Blog-azic

There seems to be a flock of red wing blackbirds that gather around our little house on Rogerson Drive. I last heard them as the leaves were turning. Now, I hear them again as the days warm to 70F. For years, I've suspected that they were Red Wings - even reaching back in memory to West State Street Park in Athens, Ohio, where I would listen to the cackling rattles of hundreds in the Sycamore Trees, but I never could convince myself that the Red Wings would flock in such numbers. I'm more accustomed to them solitary on a cattail by the river side. Just this spring, however, I pulled out Susan's Monarch binoculars and peered into the pines across the street. Flashes of red on the wing! I also captured a quick audio snapshot while the flock ate at our feeder. https://soundcloud.com/christomazic/red-wing-blackbirds-and-dog-chain 

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...