August 2005 Archives

Here's to 93 more healthy and happy years!

Love you!

And a very happy birthday to Bob, as well. Here's to Mojitos, 80's trivia and festivals in abundance!

It is a wet green day. Fog in the background. Thankfully, my coffee intake is finally reaching desired levels...

I found this (on Gizmodo) to be hilariously well-written.

Yesterday, tales of Wakamaru (also on Gizmodo and in this slightly-out-of-date Wired News article) inspired other technological musings.

I'll take one of each.

But first: more coffee...

Here's to many more -- and to a safe, healthy and very happy year ahead.

With love...

I set a rhythm with my teeth -- then divested. Headphones off, that sound-space gone. Ambience widened. Environmental. A breeze...and the sounds of crickets and cicadas. Another rhythm: accelerated tidal, with a backbeat of highway respiration. Soft, in the post-midnight hours. I ate the ice. I got quiet, inside. Figured I'd post. Then sleep. Then --

I feel a bit thin, like I've been sandpapered into near translucency.

I feel a bit empty, like a glass poured dry.

I'm viewing this on a swapped-out monitor (I think my old one has closed its cathode eye for good). The windows are open and I'm listening to cicadas and the minimal traffic on the highway. The air? Well, the air is cool -- light (and even a bit shivery) on the skin.

I don't know why I'm still up. Don't know what I'm waiting for.

I feel a bit lost, like a mirror reflecting an empty room...

Early into Friday, mathematically patterned prettiness flowing from these small speakers. (Michael Nyman's "Cornfield", from the film Prospero's Books.) I was looking at an artbook about George Tooker, regarding his paintings. Feeling clean and thinking of life. And art.

Progression, too.

The music lifts. The art, so individualistic and full of meaning, exposes potential.

Things dust over, as time passes. Forgetfulness and disuse work a slow erasure. Small changes can sweep some of that away, though. A tiny current of air, a accidental brush of a fingertip: and truth is un-grayed and revealed again.

I feel, just a little, like I'm on the cusp of an un-graying.

My horoscope for Wednesday, August 17, 2005:

Today is your day, dear Sagittarius, and you can do no wrong. Your spirits will be high, and you shouldn't feel guilty about spending a bit of extra money at the mall. Declare game night at your house: invite your best friends over and have them bring their favorite games. In short, have fun today in whatever you do. There is absolutely no reason not to.

I wouldn't have minded getting out to a mall or something for a little "present from me-to-me" action. I haven't been getting a lot of sleep lately, though, so I think I'll make it an early night, instead. (Hopefully.) As for game night...maybe some solo Playstation 2 festivities.

I took my shirt off and let my sweat dry. I took my glasses off and blurred the lavender.

On the red bench, under an ICO sky. The air more soothing, now. Pale butterflies, out-of-focus. A little bit of excercise today: running without traveling. A start, I suppose. Afterwards, I sat there and thought of things, as my heart-rate slowed. Places and pleasures. The clover felt good beneath my bare feet.

A passing Monarch was a colorful abstraction.

Or a lesson.

At this endless hour, I feel like a hazy reflection of myself. A ghost image, glimpsed in a time-smeared and dusty mirror. Worn thin like much-folded paper. Empty as old leaves. My body is stiff. It aches slightly. Through the window, I can now see the treeline -- against a sky gone from jet to indigo. I don't know why I'm here, writing this. The light is coming up.

I am thirsty.

I'm boiling eggs and stretching out the kinks in my neck -- while the sunshine pours down outside.

Fiddled and pruned my Amazon wishlist. It was fairly dusty. I get a kick out of floating around on Amazon, picking out interesting stuff -- even if it is just window shopping.

I'm feeling better than yesterday but still kinda worn.

Should probably get out and grab some air.

I dreamt of a Victorian mansion with many attics. The home sat within a walled estate. On its grounds were sweet-flowing streams, branching from a point of land on a hill. We were going to buy the place and build a Japanese tea house on the angle of land between the streams. We explored the mansion first.

In it's attics were all manner of items from my deep childhood. Artifacts only remembered on sight and touch. The house was full to the brim of these soft-forgotten things.

A stack of three cowboy hats with smiley faces painted on them.

A black and white photograph.

An old time radio, still playing music.

Nearly endless...

My eyes are tired and watery today.

Got a vague water sheen overlaying the view, today. Air cooled a bit by some tentative rain. The sky is pale as daisy petals. My stereo (and ever more coffee) helps to add some vibe to the dim.

Amazingly, I've hit a hundred photos on my Flickr album. Just posted this shot today:

The more I play with Flickr the more I love it. Try the "Explore" link on the site. It'll keep you engrossed for hours...

Here's to a good weekend.

Random, in the early hours. Heat presses in at cool windows.

I have been thinking of the world as an interface. Not a very original thought I'm sure but an interesting one, none-the-less. There seems to be so much math woven into things. I often wish I had a greater capacity in that area. I have one math trick (figuring out a tip) and I do that one almost entirely visually.

I have also always wanted to have more languages, including gestural ones. The greater the number of ways in which you can think, the greater number of things you can think about.

I think.

I tend to feel somewhat embarassed and oddly protective of constructs such as these. Things that mimic human form and function seem so fragile and ungainly...but also so innocent and in need of nurturing.

Time, too -- there's another thing that fascinates. Jonathon Keats' project sounds lushly cool. He wants to mount a camera in a hotel room and take one, hundred year long, photo. His hope is to photograph time. I'm not sure if this is the way to do that -- but it certainly is a neat concept. I'd really like to see that image, that hundred year blink. For some reason I picture it as pale and ghostly. Maybe abstract, with hints of figures. It'd be fun to book a night in that room, to get recorded in the photograph, layered-into a spectral slice of time.

Ah, later still.

I finally finished reading Greg Bear's novel, Slant. An impressive and enjoyable work that has kept me up well past my intended bed time.

Now I'm getting kind of smeary and dense. The futon will feel good against my back...but first this.

And then a glass of water.

'nite.

Yeah, just checked and it is. Bright too. Late afternooning and the air is thick with heat and shine. Check the butterflies and birds, and the sway of flowers standing out and up.

The last grain of July has dropped through the glass. Summer is into it's last third. Damn. Tempus fugit and all that.

I feel like amping the coffee and, I don't know, doing a jump-dance-wiggle.

Hey there, August. How ya doin'?