The Man Looking for East

Honor is a moment found where doing the unprejudiced or righteous thing is done out of choice not purpose.

The man who walked off his flight and asked if we knew which direction was east, seemed hurried but intent and a little desperate. It was 7:44PM at terminal 5 of John F Kennedy airport in New York City. I didn't hear him well the first time and said the always intelligent, huh? He kindly repeated himself and my 'huh?' face remained until the lights finally came on and I realized why he was asking, the direction of Mecca. Duh. However I'm not at all from New York and didn't really know the orientation of JFK terminal 5 but yet another handy reason to have an iPhone.

After some fumbling with Google Maps, a little zooming, some discussion of the basic cardinal directions, the odd coincidence that while in Saudi Arabia he had purchased prayer mats with little compasses embedded in them and continual reassurances from him that it really didn't have to be that exact we settled on a direction we all agreed was east. He thanked us and rushed off, I still felt uneasy about our choice of the direction of Mecca, I mean, this man's faith or more faithfulness now seemed directly in my responsibility. I debated starting the whole process over again. It was too late. He had already begun his prayers, though I was lucky to be able to easily see him.

The man had laid out his mat between a column and the window if I hadn't just spoken to him I would have never noticed him. How discrete I thought. How unobtrusive a choice of place. Then I thought a moment more, was this discretion or fear. Being Muslim in an airport in New York City and observing the right of prayer seemed a risky undertaking. It at least answered the question of asking us which way was west and not any of the myriad airport staff, they would more than likely be immediately prejudiced, and then the question and cavity searches would start, but why us. The man had finished and been gone a few moments when Martha looked at me and asked,Why us? I shrugged. Then Brilliant girl she is she figured it all out. The book she was reading was the reason, Reading Lolita in Tehran. Even though the book itself is any many ways an affront to much of the culture of Islam it must have been the marker for him to believe we wouldn't judge him or would at least understand that he had missed the proper time for prayer while on his flight. All this said and done I think the both of us felt a little smug or self-satisfied but I started this all out saying it was honor so I guess we felt honorable. I don't really believe the rest of the people in that far corner of the terminal would have wanted to or been able to help that man fulfill a simple obligation of his faith.

As they announced yet another delay to our own flight though I was struck by the very same demons of prejudice I felt so above a moment ago. What if he intended harm to some other flight and that had been his final prayer before some 'glorious' death? The gaping hole of my hubris filled with doubts of any and every kind, including doubts in my doubts. This I think is the real terrible scar on the overall American psyche. I had to have those initial doubts, for America, for my Mother, who never would have helped, for everything except myself. My honor was gone, doubt had slain it with a single swing.

Terminal 5 notes

Above, jetBlue terminal 5 in all its bossanova super-swinging-sixties glory. Drink it in. From what I'm told this is quite different from any other JFK terminal, and it is brand new. Lined with restaurants, bars and kind-of high-end shops, maybe not high-end, trendy, trendy shops, almost hip but really more trendy. There is a Muji (to go), which is pretty hip though my companion believes it overpriced. Of all the shopping options though, the Sony vending machine is my personal favorite. Having never had a burning and immediate need for a PSP, GPS or E-book reader, headphones however make sense. Headphones crap out on me all the time, I guess I have really gunky ears or something. Eww.

Its nice to have this as a last view of NYC.

Also above, note the sandals. I have prepared for the return to lower latitudes. It got downright cold while in NYC, like below freezing cold. And the wind whips down every street in a way that's just strange to a Florida flatlander. The cold is strange to a Floridian too but I expected it, being December and all, but wind down every street and avenue in every direction. Cold hard wind filled with a needley ability to strike through your clothes. Enough of wind, simple temperature difference across distance , not the mean-spirited breath of Jack Frost himself. Seriously though enough of wind. 

So I leave New York behind with moments stacked in otherwise unused caverns in my mind left their to age like cheese till ripe for use in some dissimilar story. I leave knowing no point in the tourist attractions of the city. I leave with knowing sheer joy in eating is embodied as Korean BBQ. I leave knowing someone with an unhealthy obsession with muffins, admittedly the locale of this obsession does make extremely good muffins. I leave with the promise of returning but pretty much staying in Brooklyn. Brooklyn, where my grandfather was born and my friends live.

New York City Orange Juice

Seriously, it's a doughnut-hole sized O.J. and it's more than likely
gonna cost me $5.00. It takes all my will to sip this pittyful shot.
Usually I have twenty-four ounces in one long swig every morning but
also oranges are everywhere at home. At home however it is very hard to find a fresh made delicious doughnut like these.

The American Artistic Spirit is Dirty

The simple things are the great things in art. The subtlety and interplay of everything involved in the piece, from the act of creating itself, to the subject, to the venue in which it is viewed all lend to the total work. Scott Wade of Texas gets it, it being that central American ideal of art that well, just isn't that European classic/pretty or metropolitan avant garde, it's folksy maybe but a little pop too, in fact the lack of ability to describe it lends further point to it's purity as an oddball and unique American idea.

    Wade's work may make wonderful morning news fodder but there is something bigger there when Wade speaks to his ambition in a recent MAKE article,

"I have this grandiose idea of parking cars all the way up the ramp of the Guggenheim Museum and painting in dirt reproductions of the pieces that are on the wall next to it."

grandiose yes, but ambition beyond expectation is an all to American mantra.

Qu'est-ce que le baiser?

Enjoy this and wonder at what it was ever intended to accomplish. Thank you to the year 1933 and its "queer" designers as well as Natalia for providing the link that led me to this beautiful but purposeless machine. I mean just look at that thing, it's fantastic!

Space, scream all you like, America went deaf to you

Woohoo Shuttle launch! Though it is disturbing that no one on my street gives a flip. At least I know that my small circle of friends were all outside supporting, in their own drunken way, NASA and all its incredible feats.

So very sorry for being angsty and generic

    Something within crumbles, every little byte and moment profound and outright.

    A senseless waste of nothing but yesterdays thoughts and memories returned in fleeting flight.

    Dredge out some solid mass of solemnity, carry out an order unjust.

    These simple somethings inundate us in lust.

    A featureless trifle the above, couples, rhymes, tricks and clever words. Is this what obsession amounts to after so much energy spent? An existence of favors and work, obligation and trial, this is not what youth promised. A simple and pretentious quote of The Bard "I am spent."

    What is this unending drumming in the mind then if not a drive toward this end, this written word, and with drive so strong is not some sense of accomplishment eventually deserved? Sisyphean though the goal of any sort of recognition or merit may be, the feeling now emerging from my hemp cocoon is very much the moment of the rock again rolling back down the hill. Having wasted much to much time in mourning for and hiding from a idea still not quite in clear focus, but at least now an image of some reality and not simply a string broken promises to a sorely missed friend. The vivid moments of every second my good friend has been gone haunt every last corner of a mind composed only of a ring, in that debts, in the form of promises, exist not only as unfulfilled dreams but simple bits of education that can never be reviewed or re-taught, wisdom forever lost thanks only to my own selfish and flippant dreams. Accomplishments never acknowledged are the plight of every father-son relationship, but when the last things remembered are a smile and a pint and a knowing approval of all these broad plans and dreams, two and half years later it becomes a great and terrible splinter behind the eye to look around and see none of those broad plans and dreams even in motion. All that's changed is the ability to maintain a healthy relationship and a dog, and sure the dog is cute and the relationship is still healthy but for all else there seems nothing but disappointment in those long gone gray eyes, and the sinking fear that deep down these feelings never go away.

    Thank you and I do miss you so sorely.

The end of an era, literally.

The great rollicking Holocene has, according to a great many in the scientific community, come to a close. Yes friends, the ice that receded eleven thousand years ago allowing us all to cease our grunting stinking ways and settle down with wonderful things like wheat and rice, construct cities and art and civilization and generally be the groovy beings we are today, is no longer the most important event in shaping our geologic history. ENTER THE ANTHROPOCENE.

Mankind now determines geologic era, literally. "So the ice going away isn't a big deal anymore, so what?" Fine question, but not the right question, the right question being "What is the big deal if not the lack of ice?" The answer to that, us. We, being civilization (as I doubt anyone outside civilization is reading some asshole's blog about geologic epochs), are the new force shaping the Earth. Fret not though as this is not a climate change rant, just information. Information and perhaps a slight lamentation for the Holocene, never really getting the credit due to one of only two epochs (out of all of time mind you) in which we even existed. So, step back, take a moment and and remember all the great things the Holocene brought you, which is everything up until the invention of the steam engine in 1784, and don't forgot that all that you do shapes the Anthropocene.

Taken from today's w00t

“Yeah! Last week she came over, and we were talking about Kirk and Picard, and I said that if Kirk was on the SDF-1 he would have been able to get them home faster and in better condition so that the later Protoculture invasion would have failed, but Maggie said that Picard, in the same situation, would have negotiated a treaty with Breetai that allowed the Invid access to Monument City and so made it easier for the Expeditionary Force to directly attack the Masters.”

“Ralph, I have to say, I have no idea what any of those words mean.”

It disturbs me that I completely understand that paragraph and identify with both sides. Whereas the many wooters out there have little idea the meaning and importance of this argument.

On Halloween there is Always Need to Fear...

Deal with the cute. Deal with the dog's emo hatred of being photographed. Deal with my girlfriend's DIY awsomeness. 

Proud to be...

What I ask you is more American than voting while drinking a beer?

F.E.A.R.

Attention:

Compromising Electromagnetic Emanations of Keyboards Experiment 1/2 from Martin Vuagnoux on Vimeo.

It is stuff like this that makes me want to hike into the wilderness with a typewriter and never return.

Cleaning out the garage.

You know it really seems like I may have a problem.

A Serious Propensity for Rockin' Out

No buts about it folks, The Rumble Strips, even in a venue emptied out after the local opening act's set finished, brought the rock hard as the iPhone tries to represent here. The blurred specter is not the drummer smashing a lone tom, he's the bassist, Sam Mansbridge, and he's smashing not only the tom but the tambourine he is vigilantly clamping against the tom, an impromptu instrument the band's wikipedia page refers to as the "Rumble Drum". The guy playing bass, Tom Gorbutt, eight bars from now will be back on rhythm guitar as he hands off the bass back to Mansbridge and when the three minute fifty-eight second Motorcycle is done pounding veal like an Italian kitchen, Gorbutt is back on sax his most full time spot on the band. The Rumble Strips put out the sound of a very large band with a formidable intensity and an obvious sense of playing just as much for themselves as anyone who may or may not be listening and this is the central dogma of rockin' out.

The Squirrel-like Codpiece of Darkness and the Foretelling of my Demise

Welcome. Welcome! Dear October whose time around another turn of mine shall show.

Was in this solemn sole October my heart did swell awash in wake of double bass lows.

Inside the seaweed-gelatinized crimson gushing soaks the well smoked walls

Wasted my time residing in the safe unfeted halls

Treatment recommended by the demonic doctor's doll

"Bathe in pit and puddle", Doll winked,  "The carnage is mistaken as droll"

Shoved baptism, shove to baptise in this guilded writhing bright white floor

This sea, these waves tumbling over small-framed women and weak-kneed boys honor 'our masters' GWAR.

Peculiar Eats

The sauce of desperation recipe:

1 oz. wasabi peas

1 tsp.  rice wine vinegar

1.5 tsp. soy sauce

1-2 tbsp. peanut oil

1 tsp. raw sugar

the minced ginger, or sesame oil I didn't have, but only one or the other

Pulverize wasabi peas however you can, into as fine a powder as you can, then assemble like salad dressing (everything but oil goes in, gets mixed well, add oil slowly), serve with, in my case Panko breaded chicken cutlet or just about any fish and fluffy rice.

My apologies for the lack of photo but I am posting and eating.

In Honor of a Fallen Fellow

I have quit smoking, twenty-nine days ago, and in memory of my "cool before death" attitude...

I am the bodhisattva of ash. My flame, my smoke, they are all nothing. All that is, is my ashen waste. Traveling first in flame, second on wind and last on earth, I know no home. I am vibrant, behind my brother flame who helps me grow. I am hopeless. I am light in wind. The currents are my tool and master. I move across the effortless streams of life searching only for a place to rest but never die. I taste of sulfur; I reek of tobacco, which I help to prosper in the earth I regenerate. I am the opulence the cancer and the cool. This is my circle. My middle is your moment of satisfaction drawing in my sister smoke it is my birth and childhood joy you take in. The three of us, flame, smoke and ash playing in nanoseconds to you, but in a moment I am alone. They leave abandoning me with you till you too are done and my travels begin. I am the remnant of despots and warriors of old. I am shoveled away by blacksmiths and sweeps. I am the waste. I am the bodhisattva of ash. I am the best cigarette ever.

The most interesting thing in my home now.

I regret only having to eventually move it across the country.

Productivity before content.

Test of writing pad to elastic composition... Elastic composition are
you receiving?

All in an effort to improve spelling and speed from iPhone.

Sent by Alan via Mr. Tumnus.

Particle Fever

I cannot get this image out of my head lately...

Daviad Foster Wallace died and all I did was wear a lousy bandana.

The first real post.

It seems a first post should be so exciting, dynamic, interesting; (Jesus I spent over a year between starting all this and mustering the gumption to post some writing that fatefully, no one will EVER read) something to grab hold of this phantom intersoul audience,  to wriggle these vaporious echos in to their corporal, pimpled, dim, fantastic selves. Instead all I have is an overwhelming sense to feign empathy for a man whose works I've sparcley read, whom I never took the time to see lecture and whose vocabulary consistantly assured me that I know nothing of my own language.

First off, top of my DFW list is Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity, detailing the long and troubled trail of our misunderstandings of the infinte.

"What did I learn?", a great deal, the most amusing being that the great powerful and mighty ancient Rome contributed nothing to either the study of the infinte or mathematics in general. Don't know why but that's what truly stuck.

Also in my trusty, ever-ready DFW reading list is Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, a collection of short stories, and interviews with the humorously disturbed.

Enough commmercial, onto the tender meat nearer the to the bone.

David Foster Wallace shaped my belief in challenging the reader at every moment, and I believe shared a common feeling of inundation: with the world at large, the information obtainable, and the emotional stresses all those around you fabricate. A sense that at some unforseen core, simplicity in all things is merely equivalance.

A sleeping dog for the world.

Any even larger possible malcontent

All this, a refreshed attemp at mobility and profesionalism.

Sent by Alan via Mr. Tumnus.