Blog-azic

Early call from Whit, then the mad scramble to ready the house, print the entry form, and deliver the mead to NCDA near the Capital before RDU.  RDU to PHL. PHL to downtown. An apartment that, when inside, turns one inward. Outside, I'm a field. Inside, I'm a point. A walk out near Rittenhouse Square, just getting my feet wet, just getting my sea legs back. A dollar for a paper and a tip about a drug store. Found my old street (Sansom), the donuts, the medicine, the monk, the beer, the donuts (again), and the apartment. There's truth in the universe - not in some macro, overarching sense, though it is certainly there, too. I mean there is truth in all the micro, discrete events. There is truth in the universe. Sometime, I believe it is all truth. Take out dinner and a couple books. Whiskey and earplugs and eye shades before sleep. 

We go out to Lake Jordan some Sundays, for a kayaking adventure. This past weekend, we took a tandem out for a couple hours, myself, Susan, and Benji in his life vest (he actually has two!). Across the channel, off to the west, around the big bend of the shore. We pulled into a little beach and we all jumped out of the kayak for a swim in the very warm water. The lake bottom, all clay and silt, was squishy with dead sticks popping out. In the middle of the lake, boats cut big waves into the water that slowly radiated out to us. Nearer, the surface was not exactly smooth, but crinckled with lots of high frequency little waves. As the two waves combined, I was transfixed watching the resultant sum. I thought about WiFi and wondered if CCK modulation - which I've been reading about lately and is quite complicated - does something like waves on Jordan Lake.  Gawd, I love waves. The pink wave sums a deep, slow wave (blue) plus a small, fast wave (red). Courtesy of http://www

How do a few hundred people hold off an approaching storm? I wondered on it at Duke Garden's summer music series as the band began to play. We were off in the back and to the side (almost in the lily pond) with a blanket spread and a picnic basket of food and drinks. Down in the front, someone was blowing bubbles, and one got caught in the ominous breeze. It drifted upwards, soon rising above the stage. What a fragile little thing it is, I thought, gone in an instant. And soon it was. I found myself looking at empty sky before I even realized it had disappeared. I'm like that bubble, you know, floating around for an immeasurably short amount of time, popping, then being a diffuse smear of particles in the cosmic sky. However, physics tells us that the laws of the universe can run in both directions, to the future and also to the past. If I could only sit there long enough, I'd see that bubble pop back into existence. The thought gives a measure of hope to my life. So,

The cicadas this year are out in force - a seventeen year brood. An event like that reminds me that there is no better place to live than the present. I'm glad to hear it, and glad to catch up with family and old friends.

We took a long weekend to go back to Asheville and relive a trip we took some two years ago. Along the way, the wild flowers on the highway impressed me: pale yellow, burnished gold, IPA orange, sunset.  I think that I really am quite small and insignificant. I consider the expanses of space-time and the great masses and speeds out there. But then, I hear the voice of Carl Sagan from beyond the grave, and he says, "You're not insignificant. You're rare." Perhaps, I'm a beautiful quantum fluctuation, a pin prick of light, born of the vacuum, destined to annihilate.  Someday the energy of the universe will be so diluted across space that I will be indistinguishable from the vacuum's own energy. I will be - in some sense, I already am - the low hum of background radiation.  For now, I'm surfing a gravity wave over the mountains traveling back in time two years and beyond. 

The weather is hot of late: steamy heat with a fierce sun. It makes me feel the frantic passing of each little moment when I'm out of doors, as I imagine the time counting down before I burn. So, entranced by the lure of shade, I walked behind the bike store on Franklin (Back Alley Bikes). There is a cool spot: shaded by cedar and sweet gum, in the shadow of the hotel and parking deck. I don't imagine any sun can filter into it, except perhaps the early morning, horizontal rays.  Great eyes watch that place, tired, but never blinking. The real-life incarnation of T.J. Eckleburg, sprung from the pages of Gatsby. There are stunt ramps there, squeezed into the tiny space, newly finished we were told by the worker (owner?) inside. Just last week, in fact, FMX came down to do a show. I wished I could have seen it. I wished they were my eyes shining down. These are the nooks and crannies of the city that I want to know. Perhaps we can catch a future exhibition before we

I was on a flight to Cleveland with Einstein and Heisenberg, learning about time dilation, length contraction, and the wave-particle duality of light. I was also thinking, a little, about my own duality. What am I? Depends on how you ask the question. This weekend I flew back north to meet my family and run the Athens Half Marathon. The weather was northern - frowning emoticon. I woke up Saturday morning to four inches of snow, which I shoveled in my wimpy kicks. Sunday, race day, I bundled up in layers of tee shirts, a new sweater I picked up at Wally World with my sister (along with a beet, by-the-by, which I ate raw for Greek, gladiatorial endurance), hat, gloves, etc., and braved the twenty-something cold. We ran the race in just over two hours ( 2:04:40 ).  I remember showering back at the hotel, and the hot water felt very good on me, except for my hands which felt oddly cold under the water. Princess Drinking Team crosses the finish line! The old bike path... spring an

We left RDU the day of the gravity waves announcement. The universe is no longer silent. It ripples like the Gulf water that I watched as we landed in St. Petersburg: a steady background hum of waves, white noise, with smooth streaks cut throughout, remnants of the wake from speed boats. We cut our own wake through space-time, heading south over the Tampa Bay causeway and Sky Bridge, lit up with yellows and greens, and on to Bradenton, where we stopped on the outskirts for some food and local culture at a dock side bar and grill (Woody's River Roo). Outside grow old live oaks dripping with Spanish moss. The night air was chilly but we sat outside anyways next to the dock. Life sized (but cartoon) kangaroo cut outs watched us as we ate. Later that night (9 or 10 pm) we pulled into a ranch house in Sebring, where we stayed for two nights, visiting Rob, Jill, and their daughter, Wren. The next morning, when everyone had gone (Jill to work, Wren to preschool, and Rob and Susan to

The morning after the wedding, was wild. I awoke a little hung over, wondering what had happened to all of the left over booze, and I found it in the hotel's store room near the office. Next, there was the matter of packing up and schmoozing in the lobby. The wedding party showed up to help with the packing. We also divided up the booze among them all. In preparation for Jessica's wedding, I had also brought an extra 24 bottles of mead, and 24 bottles of cranberry cider, which I offloaded that morning. My father had lost his camera (he thought, at the time) and buzzed around before going off on his own adventure (camping and hiking in the Hocking Hills). We finally made it out of town, and took the long, winding road south (I-77) through Wytheville (our one-time romantic destination) and cut west on I-81 (past Johnson City). On the drive, we robbed our wedding cards for toll money (found fifty $2 bills), and down in a West Virginia holler at roadside rest for lunch: leftovers