So, got home and felt tired of the quick-hit jitteryishness of social media, resolved to take it easy and simply watch t.v. Quick-edit, junk t.v. That counts as serenity nowadays. Kinda messed up.
Dying into a dance, an agony of trance.
The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor’s drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night walkers’ song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.
Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades’ bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.
Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,
More miracle than bird or handiwork,
Planted on the star-lit golden bough,
Can like the cocks of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all complexities of mire or blood.
At midnight on the Emperor’s pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.
Astraddle on the dolphin’s mire and blood,
Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood,
The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity,
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.
– Byzantium, by William Butler Yeats
This is the follow-up poem by Yeats to his Sailing to Byzantium, one of my favorites in my 20s. This poem, written only three years later, is a call-back where the narrator explores the city of legend he aspired to reach in the earlier poem. It makes me realize the aspiration to be a crafted mechanical bird, immortal, singing to lords and ladies of the past, present, or things to come is a way out of the trappings of age and a way into existence of art into posterity, but does not convey the mire, the nature and swamp and meat of life that gives beauty. The poem above seems more sage, an initiate regarding new arrivals. Art as a process of burning and refining. Sensible. Suits an accomplished genius like Yeats. Feels like the only things I have to share are laden messes, to convey the muck and the ooze of it all. I’ve not gained the knack for refinement yet.
While typing this, the itching from a new haircut trickles down my neck through the collar of my t-shirt and sweatshirt. Seeing the amount of silver compared to brown (once natural blonde!) that falls in clumps over the haircut cape while sitting in the chair continues to amuse. The buzzing and tugging and trimming that comes from a woman cutting my hair always feels more intimate than it should be. If there’s not much chit-chat, I tend to tip higher, but I still tip pretty high because in a small way grooming by someone’s hands feels like a moment. The race between my hair turning to silver, and whether I have hair left at all, tends to not amuse. As my hair has waned over the last two decades, I determined to improve my personality to compensate. But, as in so many such resolutions, I’ve let up on THAT a bit. The curmudgeon will out.
As I get to the tasty sludge of a dark hot cocoa at a high end, but not quite aristocratic, chocolateria, three Asian women are having a spirited conversation in a language that is not Japanese nor Chinese. Their pace is quick. Their voices complement each other, and it’s a relief to NOT know enough of their words to eavesdrop. Mild melodic background. Light laughter. I’m tempted to place my smartphone on the small coffee table between them and record their voices for future background noise.
And, like that, I’ve resolved I like Sailing to Byzantium better. The narrator laments, aspires, but is not accomplished enough, it has not yet reached the holy city. November is National Novel Writing Month, and I need to get ramped up on my project.
The Apple aesthete in exile, then triumphant
In the Spring of 1996 I was a new hire at Xerox, and had been flown from home to attend a 3-day customer service & problem-solving training at the vast Xerox Document University (XDU) complex in Leesburg, Virginia. No shit, this place existed. It was HUGE. The armed forces frequently leased buildings and rooms from it.
The GREAT documentary about the start of the Silicon Valley technology industry, Triumph of the Nerds, was on PBS and I was watching it in a wing of a floor of the XDU dorm I was staying in.
Triumph of the Nerds had JUST SHOWN a segment on how the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC) had developed the graphical user interface, Ethernet, laser printers, and the mouse. The Xerox brass sniffed they were all useless. They made the inventors at Xerox PARC show the punks at Apple all of this stuff.
Xerox could have been HP, Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe all in one, but the Execs pissed it all away.
But my fellow co-trainee knuckleheads at XDU didn’t give a shit. The NBA playoffs were on (who the fuck cares?) and they saw no irony or thrill at watching how their employer was stupid and could have run the world, as we were all being trained by that same company on how to do things. I was outvoted, and found another tv in another dorm wing to resume watching Triumph of the Nerds.
I am proud to say I have never purchased a Windows machine. Mac-only since my dual disk drive Mac SE in 1987 (no hard drive until 1990!).
I have three sheets of these stickers.But the 90s were an UGLY time to be an Apple fan. Their product line an unholy mess of keeping Quadras, Performas, and several clone makers all distinct from each other. Still, we held strong even past when it made little sense to do so. Buy a Windows 386? Get the fuck out! I’ll hold strong with my Quadra 610 and its CD-ROM, thank you very much. I can play Myst on this. It’s magical (and cost a relative fortune)!
But Steve Jobs, Apple’s prodigal co-founder whose pride and bad management style got him booted in the mid 80s, came on screen and got this terrific dig into Microsoft and it was a great thing to see. I squirmed and cheered in the caverns of XDU. He was a fellow Reedie (and like me, left before graduating) so he was already a character I admired. In the moment below, even knowing in great detail he was an asshole, he championed aesthetics. In later years, he partially regretted making this statement, but not entirely:
His personal life didn’t get pulled together until he got booted from Apple, but he managed it, grew up, and within a year of rejoining Apple he got the iMac and iBook and wireless internet in mass production. He hired a kindred spirit in designer Jonathan Ive. He learned to delegate, while still keeping his keen aesthetic eye and compulsion to be a prick in pursuit of the greater good.
To your insanely great work, Steve. You will be missed, and you’ve made countless people happy, do better work, and more connected to each other. Cheers.
Buzzy throbbing rectangles
When set aside and not (one of) you its vibrations go nnzzzzzt like a nightstand alarm. Grrrrr.
What NOW?
When set aside or held, with catching a message volley its vibrations are a purrrrr.
Ah! Huzzah!
Sometimes it feels like a single cord, taut, if I shake my rectangle it makes yours flip.
I curl slightly, dumb happy look (probably), and open my chest and send a throb into the backlit screen.
The pulse makes its way to you. You, also hunched, grin widely, clutch it closer. Whisper type back.
When it’s business I lean back in aversion, make a face, thumb slaps respond.
Busy times it feels tentacled. Ugh. Latching onto hands and chair and lap. If I dropped it (though pricey!) it may skitter under the table shade. Crouching, anxious to pounce again at the next bzzzzzt.
Out and about. *CLICK* I am here. *SEND*
*CHECK* Has anyone? *SCROLL* Where is? *CHECKITY-CHECK* Ah! Have I been there? *COMMENTY-COMMENT*
A nuisance. A boon. Data plans are expensive, but planes and trains cost more.
ASCII and files slung back and forth in digital semaphore.
Amusement aggravation. I am not there I am here.
Life gets less vapid with wants and hopes and jibes filling the air.
Chaos theory
Two looks at chaos theory. A theme today. First, a decent, whimsical look by the venerable ‘Rocketboom’ from 2008:
Next, an explanation from ‘Jurassic Park’, one of the best movies ever, hammy, cheesy, chunky, a Denver omelette of entertainment. The pinnacle of the dozen of Jeff Goldblum scientist roles. Oh, how I love this performance…
Once the kids are out of high school, Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm will be my role model. That I will be 52 by then will make it even more unctuous and over the top. Letting you all know.
Tattoo coordinates
A few times I’ve mulled over getting a tattoo. But any symbol with importance in my life would have proved an embarrassment to me later in life. Thus, so far, I’ve laid off getting one.
While attending ‘Trek in the Park’ a woman sitting in front of me SO SIGNIFIED three places on earth that she got the geo coordinates tattooed on her upper back. This photo I snapped only got the top two. I did not record the third location.
The first set of coordinates led to the Mesa Arts Center in Mesa, Arizona.
The second set led to this spot in Eugene, Oregon. Can’t tell a specific building other than it’s in the middle of a street and near Pella Windows & Doors, Eugene Water & Electric Board (a publicly-held utility that’s run really well), and the Good Times Bar & Grill. All of them quite a distance from this spot, so none of them seem tied to the specific coordinates.
So, took the photo, took the time more than a month later to look it up, and then was bored by the result. Sorry. Unless YOU have a guess as to what’s going on. Maybe next summer when I see her around I’ll ask her about her apparently humdrum life and the significance of these spots. Maybe the THIRD set of coordinates is the essential component to this gigantic puzzle. A treasure map? Oh, crap. Now I won’t be able to sleep!
George Michael can stand up, sing
Despite driving while intoxicated/stoned in recent years, George Michael, according to YouTube, has given a concert within the last month. Among the songs he sung were covers by two of my favorite artists. “Let Her Down Easy” from Symphony or Damn by Terence Trent D’Arby (who now goes by Sananda Maitreya and still makes great music):
He also covers “Going to a Town” by Rufus Wainwright from the album Release the Stars. Here he admits to being stoned talking to Wainwright on the phone and not remembering the conversation afterward:
Mostly, I’m pleased to see George Michael being charming, lucid, and doing a good job selecting songs to cover. Hope he keeps it together…
This is the second time I’ve blogged about George Michael. About every five months or so seems about right, hopefully other topics present themselves in between.
Dying some day, Duck football
Portland’s nationally-renowned Voodoo Doughnuts in an Autzen Stadium trashbin with Coors, Bud Light, Solo cups, Sprite cans, water bottles.
Being in a like-minded crowd of 59,000 people is exhilarating experience, at times. It’s also relaxing. And often boring. There are high-priced snacks, increasingly-elaborate fanfare (some effective, sometimes *THUD*).
I’ve following one team over 30 years: University of Oregon Ducks football. I scarcely follow any other sport. Off-field scandals? Love ’em. The primary way I know athlete names. Terrell Owen’s working out on his driveway before the press, pouting about his contract with the Philadelphia Eagles like Achilles sulking in his tent was one of the best moments of the 21st century so far. Take up my Sunday watching pro football? Nah. Baseball? Okay in person, if the concessions and company are good. On t.v.? Will never stop to watch. Viewed about two innings of the Giants World Series last year. Soccer, ehm fútböl? Get the fuck out of here!
Women’s tennis? Raising an eyebrow. Go on: who’s playing? Don’t recognize the names. Have photos? What do their grunts sound like? Well, okay. Skootch the kids out of the room, daddy’s going to a dark place… Winter Olympics? Okay. Especially figure skating if prepped sufficiently by profiles of the personalities and psychodrama (networks usually oblige). I’m on Team Johnny Weir, bitches. Track & field? Sure. I grew up in Track City. I love watching that stuff, but never make an appointment or know when the events are. Still laughing at Tyson Gay’s knack for 100% sensible, elegant answers. Reporter speaks with him SECONDS after he sprinted his heart out, mind and body super-charged. Gay’s answer “I ran fast this time. Need to run faster next time.” Not said with a smile. That’s all he can muster, reporter, don’t make a face at the camera BECAUSE HE JUST CHALLENGED THE LIMITS OF HUMAN CAPACITY, you fool! NBA? Interest waned as did the Trailblazers in the early 90s and the names of the players changed from the Super Nintendo NBA Jams game I knew VERY well. Secret code to play as Bill Clinton & Al Gore, FTW!
Being in a mass of people is great food for thought, or un-thought. At times I scan the crowd and think: “How many here were singing to Tenacious D, Sly Stone, Rufus Wainwright, listening to Gore Vidal, liberal radio, Harold Bloom, Anne Sexton en route here?” First, I snort derisively, then I realize statistically, LOTS of people were engaged in some, maybe ALL of those very things, many even deeper & sillier. I like that realization. I like de-smugging myself.
Like in the various works of Holy Writ, our sky god continues to concern himself with taking sides in petty tribal squabbles.I first went to a University of Oregon football game in 1978 or so. The team stunk. In 1980 the Oregon Ducks went 6 wins, three losses, and two ties and the city of Eugene was elated. There was talk of bronzing the entire team before those kids could graduate. Grimly set them for all time atop a hideous concrete fountain on Willamette Street & Broadway. Happily, this was not done and the young men were allowed to lead full lives and not grimly expire, asphyxiated and scalded by molten metal. Reggie Ogburn, your heroism game after game, win or loss, kept possibly hundreds of people in Lane County from killing themselves.
Stadium capacity then was 44,000. 45,000 with standing room-only. Attendance was typically 20K – 30K. My memory of every game involves dreary rain, ponchos, and a pageant of losing game after game. There must have been dry days. They don’t stick as much. Developing a ritual about figuring out in the rain when to eat the frozen Carnation chocolate malt with its sometimes non-splntering wood spoon. My dad at the time was a faculty member, and we typically sat in the corner at sections 34-35.
Later in the early 80s, my brother and I sat in the sponsor seats. Mom remarried and her new husband’s family was a longtime donor to Oregon athletics. Sponsor seats meant seat backs, a roof with heaters, shorter concession lines, being tweens then teens among the Duck football upper-crust (not too snooty). A taste of the aristocratic life, its sweetness now turned acrid as I write frequently of class struggles nowadays.
Then it was rejoining the hoi polloi on wood bleachers, slats occasionally cracked into jab-friendly fragments. The benches had some kind of fungus underneath I scraped off with my fingers then pressed into an ashy residue in my palms when nervous during games. I was often nervous during games.
I’ve had season tickets as an adult for about 14 years now. I share seats that have been in the family for about 30 years, two seats next to two long-time family friends.
In all that time, I’ve not learned the names of the people around us save for the family friends.
I like witnessing the passage of time, football season after season — the changes for these familiar strangers. What have their paths been like? Reflecting back on my path when that person was pregnant, that other person started bringing his kids, now teenagers? What happened to those people too old to attend the last few years?
I like the excitement of the game in progress, and the adrenaline rush evoking similar games with different kids on the field. A long while ago, I realized I will make myself hoarse within minutes if I start vocalizing. I have mastered a LOUD CLAP. Fear the Clap! Ehm, need to work on that motto.
Before each game, embarrassingly, the Duck arrives on a loud motorcycle. On this September 17, 2011 game, crowd control prepares for an on-field herding of cattle. Disappointingly, no livestock other than us ever emerged.For a writing project, in 2002 I wrote a chapter that summed up my memories & feelings about Duck football within the framework, play-by-play, of a 1998 game between Oregon and Stanford (Ducks won, by a LOT). Check it out. That chapter starts on page 10.
I LIKE the territorial pride of our middle section that stretches from one 45 yard line to the other. Reliably each year, a student, an arriviste, will turn in disgust at our not standing up and shouting from our diaphragms at every possible play. He will turn and look up to the crowd and lament to us and to the lords and ladies and hermaphrodites who oversee our travails: “Come ON! Get UP you guys! Let’s go Ducks! Let’s go Ducks!” As he sits back down, disheartened the bulk of humanity simply does not care to the extent he does, a quiet chuckle ripples among us veterans. Kid, we’ll burn out if we do that. Our pace is generational, not the 4-5 years you’ll be around to get a degree. We will exhort the team when needed. Also, we’re not as drunk as you are.
Oregon v. Auburn at the 2011 National Championship game, decided by an Auburn field goal in the last 3 seconds. The post-game commentary was hugely about how Oregon could never have beaten Auburn. That’s why I fucking hate sports commentators
Football, kids, Anne Sexton, Nintendo DS
Driving home from attending a college football game, I traveled with my kids, who had spent the day with a set of grandparents, back to our home city. My daughter was asleep in the backseat, iPod touch probably still playing. My son was playing a word game on his Nintendo DSi XL. I had finished with listening to the football post-game show on the radio, and had switched to an iPod playlist of authors reading their own work. To the sound of Anne Sexton reading poems on the car stereo, my son asked me questions about his game.
Had there been a transcript of one particular point, it would have read like this:
Oh, darling! Born in that sweet birthday suit
and having owned it and known it for so long,
now you must watch high noon enter–
[Son: “Papa, what’s a word for a food that needs sauce?” Me: “Barbecue, maybe?”]
noon, that ghost hour.
Oh, funny little girl–this one under a blueberry sky,
[Son: “It doesn’t work.” Me: “How about spaghetti?” Son: “How do you spell ‘spaghetti’?” Me: “S-p-a-g-h-e-t-t-i.” Son: “That works!”]
this one! How can I say that I’ve known
just what you know and just where you are?
It’s not a strange place, this odd home
[Son: “Papa, how do you spell ‘weight’?” Me: “Like in, heavy?” Son: “Yes.” Me: “W-e-i-g-h-t.”]
where your face sits in my hand
so full of distance,
so full of its immediate fever.
“Silent Lucidity” messed up my bowels
In 1990, I fixated on how much I hated “Silent Lucidity”, the hit single by sensitive prog rock band Queensrÿche. When I really hated something in pop culture, I would delve deep to get agonizingly precise about WHY and HOW. This pathology led to a two-year obsession with Danzig. I can’t hear more than a few bars of Danzig without laughing. My buddy V, who got similarly obsessed, can get us going with quoting a Danzig grunt or mumble.
“Silent Lucidity” sounds like a Pink Floyd parody. I never liked Pink Floyd. Oh, those guys are fine as people, grateful to Dave Gilmour for bringing Kate Bush into the light, Roger Waters seems a decent bloke, and so sad about Syd Barrett, but in college people got so preciousssss about Pink Floyd, often while mocking my preference for Prince. Thus, Pink Floyd, the collective entity, has earned a karmic “kiss my grits”. Yes, I am all about pop culture vendettas.
BEHOLD this video. Be AWED how the lead singer dude looks into the camera, peering into YOU achingly, seeking solace, wanting to guide you in turn! LISTEN how “lucidity” is turned into five syllables, possibly seven, eight, infinite syllables extending to a fourth dimension! “As I lay next to you, in silent loo-sid-uh-tee-hee.”
So, my masochistic button in ’90 was pushed and I HAD to buy the cassette single (what’s that? Kids, they sucked, but that’s all we had after the Walkman revolution. Don’t worry about it.) of “Silent Lucidity”. This jihad followed my having just sold my car, my dear ’65 Buick Skylark Gran Sport, red, vanity plate “DANTE” (because it took me to hell and back, har-har). I persuaded my friend V to drive to the shopping mall. He agreed, but only if we went to Dairy Queen with out friend visiting from out of town, G, to eat Blizzards afterward. This was a fateful decision.
Bought the cassette single, we ingested Blizzards (gross! why were we girlfriendless?) and I got home. With ceremony, as my friend & roommate B was out, I put the cassette into my Walkman, and sat on the toilet.
I had felt a little flushed in the head eating the Blizzard. As the music played, it was clear digestion was not going well. Song went on, discomfort churned to disgust and I was at the mercy of some satanic gumbo gurgling in my intestines that couldn’t decide whether to evacuate & slither down through me to sewer pipes in a path back to hell, or wreak more horror by roiling within my mortal innards.
Composed myself enough to collapse into bed. The next morning I was running a 102 degree temperature and still had the runs. After sharing how ill I was, my roommate B did not register my ailment, and instead shared how he took exception to an obnoxious message I left for him on our answering machine (what’s an answering machine? Again, kids: don’t worry. You have inherited a better world). At that moment, I was not capable of interpersonal subtleties/apologies/analysis. I was fending for the integrity of soul and body, because of Queensrÿche, which had infiltrated and violated me from my very center.
So now I LOATHE the song. In fact, I didn’t even listen to the song or watch the video when posting it above. PTSD has etched the whole thing, and etched it deep.
And what is up with the ümlaüt in their name? If anÿone can provide an answer I’d be grateful.