The Man and the Blogging Website

I've been casually reading some of Aesop's fabled fables from some cheap publisher. It's intriguing to me that in the rather uninspiring and uninformative introduction, as are most when not written by the author and not by Vonnegut, mentions that the fables are thought to be from Egyptian times.
Anything ancient like this is bound to strike me as something worthwhile to read and study a bit and it depresses me that the only version I have is something that was most likely printed for children looking to get a taste of Aesop, or more accurately, parents wishing their children to have a taste. Anyone know anything more than just, "...it's possible that these stories come from the time of the Egyptians!" ?
Anyway, here's a good one paraphrased by me:

An olive tree pipes up to a fig tree saying, "Look at you! In the winter you lose all of your leaves and look comely and bare while I keep all of my beautiful plumage and am just as gorgeous throughout winter as now!" The fig tree keeps quiet.
When the winter comes a heavy snow falls and the olive tree, with all it's beautiful leaves attached, catches the snow in it's boughs and, unable to hold the weight, bends over and snaps. The fig tree let all the snow fall between it's barren branchs and survived to the spring to bear more fruit many seasons past.

Notes from the Underground or something

I have two cuts on the fingers of my left hand.
One is on my thumb and the other on the forefinger.
They are aligned in such a way that it makes grasping anything with those two fingers pretty painful.
This, and a few steam burns, is the result of a wedding I attended this last weekend. On Sunday one of my friends got married to someone they found themselves in love with. It was a good wedding. I think any wedding with obligatory kilts for the groomspeople is a good wedding. My wedding did not have obligatory kilts for the groomspeople and so you might be quick to say that I, therefore, did not have a good wedding. But you would, of course, be mistaken. My wedding was amazing. It was home-written and produced and such. We didn't even have groomspeople so there was never any time for us to even consider obligatory kilts for them. So your judgement was unjustified. Nyah nyah.
And so I have two cuts and some steam burns. This is again, due to the wedding. You may wonder why and I guess, seeing as I am the one who brought it up, I am obligated to tell you about it. But is that really true? Am I obligated to tell an absent audience anything? Are you even listening right now? Will you be? Doesn't matter.
So my story is that I was helping out by working the beverage station in the most crowded room of the wedding. The drinks were pretty much either water or this amazing tasting grape juice from a winery. Of course the grape juice was chosen over water for the most part. The bottles, being from a winery as I said, were that traditional wine style with foil over the top and a cork to keep it sealed. This, as I'm sure you are guessing already, meant that someone had to rip open each bottle for the thristy guests. Unfortunately, each bottle only satiated about two or three guests. There were about four hundred guests at this event. So I had some slipups.
Before you imagine pressurized, scalding-hot grape juice bursting from the wine bottle with every cork and me holding them with some sort of hazardous materials gloves and tongs: I meant that I cut myself accidentally cutting the foil off. I don't actually remember where the steam burns came from.
Anyway, I'm not bringing up the cuts and burns to complain about my helping out during the wedding. Besides I kind of flubbed up during the ceremony from not putting all the microphones up at the right time so I have no place to complain or anything. I wish I had remembered correctly. I was pretty bright red and embarrassed at that. If anyone who was a major player in the wedding reads this, this can be a public apology for something that I receieved no anger about but has been internally chiding me.
I brought up the wine/grape juice-bottle opening fun because it showed me something rather amazing. I have seen those fancy little bottle-openers before. With the knife and the screw and the pushing part and all that. I have vaguely understood how to use one. I have not been able to do it well with much continued success. Right before the mess of people descended upon me (and my delightful helper whose station was left unnocccupied for my sake: thank you, sir) I was given a brief reshowing by someone who clearly had more experience with it. He did it once. I watched carefully. Then came everyone wanting grape juice and I had a one-bottle head start.
The interesting thing gained from this was that I realised that quite quickly I became much more adept at opening corked bottles than I ever had before. It simply took a dismissal of the fear of my situation and a brief reminder of the simply facts and truths of the action to start. Then it started and it just kept going.
And, ok, I cut myself a few times and broke a cork and gave some people a bit too much and, maybe, others a bit too little. But whatever. It's not like anyone was looking over my shoulder and demanding any perfection from me. And I wasn't expected to learn or gain anything. It was just about keeping something going. I did still make sure people could drink grape juice if they wanted it.
Ok, so this all seemed a bit more profound without all the details of the metaphor. Just forget all the grape juice stuff and think about it in terms of living and I think you will see what I was thinking. Maybe.
And so I need to be better about saying (now that it's been quite a while in study) that I have learned enough to get going and just start doing it all. I can pray that what I have learned and studied and thought about will stay there, in the back of my mind, keeping my actions guided and directed and, hopefully, pure. But it should be a time for action above discourse now.

Man Vs. Nature

On my mind

You know, there is a beautiful offramp in Illinois driving south on the I-55. I think it's somewhere close after the ridiculous monstrosity of the intersection with I-355: that sad excuse for an express tollway.
As a quick side note, I have to say: for something designed to speed up commuting north and south in Chicago's western suburbs, everytime I've gotten on it, it has just been completely stopped. The times I've taken parallel highways instead it either takes the same or less amount of time. And you pay upwards of a dollar to take the tollroad these days. Stupid.
Sometime after that, if you pay attention to it, you will notice at one of the bridges crossing the freeway an offramp that instead of leading cars off the road, has completely fallen into disregard. There is no longer pavement. The surface where it was is choking with wild flowers, grasses, and other weeds. Nature overgrown prettily.
As it should be. But, of course, the supreme beauty of it is from the blatant appearance that it was once an offramp. The curve and flatness of the once-road is still so shockingly obvious. It reminds me of those apocalyptic views of our dazzling modern metropolises, hundreds of years from now when "the ravages of time(!)" have taken their toll.
Maybe you will think I'm nuts, but they always look more beautiful that way. A sort of perfect blending between our creative construction and nature's resourcefulness.
The offramp got me thinking of that and later had me noticing more of the same kind of thing. I wish I could take beautiful and emotive pictures to get the idea across. Something to show that clash between buildings and plants or, widening the context a little, trash in very unnasuming spots or so.
Of course, that last bit is the kind of picture to get you in trouble. It would be difficult to do without eliciting feelings of spite or bitterness or activism or something. Not to say that I don't hate the idea of littering, but the pictures would be to try and show the relationship between people and the land they live in, not to preach something (I would do that another way).
Another really obvious example would be when Rali and I were last in Hawai'i. We were walking up this really pretty mountain and came across a sign that said something to the effect of, "Restoration area, please respect the wildlife," and there underneath, perfectly framed for a photo, was a Burger King cup of "Joe"
Like I said, that one's obvious, but I'd like to explore the idea in less obvious ways. There's something about trees in those little sidewalk boxes that intrigue me. I once saw a wild flower bursting out of the curb of a street, alone with a huge and beautiful bloom (it was gone the next day). If you happen to see anything like that, I would be really pleased to see pictures of your own.
And maybe I can actually take a few myself sometime.

I need less alarm in life

Today has been a good day. I woke up using only one alarm and wasn't late to work.
Rali and I got into a fight recently because she felt as though she was the only one with responsibility for my waking up and getting to work in the morning. One thing she was frustrated with was that I would set two alarms and just ride the snooze button until she, essentially, kicked me out of bed. So, after this spat, we decided she is not to offer help in the mornings.
Well, obviously, she really was the one getting me out of bed in the morning, so I was freaked out I'd be hours late. Instead, I tried to be clever. Instead of giving myself all this buffer time from when the first alarm went off and when I actually needed to be up, I thought maybe it would help to just set one alarm and set it for exactly when if I didn't get up, I'd be late. This in the hopes that the alarm would go off and I would just get up, instead of lazing around in bed for an hour as alarms keep going off every however many minutes.
I tried it succesfully this morning. I got up after about 15 minutes of time but it worked out as I had incorrectly judged when I needed to be up and moving by about that much. In fact, I wasn't at all late to work in the end, but early by a few minutes. This is rather remarkable for me, if not for you.

Work was good. I was expo and felt like I kept up brilliantly at all times. The only thing that wasn't so hot and awesome happened in the very beginning. I have to cut green apples into thin slices to stick in the swiss oatmeal cup. I didn't remember this until the first order for a swiss cup of oatmeal came through. So, I thought, it's still pretty slow, I'll just go get an apple and do it right now. This was going fine until I flailed a little too much with the knife and sliced off a little chunk of my thumb. I'm trying to get better at cutting the correct way with a knife but it's obviously not going too brilliantly. This happened to occur as my manager was right behind me and, seeing as I wasn't wearing the protective cutting glove they suggest using, I opted not to draw to much attention to my situation. So, instead of crying out in bloody-murderish pain, I calmly threw away the apple with the small peice of my thumb on it, cleaned up, grabbed a wad of paper towels, and jogged to the office in the back praying it was still open. Thank God, it was, and I grabbed a bandage (the adhesive kind that are made for fingertips).
Now, one thing about food safety is that if you cut your finger, you have to wear what the box labels as a "fingercot." I'm not really sure why they call it that, because it is clearly a finger condom. It looks exactly like a miniature, rolled-up condom. Until you unroll it onto your finger. Then it looks like an unrolled condom. And if you unthinkingly leave a small amount of empty space above the tip of your thumb, like I did, then it looks rather idiotic. I'm pretty sure my thumb isn't going to do anything but bleed; I don't know what I was thinking.

On My Mind

Waking up in a good way. Getting up and focusing on what I'm doing.

Eastern ways of life. Is there more... er... focus on focus? Where is the concept of focus talked about? More importantly, how does one improve on focusing?

A friend at work was talking about her child. Specifically how her husband had gotten upset when their daughter didn't want to hang out with them but rather a different family member. Rali and I joke that when her sister's kids grow up, we expect them to come and hang out with us, the cool aunt and uncle, when they are fed up with their parents. I was thinking about this kind of thing and it made me think about how children shouldn't be viewed as the parent's property but as a part of the community. And they should be a part of the community. It's hard in America where there isn't a strong community made up of physical neighbors. Towns aren't unified by anything other than politics. And politics is hardly representative of the people.

There is a great story I heard at Newbold, in the conservative service. A man told of how he was sick of waking up to alarms and starting his day like that. He felt like it was ruining his whole day to wake to loud noise and fear and such. So he prayed to God and asked him to wake him up for whatever he needed to wake up for, with enough time to get ready and such. That night he didn't set his alarm. He hasn't set one since. He hasn't been late for anything because of sleeping in since.

Cars Suck

I woke up today early to my loud and annoying alarms. I turned them off, as usual.
The next thing that woke me up was the garbage truck growling it's way through our street, picking stuff up and throwing it around like a hooligan. This was not a good sign, however, as the truck usually gets to our house at about 7:00. This is when I was supposed to be at work. So I had a moment of freak out until Rali suggested I take the car as she needed to bring it to work for boxes anyway. So I relaxed a bit and got myself ready without as much worry and went to work. I was still about 10 minutes late. It worked out well though because my manager decided to simply switch me and someone else on the schedule because they were there. So in the end, I wasn't late at all but early by 20 minutes.

And then work was about the same as any other day. Business wasn't great but we were busy enough that I didn't feel bored or lacking in something to do. It's easy to feel that way when I work cashier sometimes, because as soon as there aren't customers I feel kind of at a loss as to what to do. I can even sometimes feel that way when I work as expo, but usually not. Usually I feel kind of harried by expo, like I am stuck perpetually trying to catch back up. Today I felt as if everything was smooth and I was at the same speed as the orders. So, overall, that made for a good day.
After work, I went to see Rali. Rali has a new employee under her wing again. When I came in, she was teaching her how to scoop gelato. I figured I wouldn't have much time to chat with her if she was training someone so I left.

Stupidly though, I had forgotten about the primary reason I had taken the car to work today. It wasn't actually because I was late, it was because we needed it for the boxes. So I thought to myself, "If I take the car back home, I can bike back up when I visit Rali later this evening and then we will be able to bike back home together," I enjoy that and I know Rali does, so I drove home.

At home, I played a bit of guitar. I am trying to hammer down a new song. It's a fun one because I grabbed a hold of a chord progression I made up a long time ago and reappropriated it for the ending. Because of the lyrics, the ending has to be different. I'm pretty pleased with it so far but I feel like there's a bit more I could do to make it really strong. I'll ask Rali for help later, if she doesn't mind.
And speaking of Rali, she called a little while ago upset that I had taken the car home. So now, I have to take it back up to work. Ah well, a dumb mistake: that's nothing new.

On my mind

This song I was working on. It's part of an album that I am trying to do based on a poem I wrote. It's been fun so far to work on it.
Forgetting things. Just in general. It's frustrating.

PDX punx

We are excited! Rali and I just took our trip to Portland for the week.
This was from the 12th until the 19th. We went looking for jobs and to get a good feel for the city. It was also our friends' Ande and Vala's wedding shower that weekend and, as Rali is the Matron of Honor, we were going to be there to help make a great party. And finally, Ande leads the drama class and club at her old high school and had decided to put on two of Rali's short, one-act plays. We were going to help workshop with the actors/students.

So firstly, our jobs!
We applied to a good handful of amazing, each in their own ways, coffee houses or gelato bars. Unfortunately, as we went at the beginning of summer, they were all looking only for part-time, summer jobs. But most of them said to come back or call back in July or August, which is when we;d like to move anyway. Portland is definately a great place to persue this feild of work. Coffee places here in this bum valley accept applications, assume you want part-time work, that you are in school, that you don't care about what you do, etc. In Portland, everywhere we went expected a good resumé. One, called Mio Gelato, told us that without a cover letter the owner would not even look at it, as they get hundreds at a time.
So we're excited about the oppurtunities there might be.

I didn't have a lot of time to really look into it, but I have heard for a long time that Portland has a thriving, independant music community and I can't wait to look into recording/publishing some music.
We also found something called the IPRC which is: The Independant Publishing Resource Center, a center with classes on silk screening for covers, letterpress printing, zine-making, and other intriguing ideas. Rali and I are extremely excited by the idea of going and getting practical, publishing knowledge and I know I'm going to be thrilled to see anything of hers in print some place.

The city is beautiful and every shop we went into has a feel of authenticty and every local place had something in it connecting itself to the general Portland community, which is something remarkable in my opinion. There are admittedly some strange things about this general community but I think Rali and I will be able to connect and not be spoiled by the 'more breweries and strip clubs per capita than anywhere else in the USA' or the ganja parade they have, or other such nonsense we just aren't interested in. Also, something about the city seems like it already had roots in context and is ripe for a flourishing context movement and that, as well, is exciting.

But, in spite of taking too much time on one subject, I'll move on to Rali's plays.
Our friend Ande has a few remarkable students under her wing who did a respectable performance of Rali's less post-modern of the two plays: 'Three Walls and a Door.' I, embarassingly, was called on to act as one of the three parts in this one. One of the actors opted out a little late in the term to find a different student.
Maybe it was a sense of responsibility and a conjoined need to show a mature response to duty around the high school kids, but I treated my part in the play with a sense of devotion unknown to myself and any previous acting experiences. Maybe I really am just getting better about the idea of having a stage presence.
This play was very well recieved, at least I think, judging by the parents but certainly by the students. It was wonderfully enjoyable too. I think Rali wouldn't mind showing you the script (of either of the two) if you email a request to us.

The second play of Rali, the more post-modern in style and influence, was performed first. It's called "Case and Point" and is the one I enjoy more for it's quirky humor and absurdity while, with a little context, is perfectly reasonable and realistic. Actually, the biggest joy I find in it is just that it seems absurd yet could be real, and is absurd but shows reality.
This play had worse hitches than the first one but, I think, went well reagardless. The student playing the lead decided to give up on the act and call out of school sick with "brochitis vertigo". That sounds made up to us. Epecially when he called one of the students, after declaring ill from this strange combination of illnesses including one that leaves you barely audible, to tell a sophmoric (the irony would be amazing if he actually was a sophmore) knock-knock joke. Case and Point's lead man was replaced by the student playing the next step down, as far as characters in the skit go. And his part had to be replaced by none other than the author, Rali, herself. Unfortunately for the new lead, the old one pulled this stunt on the day of performance so the new guy had a few hours to prepare. Taking that into account, his performance was excellent. Without knowing what happened, I would have said he was pretty shaky and lacked confidence in his lines. But I know I would have had far less confidence than he did, and I have a suspicion that the original lead would have had far less too. The change was beneficial.
So, the two days of performance were appropriately dramatic and exciting.

As a nice tie-up to our visit we put on Ande's wedding shower.
At first, we were a bit worried about getting everything done and about having it all set up in time, but after baking scones nearly all night long and waking up to spend the rest of the morning, nearly until the start of the party, making and cutting sandwiches, our fears were availed of us.
In the end, it was a small and fully enjoyable party, at least, from our side of it: behind the tea-bar. The guests all seemed to enjoy the theme, food, tea, and company just fine. We even had a few ego-boosting compliments. But not just ego-boosting, reassuring of the possibility of our future ideas.
We made four kinds of tea sandwiches: flagship cheese (Ande's pick) and tomato, egg salad with watercress, cream cheese and black olive, and mint-butter and cucumber. We also made vanilla almond, cinnamon struesel, and black current scones (not all together, three different kinds). Then we had English Breakfast, Earl Grey, Jasmine, and Mint for tea (/herbal). And there was even some fruit.
We had planned for about 40 people showing up but I think only about 15 really did so we had a huge amount of leftovers. They lasted two whole days between me and Rali, Ande and Vala, Ande's sister, and The Butter Lovers.

On my mind

City living an the simplicities, complexities, and balance of that. How much we want to join that lifestyle. How repulsed we are by the place we're in.
We took the MAX out to the area that Ande and Vala are looking at trying to get a home (actually we were 30 minutes closer than what they are looking at) and as soon as we walked out from the huge bus stop and train station, we barely could contain our instant frustration at suburbs completely undeveloped for pedestrians and instead catering to a car-driving consumer. Everything was huge, busy roads and corporatized strip malls. And maybe some people enjoy a location like that but Rali and I behin to loathe existence if subjected to them for too long.

Begin This Instant

This can be your first post.
All you have to do is actually write it.

If you don't, I'll weep like a willow.

-Rali