a hard pill to swallow. I’m currently situated at the bottom of a very, very large mountain of rigorous intellectual work and it’s going to take a great deal of effort, will, and time to get moving along my path. I have a meeting with my faculty advisor tomorrow (not to be confused with my practicum advisor, my mentor teacher, or my internship coordinator), a very busy and important man who is a leading scholar in his field. I’m also taking his class. He co-teaches it with Howard Gardner So when I do my research or have a conversation with him (as I will tomorrow at 10:45), I really have to have read the book and know it, because, essentially, he wrote the book. Well, then. I am an insignificant paeon, sitting at the feet of giants. So far to go.

The list of things I need to do but haven’t done has not gotten any shorter in the past two weeks. Errands are lingering, nagging my conscience. They really are small and insignificant things (buy fertilizer for my plants, call college friends, update the Live Live website) but they are on my list, and as such I’m going to be slightly anxious about them until they are physically crossed off the list. Slightly anxious X several items = edgy and ornery David. And now that school is starting for real, some of these things just won’t get done. The big things are done, thank god, but it’s now just the hanging loose threads I am left tying up. Sometimes it seems that most of my day is spent tying up loose threads. That’s the great irony of the whole situation: more time planning and organizing and making my list leads to less time actually working towards completing those things on the list. And in the meanitme, the list grows…

It was my hope to get on up to Maine this weekend, to hit the proverbial reset button in my head, to clear the mental pallete and enjoy one last weekend outside before I am bound to libraries and the weather turns. Didn’t happen. An impulsive Saturday morning trip out to Cape Cod which did the trick sort of for a couple hours not really. More than anything else it was an indicator to me that I am feeling trapped and exasperated with my current surroundings. It’s painfully true, now that I lie in bed and ponder it on a Sunday night. Here’s where I am at the close of this weekend: I am exasperated. I am restless. I am not concentrating that well. I’m in a foul mood. I’ve been sleeping more than usual, eating less than I should. I know that I haven’t been good at keeping up with some of my personal goals set when I was in Milwaukee last month, namely staying in better contact with family members. I know I’m spending far too much time plugged into electronic gizmos (case in point…) and putting on music but not really listening to it. All bad things.

I can’t really pinpoint a cause here. But given enough time, something should be figured out. It always does. I don’t think that getting really busy and distracted by school and school-related obligations is a suitable solution. Something’s definitely gnawing away at the corners of my conscience. Here’s a great idea: maybe I should formalize this ambiguous funk some more, make it something more manipulatible, add it to the list of things I need to do….

…uhhh….ah, fuck. Time, I think, to get unconscious. g’night.

Inertia, Wheels, and Will

music: OM Trio- 5/4/02 (HGMN Private Party)

Sometimes the world conspires to send you a clear message. Today, that message was Newton’s first law: inertia.

Over the past two weeks, i sunk $160 into bike repairs and $500 or so for new car tires and a battery. Both were necessary expenses; each vehicle still had its original factory-release parts. Fine. Good. money spent in order to ensure ease of movement to and fro.

Yesterday the little engine light on my dashboard came back on. “CHECK ENGINE” it says in orange. Shit. The light had been on for months and upon replacing the battery it had gone off. Problem Solved, it seemed, but not quite. The mechanics tell me that it’s just a computer sensor malfunction. So the car drives fine, better with its new tires and battery, but something deep down inside isn’t working quite right. And in the back of my head, movement and travel with the vehicle are not quite as they should be.

It would be one thing if I actually used the car a lot. As I only use the car late late at night or to get out of town, things aren’t as serious. I have my bike, after all. Now, sort of. I woke up this morning to find that someone decided to take up bike maintnence and cleaning last night on my behalf. My bike is covered in fire extinguisher dust and laundry detergent, the reflector kicked in and shattered, and my back wheel removed and bent way out of shape. Luckily the rest of the bike seems to be OK, but it’s currently unridable. And covered in a strange gooey film. The bad news is that I have to get a new wheel. The good news is that I only have to get a new wheel. That someone decided to work some of their anger out on my bike last night sucks. That I can’t ride it and have to spend even more money on a new wheel after my $160 tune up is completely infuritating. The culprits’ friends (who lived across the hall and guiltily played dumb when I talked to them today) just moved out. How nice and convienent.

All this at a time when I should be in fierce and driven movement. I am at the cusp of the hill, about to accelerate at a blinding speed into the semester. Pre-fall reading is barely begun. Energy is bulding, but my vehicles are in various states of disrepair. Momentum is hard to come by in these waning days of summer; the gears aren’t really clicking into place as they should be. Wheels are warped. Sensors not registering properly.

This is mostly a function of my old friend inertia. My body, when at rest, tends to stay at rest. And these three weeks of summer break have been nothing but rest. Although I am admittedly getting a little restless, there has been absolutely zero goal-oriented behavior and very little productiveness with regard to immediate tasks this mini summer break. I have taken care of a bunch of other things during these three weeks- festering errands that have been on the list for months, a little introspection and intrapersonal re-evaluation, the cultivation of friendships that I let drop during the summer. But as far as my primary directive, my “job”, as it were, these three weeks have been devoid of progress.

Today, after finding my poor bike covered in goo and trashed, I realized that forward progress will not be made. I, consequently, had a brilliant afternoon at Walden Pond with Tim, 1ey, Johanna, J.Z., and some friends that Tim met at an ultimate tournament in Seattle. Swam in Walden Pond on a beautiful sunny day in August. Lived deliberately. Fronted the essential facts of life. I gave in to my personal inertia. Henry would be proud. In a week’s time I’ll be back in the swing of school again, and my body will be in motion, and will tend to stay in motion. But for this elusive mini-summer break that I’ve been given, inertia is preventing me from rolling forward. That, and a busted bike. In the meanitme, I’m having a fair time where I am, enjoying that which is not found rolling along the road of progress. It’s not possible to always be productive, and lord knows that I’ll be a well-oiled, fine tuned machine of productivity this fall. The trick now is to let myself be ok with staying at rest for a little bit. Funny to see come out of my thoughts in a time of such change…

Get Your Move On

music: Herbie Hancock- Takin’ Off

Labor Day Weekend in Boston means activity, change, and transition. So here we are, perched at the top of the final weekend of the official summer, with much movement and change impending. And a whole lot of that is to take place before the weekend is through.

Yesterday was full of movement: some errands to prepare for school, and a bike ride through Boston’s streets to start the day off. Critical Mass is an absolute joy for any city biker who has been bullied into sharing the road with cars. It’s less about sweet, sweet revenge for an hour or two (although that doesn’t really hurt), and more about asserting one’s rights as a member of city traffic. During our ride, we tackled streets such as Huntington, Charlesgate West, and Comm Ave at a nice, liesurely pace. Cars waited, trailed, recognized the bikers’ rights to be out on the street. Things got a bit hairy when we took a turn down by Fenway Park, but when the Yankees come into town in late August, things get hairy down there anyway. As one fellow biker said, “We can’t turn down there [Yawkey Way]. It’s full of sausages and meatheads. True, True. But as biking thrills go, there’s not much that compares to cruising through a Fenway Park crowd when the Yankees are in town. Doing so 70 strong just adds to the fun.

Critical Mass being the warmup, myself, a newly shaved G-Phatty, J.Z., and Peet (to an extent) swung into action getting most of (a still-limping) Tim’s stuff moved, and successfully so over the course of the evening. We moved, hauled, packed, unpacked, crammed, and carried from JP to Somerville and all things considered did a bang-up job getting all the important stuff moved in two trips and 5 carloads. Working from 10pm-2:30am was exhausting, but in the end it turned out well. Less traffic, cooler temps, less overall environmental resistance. Thus, Tim is getting his Move On in full gear. On that end of things, the 1ey is getting his Move Out, while sister Johanna is getting her Move In. I’ve seen several of my TEP teachers, each settling into their fall living situations, getting their respective Moves On.

Labor Day itself will be an absolute curse to the city of Boston this year: it is September 1. The day that at least 40% of Boston’s population is moving. Trucks fill the street, overanxious moms and dads and their more-entitled-than-thou children are busy claiming their stake on the curbs hustling things in and out of drab college apartments. Tempers. Honking. Double and Triple Parking. Labor. It’s a day that could count towards court-ordered community service hours, or even a loftier pennance for sins transgressed against fellow man and the environment. It’s a fucking mess, and in short, I’m glad to not be participating in the Great Annual Boston Upheaval of Housing (GA! BUH.) 2003. As moving is on the short list of things I absolutely detest, yesterday was plenty for me this go-around.

The weekend marks a temporal barrier for a lot of people around the country, myself included this year. It’s Back-To-School time. New twists this year, as I will be both student and teacher, but my three-week version of summer break is over and despite my not having read most of the post-summer/pre-fall requried reading, the school bell doth toll for me. Tuesday we move into our school placement sites, get a feel for things, and prepare for the full crushing impact of the one-two punch of teaching and grad school.

The past two nights have had that autumnal nip to them, indicating the inevitable falling of the leaves, shortening of the days, transition to yet another cold and messy New England winter. Things are in motion, moving towards the next thing, really can’t be (shouldn’t be) stopped or resisted. Funny, then, that I spent most of this week sleeping late, tying up as many loose ends as I could, lazing about, resisting the rest of the city’s propensity to move, conserving my strength and energy for the whirlwind that will follow this weekend, these days of labor.

Historicity (Orientation and Perspective)

music: Fingerstyle guitar compilation

Fellow anize’ers never disappoint. Some hard hitting words from DFC…

…and the original article.

It could be a cop-out to self-label as introverted and be done with it, although I have no doubt that it is completely and entirely true. I suppose tha for the sake of better integrating my past into my present, I’ll have to make special efforts to work against my personality orientation. That which can be named can be controlled. Right?

Historicity

music: Tea Leaf Green- High Sierra 7/4/03

I spent Wednesday through Sunday of last week in Milwaukee. Had a good deal of time to spend with immediate family, extended family, and a handful of friends. Going home is usually a stressful occasion; having it coupled with the holiday seaston makes it especially so. a visit in late August, then, was not nearly as stressful as the visits impending in late November and December. Thus, there was time to stretch out, lounge about, and relax a bit.

The theme every time I go to Milwaukee is the same: I have a past. I know this, of course, but upon each visit, I seem to be reminded of certain corners of my past about which I had forgotten. The big chunks are always clear: family, extended family, high school friends, camp. But more often than not my memory is more declarative than episodic. Visiting home does quite a number on cueing up the ol’ episodic. And this trip was more different.

I had some good conversations while home. Briefly checked in with Trangy regarding his big shift from the ultra-familiar at our summer homeland to the expanses of the American West. (Others at camp are preparing to step up to their respective challenges: Drayna tells me he is digging deeper into med school, A.K. is figuring out how to best approximate the camp experience year round and moving in an easterly direction while doing so, E.H. is about to graduate and get his move on as well.) M.M. and I shared two fairly significant conversations, which really hit the nail on the head as far as all the things I was thinking about in terms of past versus present. The Rapper and I got down to some grimy issues while pacing Milwaukee’s downtown, he getting restless with kicking around Fox Point in his post-med school shift and is taking steps in a positive direction, presumably leading to Chicago. Funny how the theme was the same throughout the weekend: recognizing one’s past and figuring out how to integrate the past’s lessons into one’s present.

For a lot of folks in Milwaukee, this season is one of fairly significant change, voyage, shear, and shift. Same story on the family front. Sarah is setting up her own place and now has a quasi-serious boyfriend (this time her age). Jessie is working towards flying the coop in one year’s time, and is having quite a time figuring out where she’s going to end up. Cousin Benji is about to drive to Denver and become a buff red-haired rat in that wonderful race we college grads tend to run. Grandma Lois is gearing up for a trip out east this September(an increasingly difficult task for her), and (recently-turned 80 years old) Grandpa Max is trying hard to not slow down. Grandma Doris is staying busy keeping Grandpa Max a little less busy. It’s a wonderful interplay.

Considering all: different challenges, Same theme. Including me.

Now back in Boston, after spending a good day sleeping late, eating right, fixing up the Live Live website, working through some post-summer reading for school, and a good three hours on the bike down to Park Street and back, I have had some time to chew over the theme of last week’s journey home. And consider some solutions to its dilemma — and it is a dilemma — how to best integrate aspects of my past into the present?

Part of the problem is physical location. I tend to focus on what is directly in front of me. I tend to concern myself with things and issues with which I can interact on a sensory level. Which is fine. But many issues, situations, people are not physically proximal and therefore get less attention. I think getting a cell phone was a step in the direction of remembering that I carry my past with me. But it’s more than being mindful of such issues and people. I think that it’s important to in some way ritualize these connections to the past, to engage in action with regard to my past, to actively bring it to the forefront and into my present.

Gut-reaction: this seems like an unnatural action for me. It seems forced, contrived, unnecessary. Four years of undergraduate psychology tell me to flag such actions as important simply due to my knee-jerk reaction. Santayana’s axiom about history, then, seems to apply to individuals as well as civilizations.

And as much as I do shunt my past to…well, the past…I do enjoy the moments when it collides with the present. This seems to happen a lot in Milwaukee, which is why the trips home are both stressful and fruitful. No doubt things will just get more beautiful and complicated come December…

Yet Another Sign of the Apocalypse

music: Altitude Music 5/21/02

Cultural norms contine to chip away at my better judgement. I spent a good hour today researching cell phones.

I cringe at the thought of carrying one of those ringing devices around with me. Very rarely do I want to be 100% reachable. If I do end up getting one, which is looking more and more likely every day, I take solace in the fact that yes, I can switch it off. Yes, I can leave it at home. But if the situation arises, I have the option.

My reasoning for even considering this leap into the present is twofold:

1. I am entirely unreachable now that I am in grad school and never home. My schedule is such that I am back and forth from the library, high school, classes, and wherever else. This year, by design, is meant to be spent out and about. Because I don’t live with my friends anymore, getting ahold of them (or them getting ahold of me) has been increasingly difficult. So there’s access — only for a small group of people though. Everyone else I’d rather wait until I got home to hear from.

2. My home situation is growing increasingly unpleasant. Part of it is that roommate K. is on the phone the majority of the time she is home, and to Senegal at that. Sure, she has to talk with her hubby, but 3/4 of the time I pick up to make a phone call, I can’t. I really don’t mind taking steps that would liberate me from the people with whom I live. At this point, the bads of cell phone ownership are quickly becoming outweighed by the bads of sharing a phone line with the roomies and having to come home to check messages. Plus, I often don’t get messages. Last week I missed four phone calls that I found out about over email; three were “business” calls for Live Live. Infinitely frustrating.

I suppose it was a matter of time. I suppose that if I am to do this, I really have to get over my luddite tendencies. I suppose it’s not that big a deal. But still, I’m very anxious over the whole business. I’ll sleep on it a couple of nights, weigh things out in my mind, and more likely than not, bite the bullet by the beginning of school in September.

Burning It Out

music: Alison Krauss: So Long, So Wrong

Today I woke up with a fever and a headache. That was at 7:00 AM. It’s now past noon, and after wrestling with a very uncomfortable consciousness all morning, I’m throwing in the towel and accepting the fact that I’m going to be awake and it’s going to suck.

This is the bad news. The good news is that the fever means I’m burning out what’s left of the sickness that I’ve been negotiating since Thursday. I could take some medicine, but I have come to see pill-popping for headaches increasingly in Faustian terms.. Not only is my tolerance for things like alleve and advil far too high, but some part of me thinks that i’ll get a headache (and possibly fever too) when they have worn off. Plus the elevated body temperature is essential to kill off whatever is making me cough, wheeze, and excrete mucous. This is nothing new to me, and once I get a free minute I’m going to investigate some more potent migraine medicine (mom says imitrex nasal spray is the way to go. In the meantime, I can lie as still as possible and jam a thumb into my eyesocket, which seems to help with the pressure in my head. And, of course, continue to blow snot and blood into an already disgusting bandana.

This is some time to get sick. Neither life nor teaching nor grad school will slow down for me. Although I skipped class on Thursday to stay home and convalesce, that only means more work to catch up on today. If I can get around to it, that is. Yesterday was Saturday, usually a break in the rigorous schedule. Instead, I spent eight hours filling out scantron bubbles. And then a get-together at Volker and Peet’s place, which was nice, but I was simply too exhausted and residually sick to get into it. Some nice pictures from the 1ey’s voyages West, obligatory conversations about the funk with Peet, and the latest in housing, stretching, dancing, and living from tmo, who is about to celebrate his going under the knife with a trip up to Limestone, ME. I’ll be home writing papers.

I really should start up on some of my work today, but I’m physically out right now, hunkered down in my room on this beautiful Sunday blowing snot rockets and doing what I can to keep my core temperature at a relatively comfortable 100 degrees. Instead I’m working through some organizational stuff that is not cognitively demanding: burning out CDs. I figure that if i’m going to be burning, I might as well burn on multiple fronts. Looks increasingly like the trip out to the Common Ground to see the “Skip’s Party Band” won’t happen tonight. Balls.

This is purgatory. My hope is that by tomorrow all the evil will be expelled from my body and I can get back on the workout wheel of teacher education. I’m hitting the homestretch for the summer-only two weeks to go before three weeks of freedom and the return to a more varied and familiar lifestyle. It’s imperitave that i’m in working order for the homestretch, and this fever/headache/virus thing needs to end itself before I vault into perpetual motion once again. It’s a good lesson: sometimes one needs to walk slow. Or lie down sweating and shivering at the same time with a thumb jammed into one’s eyesocket to relieve intracranial pressure. One of the two.

Swingin'

music: Garcia/Grisman/Rice- The Pizza Tapes

Spurred by an impromptu gift from tmo, I finally got my hammock up and am currently lounging in my room, suspended by red, yellow, and black weaving, gently swinging somewhere between tonights uncompleted homework and tomorrow’s classes. But for the very first time, I can access the internet from my hammock. Thanks to this nifty wireless laptop I’ve got. Ain’t technology grand?

Things are in full motion currently, despite my current suspended state. I find myself in the thick of the summer of ‘03 and am far too busy moment-to-moment to relaize that my lack of free time is resulting in a summer-that-never-was. Well, that’s not quite fair. More like summer-that-is-dedicated-to-the-practice-and-study-of-teaching. If I stick with it, this will be the last summer where I have obligations of this magnitude. From here on in, the summertime is mine to use how I see fit. Which is nice.

But with all this bustling about, writing papers and grading papers, I hardly have time to catch my breath. There is something to be said for going full-tilt from 7:00 AM until 11:00 (or so) PM five days a week. By this point, week 4, I’m beginning to get a feel for where my physicial limits might lie. Tonight was a series of failed attempts to get into the meat of a paper due next Monday. I would have liked to put the thing behind me before the weekend began, but in an uncharacteristic move for me I chose to give myself the extra time to put some quality work into the thing instead of getting it off my desk. Sunday afternoon should be a blast. But it’s par for the course. Full Speed Ahead from the time I wake up until the time I go to bed. Time in the summer is much more precious than time during the rest of the year, and no matter what I’m doing, I have to maximize my use of time between Memorial Day and Labor Day. There’s a lot of work to do, some kids to teach, some things to learn, and I’m more often than not going to bed exhausted. Reminds me of another summer job I had…

This hammock might be my favorite piece of furniture. It requires that I slow down and realx when I lie in it. In return, I get to defy gravity for a while. Thought of as such, it becomes a tool that helps me balance out a little. This weaving bought at a hippie music festival for something like $30 has become a refuge. Helps me step away from the day. Catch my breath. Slow down. Take time to reflect a bit. Listen to music (something that my schedule rarely allows for these days, which is an utter travesty). And look — because I threw in the towel tonight with regard to work, I have a clear schedule for the rest of the night and it’s only 11pm. Clearly cause for celebration. More to the point: time to stop typing and start sleeping. Maybe I’ll just doze off right here, suspended three feet or so off the ground.

Chowdahaus it Ain't

music: Bob Marley- Songs of Freedom d.4

snippets from the house meeting tonight:
-please sign the leases and return with deposit as soon as you can.
-message center? good idea.
-i don’t see the problem with five separate sticks of butter in the fridge. just don’t leave them out.
-i need to drink bottled water.
-please lock the door, even when you’re home. just in case.
-yeah, maybe we should make our common space usable.
-i’d like to supervise any ‘modifications’ you are thinking of making to your room.
-who knows how this dsl works?
-organic waste goes down the disposal.
-i just got a 27 inch TV that i’d think about putting in the common area.
-i like the idea of sharing food, but i don’t really cook.
-garlic powder’s just as good.

To be fair, after this first time sitting down with the roommates, I have a better understanding of where everyone is coming from. And for that alone, I’m thankful that the house meeting happened. Some financial issues were cleared up as well, and house dynamics are beginning to make some more sense. It was nice to reach this understanding, especially after an overly indulgent, escapist weekend in Vermont (one night turned into two).

So I do the best I can with what I’ve got. That’s all one can ask for, after all. This living situation is not ideal, but it suffices. It’s functional. The pros outweigh the cons. While I’m still considering in the back of my mind a move out to Brighton with Duncan and Amy (and now OGD), or possibly a yet-to-be-considered option, this living situation seems stable enough to keep.

L. got rid of her double-sized mattress today, and against my better judgement I took it. The old mattress is still around, but now my bed size has doubled and room size has shrank. Things are fairly awkward in my room with this strange new big bed. Perhaps this is another almost symbolic shift away from the monastic state of mind that was so prevalent at Chowdahaus. It really has been far too long since i’ve shared a bed with anybody. And at the same time, I’m not really thinking about dating at all. For the time being, I’m married to the three L’s: Library, Lesson Planning, and Lectures.

This weekend, while fun, has set be way back on the to-do list, both on the school and home fronts. There’s now a movement here at 367 Harvard St to make more of a home out of this place, which of cousre requires investments of time, thought, and effort. Errands pile up. Reading continues to pile up, and papers are now being added to the mix. Teaching continues to be very positive, but taxing on time. I’m tired, but luckily will get to be before midnignt tonight. Nobody said it would be easy.

When there is so much to do, so many obligations that need my attention, it’s important that the living situation is squared away, a no-brainer. That’s my goal in thinking about this process. Take care of certain basic needs in order to address others. It’s not ideal. I miss Chowdahaus. I miss my old roommates, who I rarely see these days due to my insane schedule. But it’s functional, for the most part, and after the house meeting tonight and a new degree of understanding of these strangers with whom I’m sharing living space, it will do.

Remember When?

music: Ben Harper- Live from Mars d.2

It’s only been a week and already i’m feeling estranged from my Chowdahaus crew. I went over to the 1ey’s residence to see him and Peet for a spell tonight. It’s now far later than I would have hoped earlier (wha…) but I thought I’d take a quick minute to get some thoughts down before bed. Tomorrow is a big day- first day of summer school. All these “kids” we’ve been talking about in abstraction are going to become reality. ‘bout time too.

I’m reminded of the fourth tenet of my re-worked purple rag: spend time on what is important. An interesting thought. At this point, it’s hard for me to judge what really is important. More reading? Readings on the same topics I’ve been reading about for the past couple days? A social life? (Here’s the real doozy: live music at murphy’s?) It should be handled on a case-by-case basis. I find myself getting back into the habit of spending multiple hours in the library every night, although just because I can keep my concentration doesn’t make it important. Tonight it was important to see Peet and Volker. Tomorrow it’s important to play ultimate. Wednesday it will be fairly important to go to the MFA and pay $20 to see d’Elf. It will also be important to throw everything I can into student teaching, participate in class, and do enough reading to be comfortable discussing it all with professors. An tall order; an incredible balancing act.

And if last week seems far away, freshman year of college seems like an eternity ago. I snapped back to that time for a bit this evening, as I got an email from A., a beautiful young lady with whom I spent some time freshman year. I dropped an email to her after discovering that I had met one of her childhood friends in TEP. She replied this evening, having returned from hiking in Colorado (sound familiar?). It was really nice to hear from her after all this time. What wasn’t nice was the well of emotions that accompanied her memory, for so long left to dissipate into less than a whisper of a memory.

Freshman year was a study in extremes for me. I reread some of my journals and emails tonight, inspired by a connection to the past. And while I was experiencing my all-time-lows, putting myself through the emotional wringer, I now realize that I probably inadvertently dragged her through as well. How absolutely shitty of me. The worst part is that at the time, it was not A. herself that I took to, but in all likelihood some mental construct that I projected onto A. It’s funny, but given this time and distance, I realize that I never got to know A. herself, free of my psychological cobwebs. Which is even more shitty of me. But I do know that she is a solid human being of high quality. Of course now is now, and the past is best left where it is, but I still feel terrible about the place I might have (most likely) put A. all those years ago, despite my best intentions and efforts. It’s painful for me to think about those dark days even now, but it’s important to do so as well.

A.: all sincere apologies for anything I did to you, directly, or indirectly, freshman year. Time heals, and hopefully forgives. It was good to hear from you today.

I really have to snap back to the present now. Kids and a classroom in seven hours, and I need my sleep. Of course, I’m up way past when I wanted to go to bed. At least some things don’t change.

After Dinner is Free Time

_music: Portishead- PNYC_

I was supposed to catch up with some other TEP students this evening, go to S.’s house for some pregame/bbq and then go out. Dinner with the folks was nice and casual, and left me free at around 9pm. So instead of trucking out to Belmont on the off chance everyone was still there, I strolled slowly through Harvard Square, taking in the street culture, and headed home. I read some from my course packets and textbooks, caught up on a writing assignment, and futzed around with recording some guitar lines on cool edit. After a full week of orientation and classes with these relatively new people, I really don’t mind taking a night off and spending time with myself.

I do like the TEP people. As much as one can like others after a week of acquaintance. As was expected, they are an inspiring bunch, full of jaw-dropping life experience and solid intellect. And at the same time (mostly) down to earth, socially competent, able to carry on a normal conversation. We all have quickly realized that the Ed school is an exception to the rule at Harvard. I guess since its graduates make something around 30K the first year out (as opposed to whatever rediculous salary a law or business school grad makes), everyone has some sort of understanding of life priorities that is not so far off from my own.

And tonight, for the first time in a week, I was able to even peek out from behind the curtain of work I have wrapped myself up in. Hopefully this will be more than a once-a-week thing, but geez. 11 hour days. Tonight was nice, reminded me that there still is much more out there.

The ‘rents were in town this afternoon. They are doing a summer tour of the Eastern Seaboard, visiting me, Jessie (who is at RISD for the summer), Aunt Ellen, and Rich’s sister for July 4. I came off a night of poor sleep due to sweltering heat and a very loud college party on the first floor of 367 and found myself with a respectable headache when I woke up. Food solved 75% of the problem this time. But we strolled around, they briefly glimpsed into my current life, I did some explaining of myself, we picked up cousin Juliana, and we ate Japanese. It was nice. To top it off, the heat finally broke and we could be outside without sweating like hogs in Alabama. A very relaxed, pleasant evening once my headache cleared. Even for a parental visit, which usually carries stresses of various kinds. Mostly I feel like an ass for not calling more often and that sort of thing. But this one was a quick in-and-out, though, so maybe that had something to do with everything being more chill. That, or my head’s been stuck in a course packet all week.

Tonight is essential. I need to remember that I tend towards the solitary at least once a week, and that needs to be honored. It’s been a strenuous week all around, with all the work, meeting new people and being “on” all the time, having my free time cut to just above nothing, and the increasing list of errands and chores that I have to get done soon. Time is going to be very structured and full this year, so it’s essential to have some free time to myself every now and then. I’m discombobulated as it is. Which books don’t I have yet? What have I read? What have I not? Will this be on the test? Does spelling count?

well, now that I read back on this all, it’s hardly reflection. With all the enforced journaling we’re doing in class, reflection is becoming a chore. This is a shade better than just recapping the events. Which is important on some level, I suppose. Lurking around the lower levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy is not preferable. But it happens. My mind is tired. Stumbling through schoolwork and absentymindedly tweaking the minutae of my room isn’t much of an evening, but I guess that’s the point. Still much better than sitting in front of the TV.

Room A

music: Tori Amos- Little Earthquakes

I visited Vinfen’s Employment & Training Center today. I’m not sure why. Possibly because I saw L.T. on the street this week, more likely because I needed to remind myself that these people were still around and that I spent almost a year working with them, and that after all that time, nothing has changed.

There is nothing more sad than severe mental retardation. These are institutionalized people, so entrenched in the system that there is no reason for them to give a damn about striving for some sort of life that includes autonomy, free will, and all the rights and privilieges of adult life in the United States. The truth is that even if they wanted to, they would never be able to enjoy true freedom. They are retarded. They lack the cognitive ability to conduct themselves sufficiently within societal norms. And out of the goodness of our hearts, we the able-minded have systematically stripped them of most of their dignity and freedom. In their best interest, of course. For almost a year it was my job to see to it that society’s sentence for these human beings was being carried out as benevolently and mercifully as possible. That, and I was supposed to help them become gainfully employed in our post-9/11 Bush economy. Uh huh.

As many off-the-wall stories as I have about these people, as unbelievable as it is to think about what I did there, to see it in person is excruciating and infinitely depressing. For all their disadvantage (and from my experience, the only thing saving the situation is that they don’t have the capacity to conceive that they drew the short straw in life), they are colorful and animated human beings.

I wrote this on the way home from my last day at ETC:

10/11/02
I am done.
I’m crying. It’s a foreful cry, and I can’t seem to lock down its exact souce. It seems, though, that I have learned to love the unlovable.
I cry for them. I cry for them because they are not going to get better, because they ahve been dealt the worst of hands, because they will never experience and lead a life cloase to free or normal.
I cry for the system that will essentially keep these people subdued, and attempt to mainstream these exceptional cases into teh norm.
I cry for those colleuges I leave behind, who carry on the work, who for whatever reason have heards of gold, will of iron,a nd patience of the infinite.
And perhaps most of all, I cry for myself-out of relief, yes, but also out of how I have been changed by my experience. How I pushed a wall of stone and did not succeed in moving it. How I perhaps was only a nice guy who spent 10 months as a model and safeguard, preventing too much deterioration, prolonging the inevitable, straining against all the weight of nature and nurture to make a small scratch in the thin pith of these people’s lives. How in the end, I learned compassion, empathy, and saw these people as just that: people.
But whatever the case, it is done. And for now, I cry.

Tetris

music: Garcia/Grisman/Rice- The Pizza Tapes

I can’t tell if I’m making a bigger deal out of the start of grad school than it has to be. I know that whatever they are asking me to do in order to prepare is enough to make me a little anxious. It’s nothing incredibly difficult, it’s more a list of logistical and administrative items. I’d rather take on a few difficult items that require genuine effort than piece together many mundane tasks. But these are necessary evils at this point.

The goal is to clear my plate as much as possible before grad school starts, which is next Monday. This basically means tying up as many loose ends in my current life as I can. Things range from taking my bike in to get the wheels trued (haven’t done yet) to negotiating erroneous gas bills from the last apartment (haven’t called yet) to updating my resume and buying teacherly clothes (just finished resume, haven’t bought new clothes) to getting in touch with Gamelan in regards to having Live Live’s presence at Berkfest this August (haven’t heard back yet). And then ther’s the station itself…

The Live Live/Allston-Brighton Free Radio axis has been largely put to the side as I straighten out other matters in my life. I sometimes have to remind myself that it is volunteer, and that I do it for fun. Hopefully, ABFree will reach a point where it can sustain itself financially, mechanically, and electrically. We have an important all-station meeting tomorrow, and I’m looking forward to having the executive board get chewed out by the rest of the station. We could use the kick in the ass, and the fresh blood, the new minds willing to put forth the effort. Because truthfully, the station itself is something I want to invest my time and effort into only if others are doing the same. And for the most part, that has not been the case. Or at least as much as I would have hoped.

I’m finding it increasingly hard to find time to check in with friends. It’s mostly due to my new living situation: a houseful of five stangers, most of which excel at closing their doors and tucking themselves comfortably into their rooms. Which is fine every now and then, but all the time? And really, must the apartment door be locked when people are home and awake? When you are sharing a phone line and kitchen with people you’d expect a little more interaction. I would, at least. Maybe i’ve just been really lucky in my housing situations this far. But Amy and Duncan hosted a little get-together before Murphy’s last night, and I popped in before the radio show. It was really great to share food and conversation with those folks-a really great bunch of people. and Murphy’s continues to be a great scene, musically and socially. (But when you get down to it, what’s the difference?) I think I won’t be able to go to Murphy’s all that much in the coming weeks due to grad school, but we shall see how my schedule works itself out.

So many pieces, all of different shapes. It’s not like a jigsaw puzzle, where certain pieces were meant to go together. That would be much easier. It would just be a matter of figuring out which pieces go where. But as things are, no piece is meant to go anywhere. It’s up to me to decide where they go, which to place first, which to hold off on, which to throw out altogether. And they keep coming, seemingly at a faster and faster rate. That is the task at hand these days: to make sure all these distinct pieces fit together somehow, in some impossible fashion, and to anticipate even more pieces and ensure that plenty of room is left for them. It will inevitably be imperfect, but if all the key pieces are set in place, the details will (hopefully) fall into the gaps, making things look as if nothing was ever in question.

Like Father...

music: Pink Floyd- The Wall d.1

Today was Father’s Day. Yesterday would have been my dad’s birthday, were he alive. 53, I think. It’s a strange and emotional and uncomfortable time of year.

I no longer feel sadness that he’s not around, more just that I wonder who he was and how we would have gotten along with me at 24 and he at 53. In years past I would go into an irreversible funk this time of year. Not the best way to spend the first days of summer, but understandable. That didn’t happen this year. I found myself being nostalgic for childhood more than anything else. At this point, I am more curious about my dad the human being than the psychological ramifications of him dying when I was twelve. I think that got played out in college.

Growing up past age twelve involved a lot of guesswork on my part. One half of the instruction manual was snatched away before the work was complete. Some assembly required. Having made it through childhood and adolescence, I see some character traits that I, without question, inherited from mom (a tendency to collect and organize things), and other things that I find myself doing I can only guess that I inherited them from Dad (the need to squirrel myself away and navigate the channels of my own head on a fairly regular basis, an affinity for very late nights, a love of music). From what I know of him, he was a fairly cerebral human being. I think I inherited more dad than mom. More than anything else, I feel like I know him through knowing those parts of myself that I can’t easily explain.

There are stories from Mom, Grandma, Aunts, even his friends occasionally. But their perspective is distinct from mine. As only son and recipient of his life’s blueprint, I feel as though I have some sort of inborn insight into the man. My cells tick in the same fashion, similar things resonate with me as I hear they did with him. Theys say parents live through their kids, and I think I understand this. It’s more than carrying the torch of the family. It’s what Richard Powers touched on in The Gold Bug Variations: I am an aspect of him. “What could be simpler,” says the good doctor Ressler. The scattered evidence of who he was reinforces most of this.

Granted, this is mostly conjecture on my part, but I’m fairly confident in it. I should really consult primary sources, mom and grandma and aunts, people who spent more years with him than I did. The fact that I never knew his dad doesn’t help either.

The fact that dad is gone has disrupted my perception of and interest in the phenomenon of familial lineage. While I know that family members are all necessarily bound, it remains declarative knowledge most of the time. The fact that family now involves non-blood relatives throws a wrench in the development of such theories as well. But this is the life that has been given to me. This is what I have to work with. This is a behemoth of a task.

For my part, I take this weekend to remember as much as I can, and keep dad close at heart. Not the idealized, rose-colored persona that the dead usually acquire, but a more realistic picture of a man with ambition, passion, struggle, a somewhat short temper with regard to certain things, and a stream of thoughts and opinions about far too many things all at once. I don’t have to look too far; I have an almost-certain suspicion that I am walking more or less the same path as he did 30-some years ago.

I was a bit restless this afternoon. I took a walk today to stretch my legs and get out of the house. I found myself strolling through Harvard Law School.

Pivot Point

_music: MMW- 10/30/01, Providence, RI_

It’s amazing what a good night’s sleep will bring. Yesterday was full of headaches of all kinds, and today everything fell neatly into place. Some major pieces of my transition to Cambridge resolved themselves effortlessly. I woke up to the answering machine telling me that some guy named Paul had a parking space to rent to me. I finally stocked the kitchen with food and cooked myself something decent. I went out and bought things to help me organize my stuff. This here computer continues to click along nicely. All that’s left, really, is to straighten out some stuff on the Live Live front and then square away some stuff before grad school starts:

-TB Test. i get stuck with a needle. It makes a little bubble. whatever.
-Update resume and submit to HGSE in triplicate. Wait, didn’t I already get in? curious.
-Check wardrobe for professional attire. Uh oh. Haven’t bought new clothes that weren’t tech outdoor gear since…high school? I don’t remember. All I can think to do is order some Ex Officio pants. And that’s just because my convertible ones are permanently dirty and have bleach stains.
-Complete the pre-summer reading. Gah! Pre-summer? Indeed. Journal articles and two or three books. This whole graduate school thing, apparently, is no joke. So begins the enthralling Friday nights of a graduate student.

Hardly insurmountable. Now that i’m 98% done with my move, it’s all looking a lot easier.

I guess this is the back end of the sweeping arch of transition from the Bolster Street Refugee Camp to Cambridge and the Ivory Tower. I’m beginning to see that the logistics of the move are only the small part. This is a shift in physical location, yes, but it is also a somewhat major shift in my personal narrative as well. Even though I’m in the same city, things are different. I no longer live with the same roommates. I am not working for money (nor am I working for somebody else’s vision). I am about to meet a big group of people with whom I will share this year. My leisure time is about to go away. Some sort of intangible threshold is being crossed slowly (like four weeks slowly), and while I can only speculate about what is on the other side right now, I do recognize that there is another side. There is much in the Boston of the past two years that I don’t want to lose sight of, and am determined not to. But there is also much in front of me that I don’t want to miss. As things begin to pile up, my life once again becomes a plate-spinning-pin-juggling-unicycle-riding balancing act. For tonight, I plan on spending time at home (whatever that has come to mean) getting to know my new roommates and reading.

Already, the enthralling nights of a graduate student.

Naproxen Sodium

music: Paul Simon- Rhythm of the Saints

I have a headache. I get them a lot. It’s the first headache I’ve had in a while, and thankfully it’s not one of those apocolyptic icepick-repeatedly-pounding-at-your eyeball-from-the-inside headaches. The sirens outside aren’t making things any better though.

I have a bunch of theories why I get headaches. The easiest is that they are idiopathic migraines but I don’t buy it. I get headaches when certain chemicals are introduced into my system, even in trace amounts: decaf tea, secondhand smoke. Only the headaches don’t start until about 36 hours after the tea or the smoky bar. Which leads me to believe that it has to do with my body purging toxins. But then sometimes I get headache sans caffeine or nicotine. The general guideline I follow then is to pay close attention to my water intake and electrolyte balance. This basically amounts to me mainlining water or juice, sometimes downing half a teaspoon of salt and/or sugar. But usually that doesn’t do much. So I lie on my bed in the dark and relative quiet, begging the Gods to revoke my excruciating pennance for something I wasn’t aware I did in the first place, and apply pressure to my temples, sinuses, and eyes. This actually makes things better, and has developed into the most current theory: vascular pressure in my head.

I also get bloody noses fairly frequently, and I’ve noticed that when I get bloody noses I ususally don’t get headaches. a doctor told me that migraines are thought to be the swelling of blood vessels surrounding the brain and sinuses. Meaning more blood than usual is in these vessels. Meaning when my nose bleeds, the pressure is actually being released from the vessels and thus pain is diminished. This could be why I didn’t get headaches on my trip in Colorado and Utah; I had bloody noses almost every day due to the dryness of the desert.

Whatever the cause, it sucks. I really can’t do much but drink water and try to relax. Commercial pain killers don’t do much anymore so I stopped taking them. So I just wait and ride it out, hoping that the black cloud will pass quickly from inside my head so I can get on with my day. It’s even worse when there is a lot to do, as there is (was) today. Especially when that something I have to do involves reading. Reading with a headache is just a few degrees lower on the pain scale than putting tacks underneath one’s toenails and kicking a wall.

Of course, I’m sure one of the foremost causes of headaches is stress. Not that my day-to-day is stressful, but the behemoth of grad school on the horizon isn’t quite settling. Neither are the few scattered items that I have to resolve sooner than later, but of course later because now i have a headache. fuck.

It’s probably not the best thing to be staring at a computer screen in this state either. Yet another genius revelation from Yours Truly.

Spinning Wheels

music: Norah Jones- Come Away With Me

Another late night. It’s like that when I have no obligations at 9 AM. Soon enough I’ll be on a regimented schedule, so while I have this sort of freedom to stay up until 4:00 AM without consequence I’ll do it and love it. It seems that I drift towards the wee hours; given the choice, I’d rather be up late into the night than up early in the morning. Occupational choices might force me into a sleep schedule that runs counter to my natural clock, but I’ll deal with that as it comes up.

For the past two nights I’ve done some bike riding through Boston between the hours of 2:00 and 3:00 AM. It’s a wonderful time to be pedaling through the city. The streets are free of cars so I can dip in and out of my lane and take up the width of the street. Biking through Harvard Square at 3:00 AM is a worthy experience. For a location so bustling and hectic during the day, it’s eerily quiet. All that is heard are scattered homeless shuffling in their cardboard, distant cars out on Mass Ave, and the sprinklers that are wasting perfectly good drinking water on Harvard’s patchy-at-best lawns. The University itself is ancient and solemn at three in the morning, much more so than it could ever be during the day with all the tourists and shiny security cars. I really love rolling through with nobody else around, taking in the black iron gates and the red buildings built thick with history. Biking at three in the morning also makes me half-believe that I’m not so unlike Kaneda cruising through Neo Tokyo. Or better yet, S.T. biking through Boston.

Much of the evening was spent with Tim, Peet, and Volker. It was good to just be around them. Comfortable. Familiar. More and more, I fear, our interactions will be augmented by our new living arrangements. It makes me sad, because we all do get on very well and after having lived together for so many months have sort of taken it for granted. Now that I’m living in an apartment with relative strangers, now that there are four milk jugs in the fridge and closed bedroom doors, I can appreciate the home environment that we had with Chowdahaus and the Refugee Camp next door.

But since I spent so much time with my friends tonight, little headway was made towards locking down certain nagging items that really need to be checked off the list before I start up with school. Yes, i’m doing the preliminaries: gathering my pre-summer reading materials, collecting phone numbers to call regarding parking spaces, thinking about scheduling at TB test, thinking about what constitutes a high school teacher’s wardrobe. Lots of gathering, collecting, and thinking. Not much to show for my time, though. I know it will get done, but the list on my dry-erase is a hulking mass of building anxiety, staring back at me and growing heavier by the hour.

It’s tough, balancing this freedom that I surely won’t see much of in the coming year with the obligations that are beginning to pile up. There are some big decisions to make in all domains of my life here in Boston, and it’s best to have some solid groundwork laid before I start up with school. For my own sanity, but more importantly to ensure the best possible environment in which to teach and study, an environment in which everything is pretty much taken care of except for my school work. It’s time to get into that state of mind. It’s time to tie up all those loose ends. Rolling leisurely through Boston is all good and fine, but I have to be mindful about my direction.

En Media Res

music: Phish 8/14/98- Lemonwheel Soundcheck

The seemingly isolated thoughts and events of one’s life inevitably form context, a reference point from which one’s life can be understood more clearly. More than that though: a soil in which one grows, full of nutrients and pollutants, specific compounds and other characteristics that make that individual absolutely unique. This blog certainly does not coincide with the beginning of its author, and thus I feel it importnant to provide some context for what is to transpire here. That may also help me get some things straight as far as what I am to use this blog for anyway.

There is no way to include everything, of course, but I hope to get enough in here as is needed for the forlorn stranger to start reading comfortably, with some sort of idea as to where I am coming from.

Past. Graduated college in May 2001 with a BA in psychology. Moved to Boston, MA and found myself in a big yellow house with some mighty fine individuals, including fellow anizer tmo. It was a place of incredible growth and learning and above all challenge. While the Chowdahaus started as a summer layover, it turned into a lifestyle. There was much to learn from each member of Chowdahaus, as well as just living in such a place. In the fall of 2001 I moved out of my hole in the attic, and spent a year in Allston being poor and working with mentally retarded and autistic adults, then moved back to Chowdahaus in the fall of 2002, only to be evicted two months later (through no fault of my own, I might add) and move next door with Peet and Tim. It was a holding pattern of sorts, a stable ground from which to worry about other things. i’d switched to research work at Children’s Hospital, which meant I was no longer poor. All the while, I’d been cultivating a little project called Live Live, a radio program on a community radio station dedicated to the community that exists around live music. Most of my free time went into Live Live, as well as applying for graduate programs in teacher education.

Present. With the limited perspective I have on my current situation, it’s hard to say for sure what is happening right now. I can supply the facts: I moved from Jamaica Plain to Cambridge, have moved in with an assortment of people I hadn’t met previously, and am preparing for a yearlong master’s program in teacher education at Harvard. I just returned from two weeks of rafting and backpacking in Colorado and Utah, and even more recently from a music festival in Forksville, PA (Both the festival and the sojourn West deserve their own entries). In the interest of being up-to-the-minute, I just returned from my first Ultimate Frisbee summer league game. My current tasks are to settle into my new living situation, figure out what to do with my car, prepare for the start of graduate school, and enjoy my final days of freedom. Now that I think about it there is much to do. I have two weeks.

Future. Who can say? I know that I will be in Boston for the next year, and that if all goes according to plan I will earn a Masters in education and a teaching credential. Chances are after that I’ll teach high school biology for a spell. Possibly for a long while. It’s impossible to say definitively. I’m living the sort of life right now where my options are wide open and the only force pushing and pulling on me is me. Which is interesting.

So there’s a little context. Hardly a context worthy of much, more like a ten second rough outline done in hasty pencil srokes. But it’s something, some sort of framework. It makes me think about my audience, because clearly when one decides to keep a weblog, one is aware that other people will be reading it. If not, one would just write it all down in a small book, probably lined, possibly equipped with lock and key, and keep it in their underwear drawer. The amazing thing about the internet is that an audience is practically limitless and entirely uncontrolable. So to those that know me, certain points of context are unnecessay because they make up some part of my context. To others, a whole lot more context is needed for any degree of understanding. While here I am trying to provide a context out of preceived obligation to an audience I will probably never fully meet, I wonder if any more than this feeble attempt is really necessary. Let’s examine the title of this entry: latin for “in the middle.” A literary technique in which the reader is thrown directly into the action without explanation of context, and they are left to connect past, present, and future by themselves. Stories are carefully crafted things, lives generally are not. As such, I think I’ll leave the rest of the context to future entries.

I’m more than ready to move on from contemplating the nature of blogging and to externalize the content to other spheres. So this entry on this first day, hopefully, has gotten it all out of my system. All part of breaking the ice. To take on this project thinking it will encompass everything is silly. By its very nature, the blog is a public document and involves some degree of self-censorship. But for what it is, for whatever it will be, context will come. And hopefully, with it, understanding for all involved.

Breaking the Ice

_music: Sound Tribe Sector 9 8/25/01- Oakland, CA_

The first step is always the hardest.

…there.

Now that ol’ man inertia is on my side, I can get down to business here. First order of business is to figure out excatly how I want to use this great tool that DFC has provided. Like many things in my life, I’m still not completely sure, but if old patterns hold: jump in headfirst and see what happens. Deal with things as they arise. Act first, ask later.

The first step was the hardest, in some internal way. Not the movement of fingers across keys, but the decision to go ahead with this. Whatever this is. Now and henceforth it’s all just a matter of finding the flow and riding it.

More to come before this day is through, i’m sure…