The Bridges
(12-21 May 2000)
21 May
2000
[from Albuquerque]
-Trains rock my world. They
also rock my back when trying to
sleep, but other than that, there's nothing wrong with 'em.
Even the guy in the snack bar
who described his wares as containing "two kindsa nuts,
including myself" over the
loudspeaker was great. & he had the guts to confront me
on vegetarianism, which is rare,
even admitting in the end that "some of us may be
evolving", which is precisely what
I'd contend.
-23 new e-mail messages in 11 days of absence.
I feel very loved.
But this reminds me I haven't written a single one in that
span... so please still feel
loved - I promise to write soon!
-Maybe the bad span in
April/May is over early this year.
Maybe I'd better find some wood because I'm jinxing myself.
Lord, I feel like
Steve.
-Speaking of jinxes & superstition, I didn't get my
fortune cookie fulfilled on the
train, but I'm still holdin' out. I did a lot of thinking
about such matters on the train,
coming to fewer conclusions than my usual low total. But I
do think it of interest that
Americans invented fortune cookies but couldn't take the credit
& pawned them off as an ancient
Chinese tradition, which is entirely artificial. It's like
we love the superstition but we
can't admit to it. Ack! I just referred to Americans
as "we"... that's gotta
stop.
-Verve is becoming tomorrow's dubious. In usage,
not sentiment, of course.
-Fish,
Jake, & Kunx, I can't thank you enough. These last 2
weeks have made my year so far,
which, for those scoring at home, is my millennium so far. I
will see you all again next
month, but thanks so much for everything... You too, Gris,
for accompanying me, even if
you weren't hosting & all.
20 May 2000
[from Los Angeles]
-Okay. Perhaps we should have PRACTICED basketball
some. Especially as a 3-on-3 team. But hey, I had fun. &
I got a cool shirt!
-"Sunday morning, I'm comin' home today..."
19 May 2000
[from San Diego]
-I keep having these odd debate dreams. Which
is understandable in part, I guess, since I'm going into withdrawl from a 7-year
addiction that being away from always seems like the biggest challenge of summer.
Was that proper sentence structure? Either way, it's been really
weird lately since most of these recent dreams have been about high school debate.
Or strange combinations of the 2 eras. In any case, they almost
always seem to be about missing rounds or important tournaments or partners
or stuff like that - basically, missing out on enough debate. So it all
makes sense.
-Even the music from lousy tapes can get stuck in your head.
-One of the best indications of a solid & long-lasting friendship is how
quickly one can bounce back from earnestly serious arguments with said friends.
If you can get really upset at a friend, tell them so, argue with them
about it, hash it out, & return to normal discussion after a short cooling
period, that's really something. Because arguments are inevitable, but
they don't have to be so devastating as many people take them for. I suppose
it does help when the source of the initial argument is concern & care for
the well-being of the friend one's arguing with, though.
-If anyone goes to see "The Virgin Suicides", could you please explain
it to me? I've slept on it & I still feel like I was distinctly missing
something exceptionally important.
18 May 2000
[from San Diego]
-Schneider may have started it, but Gris sure made
it an art.
-Gris is a nutcase when he's drunk. How's THAT for not cryptic?!?!
-I love revisiting old arguments, especially with the same people I've had the
arguments with for years. I still think that obsession is about the most
underrated concept in human experience right now. Well, behind pacifism,
that is. Passionate commitment to ideals, goals, projects, people, &
all sorts of other stuff is what we should all be aspiring to, not shying away
from in the shadows of emotional drudgery.
-I think we are all obsessed, if nothing else, with embarassing each other.
17 May 2000
[from San Diego]
-Crudbuckets. Never thought I'd see one of
those. Maybe it's really time to move on - as in, seriously.
-My fascination with aquariums has many strange facets. I'm just surprised
I could face that life-size whale model so calmly... perhaps for the first time
ever. "You hippies should know stuff about the whales, right?"...
crazy Brooke. Which, Fish might tell you, also means pregnant Brooke.
But not so.
-Can't beat a Wednesday the 17th. Though for a day three weeks before
Mortality Day, we certainly dodged near-death a crudload of times. I coulda
sworn Gris was a man on a mission.
16 May 2000
[from Pasadena & Long Beach]
-Awareness is never enough. It must always
be wonder.
-There is perhaps little in this world so fascinating as a single grain of sand
in the context of a seemingly limitless beach.
15 May 2000
[from Pasadena & Long Beach]
-Dialogue that truly captures the nature of driving
in Southern California... Gris: "Do we know where we're going?"
Jake: "Oh, we know where we're going - we just don't know how
to get there!"
-Yay! Somebody e-mailed me!
-Spend enough time trying to contemplate how to get out of paying for something
& you just might get it free anyway.
-How do we measure the economic value of people & their labor? Jaque
suggests corn to you all. In ears. Which is also how things are
played by in the old idiom, just for the record.
-California, especially the Southern portion, is coated with the names of people
who paid to put their names there. Almost always by buying that space,
either directly or indirectly. I suppose this whole nation is coated in
such a fashion, but it really comes out most clearly on the vast chain of highways
in this metro area. For some reason, this got me thinking about all the
names in our lives that don't necessarily deserve to be there, like Wells or
Fargo or Sears or Ford or who-knows-who. Which immediately prompted contemplation
of names that DO deserve to be there, like streets named for MLKJ or something.
That led straight back to Ms. Moore's godforsaken 11th grade English class
& my habit of writing a Question of the Day on the board as I arrived early
to that class every day. One of my favorite questions was "Can a
person better serve a cause by living for it or dying for it?" Admittedly,
the jury is still out. But I keep wondering... clearly.
-Some things never change. If we're lucky, those things are often the
things that shouldn't change. Right now, I feel pretty lucky.
14 May 2000
[from San Diego]
-Happy Mother's Day, Mom!!
-Nothing brings out vast differences in perspective & interpretation quite
like watching a 3-hour movie & then analyzing it at length with good friends.
It doesn't even have to be a controversial one - it could be something
as seemingly mundane as "Meet Joe Black". Which was a good film
& not that mundane, but you get the idea... maybe it's just because that's
how Fish & Jake & I are about everything, filling it with disagreeing
overanalysis. But I spent a good bit of the discussion being actually
shocked at the movie that they had been watching while sitting not two feet
away, in front of the same screen.
-Four hours of basketball one day leads to massive soreness the next.
-I think a basic long-term goal of mine is going to become not being considered
a fickle person. Whichever gender is more likely to be seen as fickle,
or actually be fickle, the least I can do is pull my hat out of that ring. I
don't think of myself as fickle & I know some people do think of themselves
as such. It's one thing I'd like not to do to other people.
-I had forgotten how much I loved "The Waste Land" till Fish brought
it up. It'd been a long time since I'd read it, but it still resonates.
T.S. Eliot knew what was up... "April is the cruellest month..."
-Playing softball made me feel like I was forty-five, had a wife & kids,
a minivan, & a dull office desk job. It was a little creepy - all the
talk which seems omnipresent of time flashing by so quickly & people waking
up one morning in middle age, not knowing what happened to them. It's
almost like that happened to me & I really DIDN'T know what'd happened. Methinks
I should just stick to baseball in the future.
13 May 2000
[from San Diego]
-The ultimate primary purpose of this ongoing project
is the exact same as saving e-mails or writing a diary (for those who keep them)
or just about any other type of recorded history on a personal individual level.
It allows individuals to glance back, pore over their place &/or time
in the past, & loudly yell "Man, I was a complete IDIOT a year ago!
What was I THINKing?" I keep trying to tell myself that continually
thinking that on a daily basis about the annum prior is some sort of indicator
of progress. That feeling would likely be bolstered if I weren't so sure
that I'd be calling myself names for all this in a year. Some history
major I am.
-Life here is reminding me of the way things should be.
-"Not a day less will do..."
12 May 2000
[from San Diego]
-I like sky.
-So I went to Fish's humanities class with the famed O'Brien lecturer. Exceeded
expectations. One of the most thought-provoking & entertaining class
experiences I've probably ever had, certainly top five all-time in college,
excluding Hirsch classes. Even if I don't buy most of the Freudian stuff
he was spouting, he made it interesting & prompted me to consider a lot of
human reactions in a new light. Sometimes, I just get that outside-looking-in
feeling about humanity. Like most sensations, it's both disconcerting
& strangely comforting. I just don't feel like I'm repressing things
the way Freud argues - besides, I really DO hate "raunchy jokes".
I refuse to believe that morality is tantamount to repressing what we're
really thinking. Even if transcending human nature is a fundamental goal
of humanity.
-Walking back from class discussed above, I passed this flighty blonde girl
on a cell phone. The only snippet of conversation I heard was "It
makes me stronger. Helps me stop feeling my emotions." My head
swam with correlations, but I was at least angered, amused, & most especially
reminded.
-Time passes extraordinarily quickly around here. Wonder why that is.
-How many women do YOU think are in the music industry? More to the point,
how many of them look more like Ryan's older sister than Alanis Morisette?
-Maybe resignation & inner peace are closer to each other than we'd think.
In some ways, I'd hate to think that, though. Okay, in almost every
way.
Introspection, My Worst Friend* (Current)
Ye Olde Archive (Past)
Tell me this is not the end...*
*-lyrics from an as-yet unreleased song, "The Same Old Frontiers",
by SWClayton.