Blog-azic

I left work after dark and raced to the highway, wove through traffic, sped judiciously past Greensboro, Winston Salem, turned north: Pilot Mountain to the left rising out of the blackness - somehow appearing more black than the sky. Yes, in fact, I noticed the sky was not black but deep purple, like bruised flesh - a trick from the full moon obscured behind clouds. I climbed I-77, rose above the Piedmont, and sped back into the high country before the wild hills of West Virginia appeared - black coal hills, undulating, looking down on me. I had a distinct feeling of something old - perhaps something I felt a long time ago, but since I could not name it, it slipped away. I past the time (except for a quick gas stop near Wytheville) on Mars, tracking its colonization by humans early in this century. This history was laid out in vignettes and was read aloud - the voice emanating from a tablet computer. The Martian Chronicles. I hugged the tablet close to my body (sometimes right up

Saturday, Benji and I walked out to the OWASA pumping station where I picked a bundle of dogbane before the first frost was able to touch it: tall crimson stalks that I lashed together and slung over my shoulder, like a quiver of arrows. USGS map, Carrboro quadrant, 1993 --- the path we walked. We walked behind the pumphouse, back, along the creek, into a sort-of breathtaking alluvial forest. I take off Benji's leash back there and he leaps through the tall grass, over the fallen trees and old fences, splashes into water puddles, and dives into privet thickets. As we go along, I count the landmarks: an excellent old paw paw stand, two deer blinds, the old river birch that seem to be planted in a row, a lone deer hoof (the rest of it's got to be around here somewhere). We walk on and on, following the creek until we get to a spot where it bends sharply northeast. Here the water level is noticeably raised (or else the land is lowered). I watch my step to avoid water f

An eerie, dark forest surrounded us, as we left the security of a paved road and turned onto the rough gravel drive. We were flanked on either side by swampy water. How far the water stretched, I couldn't tell in the darkness, but I had the distinct feeling dark space. Off to the right, I pointed to a small creature. Deer, I thought, but as I opened my mouth to speak the word, it morphed and I saw it was actually an old, broken pine. "What a strange wood," I said. After about a mile, we pulled off to one side and turned off the car. It was pitch-black night, and the moon - "like to a silver bow, new-bent in heaven" - was gone below the horizon. We worked in frustrated silence, pitching the tent, gathering firewood, beating away mosquitos. After a grumpy fireside meal of tofu dogs, we went to bed - Susan and I in one tent, and Benji in another. That night, I law awake listening to the buzzing drone of a thousand mosquitos thirsty for my blood. I awoke just

The Station - the place I go when she's gone - with an IPA, I was watching the rain drip off the roof - gentle streams, pseudorandom - and thinking that the only time I come close to that - that uninhibited, natural, plugged-into-quantum-fluctuational, brazen existential - is when I am playing guitar, flat picking around chords. So, tonight I sat and played my old six string, while the evening slipped into night, and the dog napped in the hall, and I sang like the whole world was listening, and paradoxically, like I was all alone.

I went for a walk today, alone, in the hammocks on the edge of Key Largo. The smell of wet, rotting leaves wafted up, and the air was stuffy. It felt like fall up north. A dodging path, a hint of fear - something unknown here, something unseen. Black mosquitoes with stinging bites. Strange holes in the ground. Poison wood with oily, black spots. Trees reaching long fingers down to ground, sucking salty water, forming fences like wrought iron ... the murky wood, the black forest. I pondered my life: what does it all mean? What do I want? What have I got? How can I live beyond my years? I want greatness, uniqueness. I want determination and surprise. Adventure and stamina. And yet, I want to be more still, even beyond myself. A part of something larger. Like the great dance of the shoreline.The slow retreat of a sea. The gradual building of a reef. Oh that I could be a tuft of sea weed, or a mangrove shoot. One of many countless things building a island. A real purpose. A greater go

On my lunch break, zipping to the bank (tax time, sigh). It was sitting under a lawn tree outside of the Sheraton plucking away at red guts. I pulled into the parking lot conveniently behind a tree and out of site so that I could carefully walk up to the hawk. About five feet away I came into it's view. It stopped and stared at me beak a-gapping! When I moved around it's back to see it's tail, it swooped up with it's squirrel in tow leaving behind congealed blood and squiggles of intestine. Wonder what kind of hawk I saw?

That's all we are really - energy smears on a quantum fluctuation. In this perspective, irreparable harm takes on a different meaning. I speculated to Susan as we did our Saturday chores. What's the worst I can do? Forced proton decay? Take away your ability to form matter? You'd be a weak energy field diluted over the whole of space. Ah, but we're not much more anyways. Little energy smears going round and round the same path in our solar system at the same relative speed. I watch TNG and I wonder at the endless adventures that a starship crew could find in the cosmos. Bizarre ruptures in space time. Dimensional shifts. Quantum creatures. How extraordinary. And what adventures do I find? A deformed spring beauty (seriously). Peas are up in the garden. New Elvis record. In my world, matter is always perfectly coalesced, time is nice straight line, and quantum fluctuations are a thought experiment, but then again, here I am traveling the same path in space, at the same

2/23/2014 - Planted peas (two rows) and onions (red; sets) in West Bed. Repaired fence in West Bed. 3/9/2014 - Planted onions (yellow; sets) in East Bed. Moved comfrey, passion flower, and sage.

Since it was a bit after lunch, and since Benji was restless, I put him on a leash and off we went down the road and back on the muddy trail that goes by the pumping station. Mud and more mud (five inches of snow melt) and we're in a floodplain no less, so that I pulled the dog off the path and tracked through the snow and brown brush, but even that I couldn't stand. I'm too turned on to plants and especially poison ivy and I could see all the dormant little fingers of it reaching up through the dirt, not yet in leaf (not for a couple more months) but still irking my good sense to tramp right through it all. So, Benji and me turned around and walked through the abandoned field just north of the house. At one point, I saw a mess of deer tracks stamped in the mud with no real direction to follow. Further on by a drainage creek, I spied an Elder bush and remembered last year: I picked them. No I didn't. But yes I did, just one weekend morning after Susan had gone to Colora

Much has happened since my last post... First, Susan and I are engaged. It was quite unexpected for the both of us. After work one Friday (December the 20th), I was talking to Susan as she prepared to go out for dinner. I thought her eyes were mesmerizing, and the question just popped out of me! Second, we rescued a puppy that was found a stray by a few friends. His name is Benji, and he is a beagle mutt. He is now about 5 months old. Third, and finally, I have been doing a lot of traveling! Last week in Philly (CHOP upgrade) and this week to Maricopa, where I hope I can solve some ongoing and quite troubling problems. I've been troubleshooting this since Christmas eve!

Day hike near Ouray, CO - Wednesday, July 24, 2013 We scrambled, one after another, in file - if two can constitute a file. The hillside was shattered into pieces: bits of shale that crinkled like glass as I set down the point of my walking stick. Mine was smooth, chest high, relatively straight. But hers was short, and twisted at the top. "I want this one because it has character," she told me. I can say the same of you, my dear. So, we went up Bear Mine Trail. I was not expecting the steep ascent. Defiant pines stood, straight and tall; wicked, grotesque oaks sprawled. And the path! No, not a path, but only the idea of a path, a thin trickle of smoke. We clung to the mountain side, she leading me. Below us, a blue creek churned white over boulders. Across the gully, a sheer rock wall. Above, the sun beat down. My shirt soaked through. A deep longing from inside: too much coffee this morning. I was light headed and hungry. Soon we reached the old mine. The land