I'm in the Bay, circling the wagons with my work gang. The new office space is actually pretty sweet. It's a good lofty spot right on the new Muni line, pretty classy (nice elevators, good-looking neighbors, etc) and located near some good eats.

The space is still coming together. Tyson, the master tenant, is an architect and interior designer, is building a pretty kick-ass conference room, and has big plans. As with most big plans, it'll take some time, but the room is only a day or two's labor away from fully workable with acreage to grow into.

The aftermath of St. Paddy's day wasn't as bad as it might have been. We started off with some excellent Irish Breakfast, moved on to Guiness and Espresso, and then a delicious Corned Beef dinner with some friends in Town, and then the downtown strip. I enjoy a good turn as the Wild Rover, and got to see some sights -- girls in green and all that -- and carouse the scene.

There's something to be said for ramblin' around with half your forebrain tied behind your back. It gets you down to a level, removes some of that social armor. It made me feel a touch more native, especially going out late on my lonesome after Mark and Zya crashed out. Nice.

On the minus side, someone stole my iPod from my truck, but they didn't steal my bike (which they could have), so I guess I can't complain.

It makes me think. I'm just now starting to feel settled and strong in the HC, but looking at 1000 square feet, I can't help but get the feeling that I should spend more time occupying my share of them. I'm sure this will work itself out, but it's kind of funny. Always on the go, it seems.

Gonna hit up the legitimate theatre tonight:

For the past four weeks, Dell’Arte teachers have guided the actors through the Melodramatic territory, a style normally associated with twirling mustaches and maidens tied to railway lines. Six, student-devised, 15-minute plays explore moral dilemmas, neurosis, obsession and the struggle against repressive forces.

Sounds like my kind of thing. I like watching people perform stuff they create, and the fact that it's at bunch of 15-minute vignettes means that if any one is kinda awful -- which with student work is virtually guaranteed, and as it should be -- it will be over soon and the next one will be better. I think it'll be nice.

In nerd news, comment spam has reared its ugly head. I'll be tweaking things to try and change that so my apologies if that prevents you, my beloved readers, from yakking back at me.

And now, a grab-bag of thoughts with spring in the air.

For starters, here's a pointless 20-second video of my man Mark's "outdoor bike garage":

Click To Play

Apropos the post below, I started thinking a bit about the number of friends (let along colleagues, fellow-travelers, etc) put their stuff out there online these days. I think it's great, and I like pulling together the network. But "blogrolls" are so web 1.0.

In that spirit, here's new little featurette here on the OJ.com, aggregation. I just took 15 minutes and plopped in a bunch of feeds from friends and family, and the results are good so far. I plan on working this into a AJAX widget similar to my tag cloud at the top o' the page here, and heck, even if I'm the only one to use it it's worth my while.

For instance, I discovered this and this and this. My people are up to amazing wonderful things.

So this feature, such as it is, will evolve a bit. Content from the aggregator will get more categories, and make its way up to the front page in some blocky headlines-only pop'n-and-lock'n form. Let me know if you've got something I aught to include.

There's more here at The Kevin Murphy Show. Apparently the real thing will begin to air soon. This is a collaboration between a whole lot of folks I know back in BKLYN. Sassy bastards.

I've been thinking a lot about [[Art]]. Lately, my personal struggles have reminded me a lot of the latter years of college, spiraling through various creative processes in The Experimental Theater Wing, getting stuck in third-person camera mode (that way it can get for actors, where you watch yourself), stewing in a simmering pot of personal loneliness, confronting an uncertain future.

It's been very difficult to be "in the moment" lately. Admittedly, I don't have are real call to be there as part of a production or anything, but it's one of my core [[Axioms of Living]], the idea that [[Presence is Perfection]]. It's a tense and pensive place to be, one foot in the past, one foot groping for some perchase on the future; pissing on the now.

There are several ways I can think of confronting this, but the one that stands out, is the most frightening, and probably therefore the best, is the idea of getting off my fat careerist ass and being creative again.

There are lots of unanswered questions from that point. Form is a big one. When I came out here originally I told a lot of people I wanted to write a book, which I haven't done. I did end up writing a chapter which may or may not be included in something, which is nice. However, while putting together 8,000 or so words was a good exercise, it didn't really scratch that original itch. I don't particularly have any ambitions (at this point) to deal with the world of publishing, but going after an ambitious writing project is one possibility that appeals. It would have to be some kind of real freaky Gonzo head-explosion, but that's possible. Writing on a tear would give me some of the release I need.

I just think it's a great new nickname for Dick Cheney: Blood Clot!. From everything2:

"Blood Clot" is the most virulent insult in Jamaican Patois English. It is similar to 'fuck' in usage, but does not change form for different parts of speech. Blood Clot has entered the slang lexicon in other dialects of English through the Rastafarian sub-culture.

It can be an noun, as in "Shut up, blood clot," or, more commonly, an adjective, as in "The blood clot government is cracking down on the growing of the herb."

I got this idea from a comment in this Rolling Stone blog post about the distant potential of a Bush Impeachment (600+ days and counting): "As for Cheney becoming prez… C’mon bloodclot!!! make your move!!!"

This is sort of a juicy post by recent standards. I'm not entirely comfortable with the exploitive possibilities that come from writing about my romantic life, but I've gone this far. Back in the day I had some pages about girlfriends, and at the time Christine said that this was charming. I hope that's still true.

It's a trip, you know? I'm in unexplored territory here, being a single man off in the woods. If I'm honest, this is part of why I moved here, to get away from women, to clarify what it is that I want. It forces the issue, being on your own.

It may sound cocky, but I mean it humbly: I've had a very lucky and blessed life in love. One full of mistakes like any other, some heartbreaking idiocy and some plain-old heartbreak, but also great moments, charmed times, high and heady runs into what's created between two. I can't say I've always been at my best, but I think overall I've been Good, and people have been Good to me.

I catch myself thinking about faces from my past a lot these days. Recent lovers and old flames and ones that got away. The other night I was watching Reds (the Warren Beatty film), which gave me a nice jolt of that old revolutionary spirit, but which really affected me most in that young Dianne Keaton looks an awful lot like The Peach, the beauty who came out to visit me last Summer. The film brought back strong flashes of that. We had a pretty lovely week, and I saw her in New York afterwards, but it wasn't the sort of thing that could really work with her there and me here. We're still friends, or at least honestly friendly.

Here we go, yo.

I decided I liked this simplistic layout enough to make it the new theme for the blog as I rebuild. I want (need) to get back to using this outlet, and building it up from scratch is appealing. So here it is, dirtstyle, with big ass images.

There's more on the way. The writerly mission is to start delving into the sorts of things you'd find in the archives, a kind of personal wiki. I'm toying with the idea of mixing in real gonzo-style stuff with the usual autobio/about-me crap, taking things a little bit further, maybe making up a bunch of pseudonyms. In any case, I'm going to get back into writing about the juicy stuff.

On the coding end, I need to figure out some clever way to deal with categories and the like. I also need to figure out how best to incorporate all the varied content. Not just the archives, but also the old blog content, and disparate things like Vagabender. It'll be an evolution.

I'm looking forward to it.

Some news! My sister (above) somehow scammed her way into this New York City diploma-mill popularly known as "Columbia University." Seriously though, this is exciting stuff. She's definitely moving out there along with her man Scott, and is still waiting to hear from some other schools, but Columbia's MFA Writing program is, as they say, prestigious. So things are looking good. I always knew she'd pass me on the achievement ladder one of these days, dammit.

Also, somewhat selfishly, this is a great reason to get back east more often. I can feel the sweet embrace of her couch already.

For my part, I spent Sunday - Wednesday down and back to the Bay area. It was all business, so not that much fun, but I got the work done and for the first time I tried my new plan of bringing the bike with me and using that to get around the city. Weather was lovely, and it worked out great until I got hit by a car in Oakland: some kid who was already fleeing a hit-and-run with a parked car. I'm fine and so's my machine, but it was close to being awful. Ironically, one of the bits of business I was dealing with was filing for our company health insurance. Cheap thrills.

On the five-hour drive back, I thought a lot about this whole urban/rural living thing I have going on. I've been missing NYC a lot lately, and I've also been pondering what it would take to make living here more sustainable. Girl(s), obviously, but there's also a level of peer-review that I miss, a community of people who I share some ambitions with.

It's proving harder to make those kinds of connections. I don't really do that well at meeting new people without a context, and it's a smaller pool. People seem private though. I don't know if it's just the way of country life, or if, as someone recently pointed out, there are proportionately more people here who are stoned out of their minds at any given point.

Blog withdrawl. It's been an interesting thing. I miss this outlet. It makes me feel disconnected. Energy that would get radiated out through this -- admitedly imperfect -- filter just circles back around inside. Maybe it stagnates; maybe it tenderizes; maybe under pressure it turns into a rich source of future-fuel like so much algae crushed under a sea-bed for ten million years.

Time will tell.

I have not done much of the work I want to do on this old website, although I have done a few sketches, and the other night I went back and looked through all the (digital) photos I've taken in the past five years. Art, bikes, friends, loves, trips, work, play... it's all there. Not all of it, but a comprehensive representative sample. A lot of things I miss.

I was back home last weekend, helping my mom out, and she sort of straight-up told me that I sounded like I needed to have more fun. Like you might think, I resisted this assessment initially, but after thinking about it for a second I couldn't disagree. It's something to consider.

More soon? Lets hope so. Wild bohemian values.