New tag. Drupal set message "Power dating." Backstory on that is here, and I'll elaborate with new thoughts now.

Well, actually, first I start with self-quote, to illustrate just how sisyphusian this feels at time. From my report back from Baja, which feels like another lifetime:

I realized, for instance, just how blatantly I’ve been keeping myself out of range of romance out of fear more than anything else. Sex and love have always been intertwined in my experience, and avoiding one is a pretty good way to skirt the other. Much as I bemoan my lonely state, it’s my own choices and habits of action that render it so. I’ve been rationalizing this to myself as a kind of jaded maturity, but now I think that’s just bluster.

The truth is I’m afraid of what might happen: of getting hurt, of hurting someone else, of getting into unknown territory where the possibility of both those things just gets greater. It’s weak sauce, really, because this is what life is all about; but as they say the first step towards finding a solution is admitting you have a problem. So there’s that.

I also realized in conjunction with the above that I’ve been looking backwards a lot, for similar reasons, when really I should be looking forward. The possibilities of the future are almost literally endless, and when I begin to entertain them I feel a real true gut-level sense of trepidation — “don’t make plans; don’t invest; shit doesn’t pan out, remember?” — and it feels like it might be that good kind of Allen Ginsburg brand of fear. The kind I know I should pursue.

So, this is woefully incomplete; In fact, it covers only the up-to-the-event story... I almost don't want to post it but I think it's good to get the first part out there. More likely I'll write the rest. I have a few photos which I'll add once I get back to the HC and can get 'em off my camera, and for the latter part of the story I can lean on Stephanie and Andy for graphics. Indeed, the above is an Andy Smith original (some rights reserved). In very brief: I had a great time, and it was actually semi-Important for me to get out of my routine and mix it up. All work and not play is not a pragmatic plan.

Travelling from SFO, Cheney drops me off at the airport, ran into the Girth's lawyerly friend Eric at the terminal. He's delayed on the way to San Diego so we have a beer. It's a little hard to make small talk since we've only met a couple times, but there's basketball, Cavs getting trounced by the Wizards, and that's en entre, and he's a good guy so we pass 45 minutes like that.

Flight in to LA is fast. Julia picks me up. New haircut. We talk about the important things first, how our respective love lives are going. You already know my scene (nada). She's got a man-friend who's got a moustache he likes to wax (to good effect, IMHO) but also says she's really mostly interested in "good sex and working on myself." I tell her that's very LA, but I also think it's great, and tell her that too.

I have a lot of stuff to write, but I may or may not get it all written, and so I quickly wanted to alert everyone to a new good thing to read if you're looking for something to tickle your brain. My friend Anna (or Anita, the first girl I ever slow-danced with) is a real live professional Artist, and is currently spending some time in rural Estonia doing an artist-in-residence thing. She's writing about it. It's good! For instance:

bq. I was already surprised to be speaking with my mom on skype- with me in Mooste, Estonia & her in Eugene, Oregon- then it got even more exciting- when Marcel, my younger brother calls my mom from Prison, in Umatilla, Oregon & she puts him on speaker phone and we are all three speaking to each other as though we are in the same room, only thousands of miles apart and each with completely different circumstances. Marcel could ask me about Mooste and I could ask him about how his parenting class is going & other such matters and my mom could intervene at any moment. If only i could have recorded our conversation it would have been an art piece in and of itself- a sound piece. I guess it was recorded through the prison- as they monitor and record all telephone calls- Now to get a copy!

Check it out y'all: A May in Mooste

Also, in one of the best examples I've yet found of how other parts of the world are starting to seriously kick our ass in internet access, this village of 500 has total WiFi, as did the bus she drove to get there. Which is what makes this possible. The assumption that US Citizens lead the best life becomes more and more faulty over time, it seems....

Friday night BART blogging. Out on the germen bar name scene, Zeitgeist then Gestalt. It's a weird fun scene. I'm contemplating more and more the implications of letting go and being confidant and full of energy about my position. There's a very real way in which my last several big efforts have been thwarted, and/or were dissapointments. I think this left me with an undue sense of skepticism about the positive potential, a sad and lamentable "can't do" attitude.

Also, one can learn a lot from Mountain. MISSISSIPPI FUCKING QUEEN. Take that shit to heart.

(morning after): and this

My man Joe is close to internet fame. Vote for him again even if you did before (1 vote per day is allowed apparently):

http://broadcasting.projectbreakout.com/media_page/entry_id/197

It's internet democracy, Chicago style.

Well, in spite of getting a mild cold, possibly from dancing until 1am in a sweaty tent full of candy ravers (everyone kept asking me for pills), I'm feeling pretty dang good. After a little bit of a rocky start getting back into the grove with work -- it's still a tenuous thing for me to take a vacation -- I'm riding higher than before, in large part thanks to getting the fuck out of my routine, shifting gears. I be riding my new Mission Bike fixie any day now, but I still think this is important: gearing lets us tackle bigger hills, and also go faster.

It's a wild world out there. I forget that a lot these days, and it's important to remember, to know in yr bones. Praxis is hard, but dancing helps. Driving fast helps. Getting a lusty little crush going helps. All these things that tap into feelings and challenge our notions of control, they're important to keep up. I realized this past weekend that I haven't been doing enough emotional exercise, and the result isn't pretty. I've been feeling bland most of the time, nervous-to-terrified the rest, and it's getting worse. This ain't no way to be, so I figure I better stop.

People have been telling me for years to get out of my comfort zone, and they're right. It's hard though. I'm pretty good at getting comfortable wherever (benefits of a big limber brain, y'see) and there's a certain innate conflict between pushing ones boundaries for the sake of rut-jumping, and pushing ones limits for the sake of getting worldly things accomplished, a pull of internal/external focus.

I was talking about this stuff w/Julia down in LA, before we went to Coachella, and her response was "yeah, these days I'm more about really good sex and working on myself." It's a refreshing perspective to consider, as I've been about neither for quite some time now.

Sometimes I'm sexy, move like a stud
Like kickin' the stall all night
Sometimes I'm so shy, got to be worked on
Don't have no bark or bite, alright

That's all. Thanks Mick.

I'm going to try and write some tonight, but the reality of me taking two days and a weekend off of work is there's a shit-ton to sort out. Sadly.

Coachella was a Very Good Time with some Very Good People. Also, as a consumer of culture (which I am from time to time), you really can't beat getting to see Dwight Yokam, Kraftwerk and Prince (and some other virtuosos somewhere within that triangle of genre) in one six-hour span. I've got stories to tell, and even a couple pictures.

In the mean-time, if you need something to do, go support a very smart guy who's trying to get some juice:

Register and vote. UPDATE: Click here to do that. Apparently it's not totally effortless like it aught to be... the same online as in the real world. Sorta.

UPDATE DEUX: Also in the world of friends doing interesting things: Rachel Shukert publishes a book and...

I decided to take a peek at my google analytics the other day, and I discovered that by far and away the most popular post on my site over the year to date is one I'm actually rather proud of: Me And Maslow's Pyramid of Human Needs Down By The Schoolyard. Almost 1000 people have seen that so far this year. Even assuming half of them were robots (and hey, robots need philosophy too), that's still immensely gratifying.

Its no secret I've been burning the candle at both ends lately. When I come down to SF it tends to get worse, feeding my workaholism. Even though this is ostensibly a thriving cosmopolitan metro area, I really have no life here, and with an office it's easy to stay at work to the point where coming home is just a trip you make to sleep before getting up to do it again. It reminds me of the MFA days in a way, or college. Any of those times when I was doing stuff for 16+ hours a day and having no sex.

Not that I'm complaining. Coming home late and hungry and unable to find a can-opener to make myself some tuna salad notwithstanding, I'm a ways away from the point where this pattern really generates any kind of meaningful irritation or negative response. Indeed, for as long as things can be kept in the power curve -- never forever, but what is? -- this isn't a bad way to exist. It makes me productive and relatively happy w/feelings of accomplishment, etc, and possibly even provides good grist for later milling when time is less tight.

And still, I can't help but feel like something is slipping past me here. I mean, the impending birthday is probably driving these feelings, sure, but I can't shake the sensation that I'm whistling into oblivion. I can't help but note the toll my current pace of activity (and past times of uber-business) put on my existing relationships, the massive impediment it poses to forming new connections.

Rocking a little free underground internet here at the Embarcaderro. I got royally soaked riding down from the office at 10:30pm when I finally arranged my exodus. Such is life in the KoneZone of late.

It actually felt good to ride in the rain. Really good. It's not ideal over the long haul, and I hope it clears up by tomorrow, but it's been quite some time since I felt the spatter of cool spring water on my face; swishing down slick glinty city streets flickering with yellow orange sodium vapor light... It made me feel young at heart, free and easy, like projing on home to Brooklyn back in the day.

I used to be much more rugged and rough, much more obviously confident, risk-inclined. If my train went off the track I picked it up, picked it up, picked it up. Those were glory days. Not the glory days oh ye of the nostalgia police, but a set of days glorious and undeniable. Their memory is worth keeping alive, the better for their spirit to live again.