I V

I got my first issue of Columbia College Today to be delivered to my new address (I've been here over a year), having finally gotten around to updating my Alumnus information online. It is filled with stories of successful graduates who are doing much better than me, from my class, from earlier classes, and even from more recent ones. Most distressing are the articles about graduates who are not only more successful, but who are actually doing things that are good and important-- writing about international law and history, traveling the world and reaching out to those in need, advising the president (for even those of us who don't like him must certainly agree that the man could use some good advise).

All this makes me feel vaguely uneasy about my marginal station in life, working in tech, pulling down a decent salary, banging in the 9 to 6 day in the veal farm. It's a reminder that, as much as we know about "The Ivy League Myth", that in truth most graduates do end up going on to lead fairly normal lives, there are still those who go forth from its hallowed halls and carry on the grand tradition of leading the country, saving the world, setting our laws and reminding us of our past, our problems, our current conditions and our very natures as human beings. Greatness, or at least, great work, is there for those who wish to achieve.

I come from this great tradition, I must remind myself, as corny as it sounds. I did not inherit it. I worked very hard to get there, and hard enough to get through with not one, but two degrees, and a very basic understanding of the sciences, of engineering, and a smattering of the arts and philosophies. I have the tools to take this further, and it frustrates me to bide my time: another two years, to pay off debts-- three if I want to be clear of college loans-- and then I can go on with those fragments of education, those pieces that need to be put together for better understanding of law, of the world, of our place in it now and then, and forward. Then I can quietly go on to do my good work.

Until then, I wait. I punch a clock, so to speak, and I hope that all this isn't ' just some excuse to hide where I'm comfortable while I let the rest of the world pass me by...

Mudbone

I'm not the type of guy who usually ends the evening driving an aging, drunk flamenco guitarist named Roberto (or was it Alberto?) home, and yet here I was, mini amp under my arm, guitar in hand, while he waddled in front of me carrying the rest of his equipment towards the Toyota Paseo (undisputed king of the road). Short, bow legged, long greasy hair, euro-style peasant shirt and all, he was too tall to be a dwarf, but somehow looking like someone had taken a larger man and squished him down about 3 feet, hands like big hamhocks and a face like a battering-ram. This is not who I would have getting into my car after a night out, if I had anything to do with it, but the man needed a ride home, and I was going his way.

Fear not, gentle reader, for the story doesn't end there. No, next I got to hear Ralberto's drunken pontification on the merits of practice vs. being lazy, drinking vs. drugs, getting saved by aliens politicians and Jesus and, my personal favorite, his Grand Scheme to Fix Everything. Pablerto's brilliant idea was that we send everyone who has a physical address a new address, every 30 days. The new address is in a new city, in a new country, and they have to move there for the next month. They can take nothing with them, including family and friends. Once there, they will receive the same job that they had in the old place, this the PoTUS (President of the United States) would be the PoTPRoC (President of The People's Republic of China) and then of Chile, Then Cuba, Then Iran and so on and so forth. "And who would stick around to oversee this master plan?" I asked him cunningly?

"A computer. A giant computer."

Of course. He seemed to have a pretty water-tight theory going here until, this morning when I told her about it, Stephie B. shot it down with one magic bullet: "Thirty days? It takes longer than that just to find a good coffee shop!"

Coffee shop, indeed. Raulbert, there you go.

I hate Yoga

Really I do.

I always have. I come from a running, lifting, endurance, no-nonsense workout background and there's certainly no room for yoga in it. I don't like the strenuous, yet relaxing workout I get from it, and I don't like the way it makes my back feel better or increases my flexibility. Its meditative properties are undesirable and it's definitely no good how it clears my head. I especially don't like being in a sweaty room filled with hot women in tight clothes. There is absolutely no reason why I should be going three times a week... and yet... I am.

I am almost ready to consider not feeling ever so slightly embarrassed about this.

Baby steps.

Beachend

While many of you non Southern Californians think that the weather is sunny and perfect year round, the truth of the matter is... well... actually that is the truth. It is not, however, perfectly warm and summerlike all year round, and with the third week of September upon us, it is about time for a quick, though subtle, turn into fall. This will not affect me very much in terms of the during the daily routine. It's not as though I'm going to start wearing galoshes to work, but it does mean that the evenings of swimming the cove are coming to the end and for most, save the serious surfers who are just getting geared up for winter's swells, no more going to the beach.

I figured this would be the last good beach weekend of the summer. This thought was particularly sad for me this year for, while in previous years I barely made it out to the shore at all, this past summer it was a several times weekly event for swimming, lounging, kayaking and the general, all around, splashing and fooling around type beachery. It will be 9 long months of 60 degree weather before it's summer again. Very difficult indeed. So I made the best of this weekend, spending nearly all of it on the beach. Saturday was four hours of lying around with my friend, going for walks and, on my own since she is afraid of the water, splashing around in the waves. Good fun.

This morning I rose at no hour later than six in the morning in order to get to the shores just after seven to stake out a fire pit for Stephie B's birthday festivities. While the party wasn't until five in the evening, the fire pits are first come first serve, and the life guard estimated I'd need to be there between seven and eight to reserve one. So there I was, fully clothed, a little sunburned from the day before, sitting in my lounge chair with my book and towel, camped out by a nice pit and waiting... and waiting... and waiting. By nine relief showed up to drop off OJ and the Sunday Times (and to get the hard to reach spot on my back with the sunscreen), and by ten a beach canopy arrived, so I had shade. I read. I napped. It was hard work, but well worth it. By the time we had a full continent of people, it was four and time for the bonfire. By seven we had hot coals and it was time to enact Stephie's birthday plan: paella making on the beach in giant, Spanish style skillets.

Every-bit worth the wait.

Scariest Quote Ever

From Reuters today:

"Teams at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and at Duke University have built arm devices that monkeys can power with their thoughts alone."


Holy Shit! We've built psychic monkeys with bionic arms! Have we no sense?

Shit.

I will publish this someday. Someday when I'm feeling better and this really is something I can look back on and be OK about, I'll hit the button, and this post will take its place among the others, as if it had always been there. For tonight though, I'm going to write it and save it, and go crawl under the covers for a while.

I remember reading somewhere--I don't know where-- about love and about breakups and how sometimes they can big noisy and fiery and sometimes they can be cold and terrible or easy and quick and about how sometimes you just hold each other for a really long time and cry until it's time to go. I'd had all but the last kind, until tonight. We talked for a long time, agreeing that as much as we wanted them to be, things just weren't right. We listened and didn't yell or get upset or accuse. Our conversations wound around themselves until eventually, inevitably, we agreed that we were stuck in a place we didn't want to be and there was only one way out. Then we held on to one another some more, and we cried and I realized that, as well as it had gone, which is to say, as well as this sort of thing possibly could go, when she left, it was going to break my fucking heart. So we kept on holding, and crying a little and talking about what was next. Then she left, and it did.