I attempted to learn to snowboard yesterday in pretty icy conditions. I fell a lot, and now I'm sore. Falling on icy snow is a a lot like falling on gravel; a few choice strawberries and a lot of bruses too. It also uses a whole set of muscles that I don't often exercise. I'm sore in ways I can only compare to the circle of pain -- an infamous quasi-transcendent group warmup and conditioning exercise -- from my freshman year in the Experimental Theater Wing.

It's been a heavy weekend. Lots more to do going forward.

Walking to the BART this morning with Zack, we coincidentally fell in behind this woman. I'd noticed her the day before working in the coffee shop -- not the one I mentioned in the blog, but one I noticed. She was tallish and willowy, with a slow long stride. Reminded me of this British woman that worked with Jeremy a couple years ago (fall 2002; an interesting time) who'd I'd been all into. Victoria. At the time Jeremy shut me down. "Bad Josh," he said when I asked if she had a boyfriend.

Anyway, it took me a while to remember that this is the girl I was being reminded of; all the while walking and talking behind her, feeling the vibe. She went to the BART also, and there was seemingly significant eye contact on the platform... but also good discussion with Zack and early morning blearyness so I wasn't about to make a move. Still, the vibe was there, sure as its ever been. Who knows what might have happened? I was legitimately attracted. How often do I piss and moan about how that never happens? Hope opportunity knocks again.

Thinking about that Victoria girl on a plane ride to Colorado -- where I blog from now on MfA retreat -- stirred up an interesting other memory. That little crush was all around the first anneversary of September 11th. Real tense time. I remember on the actual anneversary I was biking over the Queensboro bridge. It was a beautiful day, and there was this businessman walking toward me carrying a flag on a stick, just holding it up, smiling, kind of giving strength to people. That was one of the last times I remember being actively happy to see the flag in action. Strange confluence of springtime thoughts, but it's late and I'm dealing with a high altitude environment.

After three consecutive days of temperatures above 60 and no fog, rain or grey days, my tired cranky blood is starting to stir. Spring is in the air; good old Spring Awakening.

I find myself craining my head more often on my bicycle. I find myself delightfully preoccupied with the mystery of precisely what moves under a woman from Oklahoma's shirt at a bar, with the space defined between the lower cuffs of a backpack toting girl's khaki shorts at the coffee shop, with the swirl of hair, flash of teeth, curve, flex or sparkle. Whatever it is, I find myself noticing.

At the moment it's kind of maddening. I simply don't have the human resources to pursue anything resembling a conventional relationship, and it seems I lack the savvy to slide into an easy coupling. The rules of engagement are mysterious and unknown here in San Francisco. Frank confirms this; New York women are different. In the parlance of our times, I have no game.

That said, it feels good to feel. The buzz is back in a lot of ways, and I'm glad that my glands are all in order. I'd begun to worry a bit about the creeping must of an extremely overworked winter. Hopefully this spring and summer I can improve my physical condition, find more creative outlets, and maybe even make out a tad, weather permitting of course.

The Republicans are pissed about third-party groups influencing this election, and it ain't about moveon. Here's the opening volly from the Media Fund (aka George Soros). It's ok, but it's like Bush's ads, but without the punch. The shipping jobs overseas thing is the hardest hit, but it's not really driven home. Kerry's ads are harder hitting and better edited. Using Bush to beat Bush is a pretty good tactic as long as you're not taking something wildly out of context.

Update: the Log Cabin Republicans are speding a mil to air ads against Bush's hate amendment. It would seem that the right-wing consensus is unraveling, and not a minute too soon.

I'm fairly old-school on the daily kos, but I haven't been posting much since Dean went down in flames. I still read it though; Markos has an eye for news, and you get hot links to things which Paul Krugman picks up later on in the week. It's good and comforting to see old names, names I have come to trust, putting out rather high quality text. There are a lot of new faces, some of them interesting, some not. And the air is a bit different.

I don't write about things very much anymore... this will probably change some when I get into the work of crafting some vision stuff, but at the moment I'm still recovering from my Howard Dean hangover. I'm happier plugging databases and writing code than wrestling with the situation in prose at the moment. It's partly, I know, because there was a time when I was really convinced that my writing was making a difference -- which it was and is in whatever way it always has and will -- but much grandeur and possibility has subsided. Not that I'm discouraged; just smarting.

And writing is art for me. It's not something I can really force, or something I really feel comfortable wielding in a precise manner. I prefer to let fly with exuberance and passion, so this little era of low-energy and message control is doubly inhibiting.

On a different note, I've become quite a fan over the past three months of Stirling Newberry, who also writes on BOPnews and other places too. I once heckled him under an assumed name on the Clark Sphere back in a snarky partisan summer moment. Now I know better. Pay attention; he's got a line on the Naked Lunch of it all.

Just heard that Spalding Grey died. The NYT (my favorite local paper) has the details, as well as a pretty decent account of his career. He was an amazing artist. I got to meet and talk with him once back in High School, and his body of work was pretty inspiring to me as a performer. Sorry to see him go.

I've gone campin'. Have a good weekend.

In a straightaway I'm slower on my bicycle than a car, but I retain an edge in agility and I disobey the law. These are really the advantages. City cycling is a ballet of sorts, a thing of rhythm and unity in motion. There are a plethora of variables that enter and exit your equation as you ride block to block. Car door, hill, streetlight, jogger, dog walker, left turn only, yadda yadda yadda. The ability of a rider to carve through time, to see ahead as a speed chess player does -- not with absolute precision, but with sufficient confidance to make a move without pausing for conscious thought -- is the differentiator between recreational cyclists and true riders.

It is the difference between tourism and adventure, between a pleasent diversion and a lifestyle choice.

My position in the world as a rider colors my other experience. I'm comfortable, even desirous of sustained physical exertion. I am comfortable with my sweat, comfortable playing with degrees of energy and torque that could be lethal if misapplied. I am urban calvary. Riding thrusts you into your environment just as driving a car removes you from it; when in transit I exist in a public space, subject to the same forces as any other object of being. This changes the way you feel about your cubicle at work, your room at home, your booth at the bar, etc etc etc.

Lately as I've been down and out some, I've taken to riding hard and high to work through things. Methodically climbing big hills in SF, I answer questions to myself; I ruminate, preachify, storm and thunder, rhapsodize; all to the rhythm set up in my thighs and pushed through my knees to my feet to the pedal crank chain gear spoke weel tube rubber road. Higher and higher. With my slick set of wheels geared all the way down, dropping one leg's full pistoning potential will cause my front end to kick up off the street even on the steepest of car-chase hills. Iggy Pop; raw power is sure to come running to you.

There's something to this, to the working and maneuvers. The downhill glee, and the syncopation of threading through other objects in motion. When I swing around a corner on a steady great arc, passing pretty crosswalk girls close enough to carry an eddy of perfume in my wake there's a thrill of quality and excellence that's absolutely priceless and addictive. There's an edge of death and danger and reptilian satisfaction to all of this, and it colors the rest of my experience. The life of a rider is saturated and high-contrast, and when we fall off our horses, there's nothing for it but to get back up and ride again.

You know, I get emails sometimes from my friends back in New York, people doing art and making fun bits of fancy. And I IM with random kids I've met through MfA and politics; child prodegy in Alaska; highschool punk rocker facing expulsion over asking questions about a teacher getting fired, his dad's been called up to serve a two year hitch; Mordecai, etc. I talk to two early-teen kids on their way to the mall via caltrain, they want to know about my shoes, what I do, so I give them a card. They're surprised I've never been to the Hillsdale mall, that I don't own a car, but they seem to think it's cool too.

I read things about what other people think is important, what other people believe in, what other people organize their lives around, and some of it makes sense and a some of it doesn't, but what's missing is something that works for me. What is it, excatly, that I'm trying to accomplish here... am I just trying to assuage my concience so I can go back to making art? Seems it's become something more than that, but why and what exactly it's become is confounding at the moment.

What am I capable of? How wide a gap can I bridge? Does it make sense to hold on to anarchists and rebel leaders with one hand and establishment electoral politics with another? Is it even possible to be a conduit for that kind of energy transfer? Does being involved in technology and culture help? Do I have credibility? Am I cool enough to attempt this? To what extent should I plan and control, and to what extent should I cut loose and ride the lightning?

Looking back on a year, I don't exactly know how I got here or even precisely where I am. I'm not complaining, just pointing out the presence of mystery and confusion. What's my role here? Good question.

Since I heard in the laundymat before going to my poll that Edwards was gonna drop out -- yet another miscarriage of democracy, but who's counting? -- I voted for good ol' Howard, rogue though he was. It's the end of a chapter, the beginning of something new; I'm filing this under general because while it's about politics, it's more about me. About time we had a good old self-centered blog anyway.

One of the things that strikes me now is just how weird this whole thing has been, how weird the political scene is. My roommate Molly, anarchist sailor that she is, opined to me the other night that people who seek to speak for others are not generally the best lot in society. I couldn't help but agree, but contended that it more had to do with the culture which surrounds politics, and not with the nature of politics or humanity itself.

I believe this, but not alltogether steadfastly. The stresses of power attract (and create) strange personalities. I can see it in my own life: moments of irrational aggression, mood swings, fatigue, dreams of impotence and premature ejaculation. Is it any surprise that a great many people -- good, decent, intelligent people -- would rather not be bothered to lend a hand at running the world? And why not? Tenuous as I think they might be, things are still pretty decent here in America. PATRIOT shmatriot; other than frisking in an airport line, most of us don't really feel any less Free. Why involve yourself in all that ugly business if you don't have to? Why take on the responsibility?

I don't believe that people are stupid. I don't even believe that they're necessarily lazy; but it does seem that the human animal likes to avoid responsibility. Hell, I'd like to avoid some responsibility, have some goofy rollicking trucker-hat fun or something. This shit is a real drag a lot of the time, even though I believe taking it on is an essential part of finding purpose.

So where does this leave me; overworked and undersexed, all-in for the next six months to try and make some change happen here in these United States? I don't really know. I'm honestly quite dispirited, looking forward to a long season carrying water for John Kerry. I hope to creating an agenda of my own -- our own -- that I can chamption. Kerry will hopefully be a footnote to my campaign. Perhaps (who knows?) he might rise to the occasion and show himself to be a great and inspiring human being. I'm not counting on anything so grand, but I do think he can beat Bush. But what then? Then it would seem the real work begins.

The real work. Ye gods. The pitch of this task must shift, or else my role evolve. I need allies; people to consort with. I need my people -- somthing I've never really had, shiftless gap-walking ranger that I am. I do little to invite or accomodate, yet I need people to come share the load. Not just to volunteer their time, but to open themselves to the enormity of Everything and help me find the light in all of it. There is lightness in there; progress and humor and love -- I'm sure of it -- but the darkness and void predominates, and as a lonesome actor it is dauntingly much to confront.

This is the low after the high, the day after Disneyland, but given what this particular Magic Kingdom contained it was somewhat less fun. It'll get better. But what it will be I cannot say. Let's put some makeup on this pig. But first get me a pound of peanut m&m's; I need to hibernate.