there's a new adventure out there
fromthatnight.blogspot.com

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. When left in the sun, mayonnaise grows hair.

unexpectations

unexpected things make me happy. I mean that in both ways, too - things that are unexpected, and things that perhaps shouldn't make me happy.

case in point: doing laundry this morning, one of those va-va-voom low rider cars pulls up in front of my building. tricked out tailpipe, pimp my ride rims, all of it. the guy driver leaves his ride neutralling while he goes to the office. oh, and his windows are down. guess what's pouring out? avril lavigne. yep. it was cool - "complicated" while I was going to the laundry room, "sk8er boi" while I was coming back. put a huge smile on my face. he came back as I was standing on my balcony, and I watched him va-va-voom off. smile.

life as a penguin?

being home is a lot like making a documentary about penguins.

I see the behind-the-scenes tapes of people slogging through the snow. sixty below, they say. hundred mile-per-hour winds, they say. why, the others say. and then at the end it's nothing but big smiles and thumbs up and whatnot. why, the others still say. I think I get it. I don't know if I'd do it (that extreme), but I get it. learning. exploring. pushing the limits. spirit unbounding. that kind of stuff.

actually, that's not like being home at all. but I did just watch a penguin documentary.

being home, on the other hand, is a completely different kind of being. sunnier, for one thing. sharper, too. quieter, I guess. farther away from some things. I'm sunburned and my legs are scratched in several different places. I learned not to ride a mountain bike barefoot (it hurts). I tackled one dog and ran another one down. I made real food, and ate real food (although I can do without the latter. I think I've gone on not much for a while). I did this and that and the other thing and not much at all and a great deal. it was a good vacation, but I was right about not wanting to do it again without much else in sight. I'm looking forward to going back. not driving back, certainly, but going.

stay nimble.

sitcommie

I have a new series in the works.
it's collegey. sitcommie. hopefully funny.
its working title is "blogosphere."
it breaks the fourth wall.
it should be fun.
very.

pine wind

power and responsibility. what do I have? can I change someone's life just by being? can I change someone's lie? I wonder, sometimes. when the lifehinge comes, will you know it? will I know it? there are more than one. maybe three rights will make a square. three lefts make a square, a wrong, a right in their own right.

la flama niposa, la ombra dispare, la noce immortale, la voce murmure.

trees outside my windows.
at home, it's a beast of a cottonwood. spring-summer's best for that boy, when it's in full leaf and it sounds like a river rainstorm with every breeze. it's green, too, the real green that's sunlight through twenty feet of leaves. for some reason, for as long as I can remember, a horseshoe's hung on the lowest branch. it's rusty, brown-copper-redgold.
in flag, it's a pine. I suppose it's the "pine view" the complex is named for: if there wasn't one there already, by golly, then they'd make one. I seem to have many memories of its snow-coveredness. it's green, too, but sunlight goes right through needles. it's the green of darkness, the cottonwood at night, or in a real storm.
they're both nice, I guess, both trees. dichotomies at their most elementary (school), deciduous and coniferous. the cottonwood's budding again, and the pine's lost its snow. we'll be going into green comparison season soon.
...but if it comes to which I'd rather listen to, I choose the cottonwood. wind in a pine feels lonely.

luck

(I take no credit)

And if there are any historians about fifty or one hundred years from now,
and there should be preserved the kinescopes of one week
of all three networks, they will there find recorded
in black and white, and in color evidence of decadence, escapism,
and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live.
We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable, and complacent.
We have a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information.
Our mass media reflect this.
But unless we get up off our fat surpluses
and recognize that television in the main
is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us,
then television and those who finance it,
those who look at it and those who work at it,
may see a totally different picture
too late.

[I]f they are right, and this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse and insulate, then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost. This instrument can teach, it can illuminate, yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.