Jun 2004, 5 entries

This is a phrase that I’ve been saying in my head for a long time and only today did I realize that I’ve probably never said it out loud. Of course it’s a play on the similar saying, regarding fire, but I think it’s more true than that. Fire is one type of context change. However, it’s possible to build something in the fire that can’t withstand the ice.

This is why, I think, people tend to find silver linings in tragedies. We each have a basket of eggs. We take those eggs with us wherever we go but we don’t know which are the best eggs and which are the bad eggs. Sometimes you get to know someone who you really like, but somehow in the back of your mind you know that they’d never be able to break you out of a Turkish prison. Or an American prison, even worse. Who are the people that can go to church, and go to the clubs, and go to the mountains, and go to corporate America, and talk on the phone for hours, and punch you in the gut, all in 24 hours? These are the people that survive trial by context-changing.

It’s not only people that go through these trials… I think goals, interests, problems, concerns, worries, visions, dreams, philosophies, theories, t-shirts, pants, memories, and tastes also go through these trials. The ones that survive are the strongest, the best… the ones with some sense of being universal, or permanent, or real.

When context changes and something disappears, you wonder, did it ever even exist? Of course, this accounts for 99.9% of the things we occupy ourselves with on a day-to-day basis. If someone gave you a plate full of pig intestines, would you be able to eat it? How about a heroin needle? How about an SUV, 2 kids, and a dog named Spike. Could you take it all of these things without puking, without becoming indignant and stomping off? I guess a better question is, could I?

Maybe I’m talking about different things here. If you have a person who has been to the highest highs and the lowest lows with you, they have survived one form of trial by context-changing, and you will most likely value them all the more. If you have a personal ambition that you can remain focused on even when that friend dies and you lose your job and you get a case of the scabbies, then you will most likely come to value that ambition as somehow stronger, better, different, maybe even yellower than the rest.

A problem occurs if you haven’t changed context in a while. We end up with things that we value but that which probably wouldn’t stick around if it really came down to it. But why must we try to only keep things that stick around when things really come down to it, I hear myself asking. Well, eventually, my guess is, things will come down to it. And I’ll realize that most things in this life don’t matter when those things have come down, to that. “That” is beginning to scare me. Anyway, if your bed is going to get messy again the next night, why make it this morning? There’s a whole other aesthetic in temporary things that I’m not addressing. Let’s address it. There is something beautiful about realizing that something only works within a certain context and that that thing is still valuable. Like RSS. Like a little ceramic cow. Like my shiny brown pants. Like, dare I admit it, the Mariners and all sports. Like Harry Potter. Like Joe Stupidhead.

So what am I saying? Trial by context-changing or nothing is new under the sun? I guess I’m saying, one or the other.

I wrote another song want to hear it here it goes:

Ludwigga

Oh Ludwigga, you are from the future!
But the present moment seems to suit ya.

Oh Ludwigga, flirtin’ with space and time,
Relativity is your modus operandi.

You are the time-travelling, riddle-solving, fast-living, heart-break girl!

Oh Ludwigga, you are from the past.
Everything you built was built to last.

Dear Ludwigga, you are so fantastic!
Through practiced repetition you’re beautifully dramatic.

You are the time-travelling, riddle-solving, fast-living, heart-break girl!

And we are your people spinning in your snowglobe world.
I guess it ain’t that bad really.

What brought the kindred spider to that height
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?

What brought the kindred spider to that height
And why’d you steer the white moth thither in the night?

I got no strings to hold me down, to make me fret, to make me frown.
I had strings, but now I’m free, there are no strings on me.

Silly Ludwigga, I took a ride in your red fire truck.
Wittgenstein says hi, and Beethoven thanks you for your uncanny luck.

I’m now the time-travelling, high-fiving, fast-gambling, heart-break boy.

Please water the plants, and remember to walk Roy.
And for Johnny’s birthday, please get him that new toy we were talking about.
Oh yeah and I guess remember to eat lots of soy.

The latest in a long line of songs that reference Beethoven. Who knows the name of the referenced poem? How about the Disney tune?

I like to keep the windows open during the day but sometimes flies come in. They fly in zig zag circles over my table. For a while, I despaired. How do I get rid of them? Use my body to push them back out the window? Didn’t work. I don’t have a fly swatter or a newspaper or anything. Then, I came upon a great solution… spray them with Windex! They drop to the floor, unable to fly any temporarily and I pick them up and toss them out the window. Is that cruel? Yes, but is it fun (especially if you don’t have a television)?

I don’t have a convenient parking spot anymore and parking in my neighborhood costs $100 a month, so I’ve taken to trying to find parking each time I use my car. I have trouble finding my car after I park it, because I confuse the last time I parked with all other times I have parked. Finding my car would require that I go to all of the places I have ever parked the car until I found the one that happened to be the most recent. Then I realized that all I had to do was take a picture of my car (preferably within sight of something I recognize) with my camera phone and save that as the wallpaper to my phone. Another way to use the technology as a backup brain.

How long has it been?
3 months, 26 days, some hours.

What does it look like?
A big pink monster.

What does it smell like?
Sometimes like the dusty area behind your fridge, sometimes like trash, and sometimes like clean linen.

How high did it lift you?
3 stories up.

How far south did it push you?
About 3 blocks.

Would the Queen approve?
Certainly not.

What about the King?
Who cares.

How long did you have to wait, before?
About a year and a half.

How much did it cost?
Only $400.

What does it feel like?
The soil feels this way when you lift a century old oak out of the unwatered ground with a rope tied to a rocket ship headed for outer space. Some roots break through, some tear. It gets pummeled with its own rocks from above. Then, someone slowly goes through the dirt with a tiny hammer and smashes as many clumps as they can. They soak the rest in Diet Coke. Other times it’s like walking into a meadow and having the trees and the animals singing to you.

What is the most difficult thing about it?
Getting a magazine in the mail that I subscribed to for her.

What is the easiest thing about it?
Talking about it.

What does it sound like?
The hum of the wind with the hum of the fridge coming in at the last moment. Maybe an unexplained snap. Singing trees.

How much weight have you lost?
11%.

Do you still feel sick sometimes?
On and off. The Vicodin helped though.

Spit it out.
I’ve gotten a divorce. Lalalalalabamba.

I guess I don’t really want to say much else. K left Seattle, I’m still here. I’m living in a 500 sq foot yellow room on Denny and Boylston. It has four windows, a small closet for a bedroom, and a built-in table in the kitchen. Free wireless internet from a few doors down. I have moved on. The rest is stored offline. Want to go to a show?

New eating out plan: never eat at the same place twice. I’m trying to cut back on eating out all the time (I tend to go 4 or 5 times a week), so I think the friction of having to find a new place each time (especially as I run out of places to eat nearby my place) will help encourage me to stay in and learn how to bloody cook. I tried it out today for the first time (and already am noticing all kinds of places to eat that are nearby that I hadn’t looked at before), but halfway through my vegetable yakisoba I realized that I had in fact eaten there once before a long time ago. We start tomorrow.

Club club is faltering… this week I’m going to some Seattle International Film Festival films instead, and next week I’m going to see Hedwig and the Angry Inch played on stage. I may try to go see Pedro the Lion next week too, it’s only ten bucks.

Does anyone care that I’ve completely fallen off the technology angle lately? No? I just haven’t had it in me for some reason. I’m fixating on fixing myself angle now instead of the trends in independant web development (as multi-faceted and fascinating as that topic is). I felt responsible for writing an entry about Amazon’s Plogs, but it would’ve hurt too much. I’m sure I’ll come back in a couple months with some out-dated impressions of best practices and ideas that I don’t have enough time to actually implement. So, I guess I’m saying, if you’re reading me for that, you might want to unbookmark, unblogroll, unsubscribe from me and set your alarm for the Winter Solstice before checking back. I’d make that an iCal feed for you if I was crazy.

I’m seeing Orwell Rolls In His Grave in a few minutes. I went to my apartment’s roof today, it was beautiful. I have some new pants. The CD is skipping. Today living feels a lot like dying, but it feels good. Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois perhaps over halfwya… and maybe there’s a truck tehre.