cycle

One era comes to an end today and another begins. It's nothing dramatic, simply a change of scene, a change of style. The morning job has placed me on its work-from-home program, along with several other people from my department at the office. Overall, it is a positive transition. I no longer have to drag my sleep-deprived self out of bed at 5:15 a.m. My shift still begins at 7:00, but because I can avoid the too-early subway commute, I get an extra hour of sleep. No more of that hike to the train while the rest of the world still slumbers or is just awakening. I also leave behind an extant artifact of my past now relegated to the archives of my personal history.

I will miss many of my coworkers. These are solid people. Good people. Chance and circumstance caused our lives to cross. People come, they go, and some stay. There are instances when a few become friends. I will definitely see these friends again (and again) and they will remain a part of my life. I admit I have my foibles and peculiarities, as do we all. I do have self-esteem and confidence to spare. But I don't like to lose. I can be temperamental and impatient, brash and cocky. I can speak before I think. But I am generous, compassionate, irrepressible, and loyal. And when I make a friend - a true friend - I consider it to be planted and unbreakable. If there ever was a Leo... it's me. That's one reason why when someone wrongs me, it cuts so deeply that it is hard to forget and even more difficult to forgive. However, another one of my positive qualities is my ability to, eventually, forgive. It can be a long and thorny path to navigate, but I find my way. Clarity arrives. Acrimony, spite, and a destructive desire for retribution are abated, extracted, eliminated. I do not want that burden. I only want peace, but too frequently, the collision and conflict of thoughts and perceived needs obfuscate my vision and I lose the direction to some degree of inner harmony. I see it through. The inner moral compass guides me back. Oh, how it can be a long journey to the end of the night.

So, the journey continues as I embark on a new era, of sorts. And what are our lives if not a minuscule series of eras that dovetail into each other, creating the entirety of our existence? One experience meshes into the next, and if we're fortunate, we learn from the past, whether that past was rife with mistake or triumph. I move forward through this curious, often quaint, sometimes painful, and occasionally glorious life.

We traverse the circle and we take the cycle to its end.

inaugural

The scene in Times Square today for Obama's inauguration:







Photos taken by Me with a Motorola K-RZR K1M mobile from a 4th floor window.

found

I paid a holiday visit to upstate New York, dazzlingly cold and chillingly desolate. The photocopied photograph below was tacked to a bulletin board outside a grocery store...



It appears to be from decades past - people out of time and frozen in a moment like some kind of anachronism and with no identity. Just... there... with the word "Found" scrawled at the top in Sharpie without any contact information. This tiny idiosyncrasy struck me as bizarre, a little amusing, and even slightly eerie.

Found.

pace

Pace Is the Essence
by Charles Bukowski

as the mailman walked up the hill
he laughed
when he saw me.
I laughed too.
"yeah, Harry, I know:
just an old man with a hose
watering the parkway.
you got me..."

those guys think it's got to be
war
all the time.
I'm just taking a
rest.
when I finally press that red
button
they'll wish I was
back watering the
gladiolas.

vote!

topical

Things I like:

1) laughter among loyal friends and late nights out

2) half-day Fridays

3) Mad Men, Dexter, Spaced (worthwhile, thought-provoking television)

4) the new Metallica (finally, after a twenty year wait, an album worthy of their name)

5) a seat on the subway at 6:10am

6) my Ben Sherman shirts

7) integrity and dignity when faced with the duplicitous and insincere

8) intelligent discourse (college degree not required)

9) writing

10) reading good writing

11) cheesy, but fun, movies that go well with a hangover (Death Race, Shoot 'Em Up, The Ultimate Warrior, Hawk the Slayer, Crank, etc.)

12) the recent Nine Inch Nails album "The Slip" (a free download - thanks, Trent)

13) Arlene's Grocery for local music in an intimate setting ("God Save Queens" last Saturday)

olio

Raindrops on roses
Happy Disney animals
This makes my parts hurt
– Chuck Palahniuk

Many thanks to Chuck for the haiku. There's an author I haven't read in a few years. The last book I checked out was "Haunted," and I enjoyed it regardless of some over-the-top shock value content. Since then, Palahniuk has put out a couple more novels ("Rant" and "Snuff"). Maybe I'll get to them someday. I've been catching up with posthumous Charles Bukowski works, and I have a masochistic desire to read "Ulysses" by James Joyce again. So much to read, so little time.

I keep a journal on my computer. People sometimes ask why it's not handwritten. Well, typing it does not make it less personal. Plus, when I got my first computer in April of 1997, I simply started writing on the new machine, and continued from there to this day. So as of right now, I have over ten years of entries, 239 pages (in 10-point arial font). I try to add to the journal every week. It's fascinating to scroll back and see where I was, what I was doing, and where my life was on a particular date. I can see where my mind and life were at a certain point in time, and I might laugh, or cringe, or shrug. Some of the written memories are pleasant, many are matter-of-fact, and some unpleasant. But I don't think I would change anything. We are all the products of our accumulated experiences and choices. I've made some wise decisions, some dubious, and some... not so wise and highly questionable. I know who I am, and I happen to like who I am. And the people who truly know me, the friends who know my acerbic veneer is just that - a facade to protect this writer's sensitive soul - happen to like me, too. Onward.

My new favorite website? It's the brilliant and riotous "The Nietzsche Family Circus." The site is exactly what it says: it combines the wholesome, cloying family drones of "The Family Circus" with the quotes of German firebrand philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Click here to see young Billy, seeking ontological meaning for himself, remark that he must "look to it that he himself does not become a monster."

"Permalink" your favorites and send along all the existential fun to your friends and neighbors and foes... let them not gaze long into an abyss (you may be on the abyssal fence about your foes, if you have any).

There isn't much on television anymore that can really blow me away, but Mad Men (on AMC) does it. The action revolves around a Madison Avenue advertising agency (Sterling & Cooper) in the early 1960s. The writing, acting, and attention to period detail is so meticulous and organic that it's nearly impossible to not be drawn in week after week. Unfortunately, much like The Sopranos and The Shield (to name just two of many), the season is only thirteen episodes long. Mad Men is more-than-worthwhile and, of course, highly recommended.

It is Labor Day here, but no labor for me today, unless you count a walk to the drug store and the job search. Of course, sending out the cover letter and resume isn't exactly arduous - it merely requires time and focus. A festive extended weekend winds down. The autumn weather slinks about on the fringe of summer, and I welcome it. I, for one, will not miss the heat and humidity, nor the higher electric bills. On the worst of summer days, I long for the temperate climate of San Francisco.

A warm week awaits. Summer's last gasp. perhaps. We head toward the fall and soon enough the holidays will be upon us. Where does the time go?