page 8

This is the kind of place where the lasagna is served with garlic bread and the toothpicks are minty. Where the tables are wiped every day and the people get into your politeness bubble and give you an easy joshing just for fun.

It's a nice cushion of good-naturedness for you to sit back in before you take the fuck off and go flying down the road. It's a nice cushion to come back to when you're drained from doing that kind of thing all day...

When you're all drained and worn out and all of a sudden you want to break down and cry because you've pushed it so hard even the you that's happy is worn out.

You have to give it all a rest.

Today I have to rest. I have to wait for my bank to catch up with my stupidity and insanity once again, so I can get moving.

I hope I don't fuck this up even more and drag these people down.

So I try and take it easy and keep things steady.
Trying to hold the throttle, my body, and the bike at a careful angle so it just sails around the corner. Goes through the corner in a straight, unwavering line.

But isn't there something beautiful about the one who tries to smile and keep it up, even though the pace hurts a little bit?

(van halen - 5150)

Two marketers are arguing.
"That crap Old Navy commercial with the bare footprints and the endless cuts? That's not art. Listen to that guitar sing. That's art."
"What part of that is art?"
Suddenly his shoulders sag.
"...Nothing. Forget about it."

By the way, David Lee Roth is a total nut. What a nut.

...

(heart - love alive)

I guess it's just the sound and the fury when I've moving, and music when I'm not.
Something's always moving with me, I guess.

The lady cooking tonight asked me if I was the one who lost my wallet. I grinned and said yeah. She made an oooh and said she always made her husband put it in his saddlebags. I told her that I could have done a lot of smarter stuff, like break up the materials, zip up my jacket, not be retarded...

She just laughed. I said, how did you know it was me? Do I just walk around looking like I got no brains? She demurred and said I just looked a little...depressed.

Do I walk around with a fucking sign on my back that says "I need a mom"?

Will you make me one?

...

I think that the reason so many stories have been told of the one waiting for the one, of the frog awaiting the princess, of the the sleeping one awaiting the princess, of the beast awaiting the beauty,
is because for thousands of years we've been trying to explain an ultimate fufillment, but we just can't explain.

We just can't explain. We can play the music, roll the credits, crane the camera up and back, roll the car down the road toward the sunset, but we just can't bring what's in our lives to be told, and we can't quite bring what's told in through the door so easily.

It comes through the twisted road of experience,
am I wrong?

I love you.

...
(donavon frankenreiter - butterfly)
Try to listen to the quiet songs, quietly, try to listen to the quiet vocalists get quieter,
Try to dim the light and fade the thoughts back a little.

Because these brakes are for slowing you down, not stopping you.

Try to warm up and drift off.
Try to lay back and rest easy.

Try to curl up and sleep tight.
Try to dream of brighter things for the next day.

Because people fit together when they rest together, even if they dream apart.

Though Ganem's apartment was very richly furnished, the lady did
not so much regard its appearance, as she did the handsome
presence and engaging mien of her deliverer, whose politeness and
obliging behaviour heightened her gratitude. She sat down on a
sofa, and to give the merchant to understand how sensible she was
of the service done her, took off her veil. Ganem on his part was
sensible of the favour so lovely a lady did in uncovering her
face to him, or rather felt he had already a most violent passion
for her. Whatever obligations she owed him, he thought himself
more than requited by so singular a favour.

The lady dived into Ganem's thoughts, yet was not at all alarmed,
because he appeared very respectful. He, judging she might have
occasion to eat, and not willing to trust any but himself with
the care of entertaining so charming a guest, went out with a
slave to an eating-house, to give directions for an
entertainment. From thence he went to a fruiterer, where he chose
the finest and best fruit; buying also the choicest wine, and the
same bread that was eaten at the caliph's table.

As soon as he returned home, he with his own hands made a pyramid
of the fruit he had bought, and serving it up himself to the lady
in a large dish, of the finest china-ware, "Madam," said he, "be
pleased to make choice of some of this fruit, while a more solid
entertainment, and more worthy yourself, is preparing." He would
have continued standing before her, but she declared she would
not touch any thing, unless he sat down and ate with her. He
obeyed; and when they had eaten a little, Ganem observing that
the lady's veil, which she laid down by her on a sofa, was
embroidered along the edge with golden letters, begged her
permission to look on the embroidery. The lady immediately took
up the veil, and delivered it to him, asking him whether he could
read? "Madam," replied he, with a modest air, "a merchant would
be ill-qualified to manage his business if he could not at least
read and write." "Well, then," said she, "read the words which
are embroidered on that veil, which gives me an opportunity of
telling you my story."

Ganem took the veil, and read these words, "I am yours, and you
are mine, thou descendant from the prophet's uncle." That
descendant from the prophet's uncle was the caliph Haroon al
Rusheed, who then reigned, and was descended from Abbas,
Mahummud's uncle.

When Ganem perceived these words, "Alas! madam," said he, in a
melancholy tone, "I have just saved your life, and this writing
is my death! I do not comprehend all the mystery; but it
convinces me I am the most unfortunate of men. Pardon, madam, the
liberty I take, but it was impossible for me to see you without
giving you my heart. You are not ignorant yourself, that it was
not in my power to refuse it you, and that makes my presumption
excusable. I proposed to myself to touch your heart by my
respectful behaviour, my care, my assiduity, my submission, my
constancy; and no sooner have I formed the flattering design,
than I am robbed of all my hopes. I cannot long survive so great
a misfortune. But, be that as it will, I shall have the
satisfaction of dying entirely yours. Proceed, madam, I conjure
you, and give me full information of my unhappy fate."

He could not utter those words without letting fall some tears.
The lady was moved; but was so far from being displeased at the
declaration he made, that she felt secret joy; for her heart
began to yield. However, she concealed her feelings, and as if
she had not regarded what Ganem had said. "I should have been
very cautious," answered she, "of strewing you my veil, had I
thought it would have given you so much uneasiness; but I do not
perceive that what I have to say to you can make your condition
so deplorable as you imagine."

"You must understand," proceeded she, "in order to acquaint you
with my story, that my name is Fetnah (which signifies
disturbance), which was given me at my birth, because it was
judged that the sight of me would one day occasion many
calamities. Of this you cannot be ignorant, since there is nobody
in Bagdad but knows that the caliph, my sovereign lord and yours,
has a favourite so called.

"I was carried into his palace in my tenderest years, and I have
been brought up with all the care that is usually taken with such
persons of my sex as are destined to reside there. I made no
little progress in all they took the pains to teach me; and that,
with some share of beauty, gained me the affection of the caliph,
who allotted me a particular apartment adjoining to his own. That
prince was not satisfied with such a mark of distinction; he
appointed twenty women to wait on me, and as many eunuchs; and
ever since he has made me such considerable presents, that I saw
myself richer than any queen in the world. You may judge by what
I have said, that Zobeide, the caliph's wife and kinswoman, could
not but be jealous of my happiness. Though Haroon has all the
regard imaginable for her, she has taken every possible
opportunity to ruin me.

"Hitherto I had secured myself against all her snares, but at
length I fell under the last effort of her jealousy; and, had it
not been for you, must now have been exposed to inevitable death.
I question not but she had corrupted one of my slaves, who last
night, in some lemonade, gave me a drug, which causes such a dead
sleep, that it is easy to dispose of those who have taken it; for
that sleep is so profound, that nothing can dispel it for the
space of seven or eight hours. I have the more reason to judge
so, because naturally I am a very bad sleeper, and apt to wake at
the least noise.

"Zobeide, the better to put her design in execution, has availed
herself of the absence of the caliph, who went lately to put
himself at the head of his troops, to chastise some neighbouring
kings, who have formed a league of rebellion. Were it not for
this opportunity, my rival, outrageous as she is, durst not have
presumed to attempt any thing against my life. I know not what
she will do to conceal this action from the caliph, but you see
it highly concerns me that you should keep my secret. My life
depends on it. I shall be safe in your house as long as the
caliph is from Bagdad. It concerns you to keep my adventure
private; for should Zobeide know the obligation I owe you, she
would punish you for having saved me.

"When the caliph returns, I shall not need to be so much upon my
guard. I shall find means to acquaint him with all that has
happened, and I am fully persuaded he will be more earnest than
myself to requite a service which restores me to his love."

As soon as Haroon al Rusheed's beautiful favourite had done
speaking, Ganem said, "Madam, I return you a thousand thanks for
having given me the information I took the liberty to desire of
you; and I beg of you to believe, that you are here in safety;
the sentiments you have inspired are a pledge of my secrecy.

"As for my slaves, they may perhaps fail of the fidelity they owe
me, should they know by what accident and in what place I had the
happiness to find you. I dare assure you, however, that they will
not have the curiosity to inquire. It is so natural for young men
to purchase beautiful slaves, that it will be no way surprising
to them to see you here, believing you to be one, and that I have
bought you. They will also conclude that I have some particular
reasons for bringing you home as they saw I did. Set your heart,
therefore, at rest, as to that point, and remain satisfied that
you shall be served with all the respect that is due to the
favourite of so great a monarch as our sovereign the caliph. But
great as he is, give me leave, madam, to declare, that nothing
can make me recall the present I have made you of my heart. I
know, and shall never forget, ‘that what belongs to the master is
forbidden to the slave;' but I loved you before you told me that
you were engaged to the caliph; it is not in my power to overcome
a passion which, though now in its infancy, has all the force of
a love strengthened by a perfect of situation. I wish your august
and most fortunate lover may avenge you of the malice of Zobeide,
by calling you back to him; and when you shall be restored to his
wishes, that you may remember the unfortunate Ganem, who is no
less your conquest than the caliph. Powerful as that prince is, I
flatter myself he will not be able to blot me out of your
remembrance. He cannot love you more passionately than I do; and
I shall never cease to love you into whatever part of the world I
may go to expire, after having lost you."

Fetnah perceived that Ganem was under the greatest of
afflictions, and his situation affected her; but considering the
uneasiness she was likely to bring upon herself, by prosecuting
the conversation on that subject, which might insensibly lead her
to discover the inclination she felt for him; "I perceive," said
she, "that this conversetion gives you too much uneasiness; let
us change the subject, and talk of the infinite obligation I owe
you. I can never sufficiently express my gratitude, when I
reflect that, without your assistance, I should never again have
beheld the light of the sun."
-A Thousand and One Nights

How strange a dream was that?
From technical development in a research program at a university to space where it was being tested? And the one who seemed almost the Director's favorite, the one who pulled them all together into one structure. A great, terrible creature of glowing blue lines and white dotted points, like the aliens from The Abyss, looking like an angel possessed of divine grace about to exercise its will.

The Director only now a voice in the structure, since it had gotten out of hand, in the network chamber. Urging her on. To eject you, or me.

And I wouldn't be having either.
Getting the guys together to start working on the structure of the ship, the huge research chamber and passage that the accelerator was to be tested in, trying physical hacks to undermine it. Remembering that you'd said to me earlier in the dream, back on the ground, that you'd leave and move on if there ever got to be only enough space for you or me. Biting my lip and ripping panels off.

We'd just started to make ground on it, putting a chink in the terrible certainty of that thing, when it was time to wake up. Left with only an arpeggiated, polyphonic song to try and hum a bookmark to, to try to figure it out long after.

...

So I saw an RC51 race replica. It's a V-Twin race bike, of all things. Supposedly it kind of rocked, but then it was removed from the races for something else. The Indiana guy I was talking to when we saw it said it was great for getting speed out of corners but didn't have any top end.

...
(uematsu nobuo - the oath (piano))
I borrowed a guitar from the front desk and reacquainted myself with how damned hard it is to play a cheap acoustic compared to a Suhr custom Stratocaster. My fingers are swollen from the pressure of hard cornering, now that they've had a chance to relax.

I'm so slow, slowed down, today. I didn't make it out the door of the bunkhouse until 10am, and I don't feel any less tired. This is because around here, where the roads twist and the valleys are deep, you can basically just take it easy or go fast. Not like an interstate in the flat nothing, where you cruise at a solid 65, or 80, or 100, or whatever.

There's a big black butterfly who sits in the dust fifty feet in front of me. The wind hits it and it twists and flaps. White dots at the trailing edge of its wings, orange and blue flames on its underside trails. I sat in front of it, and it looked back at me. I can't tell if it's sick or injured or what, but here we sit, trying not to move too much, waiting for things to get better from what we've gotten ourselves into.

I hope it forgives me for projecting my problems onto it for the sake of illustration.

I'll tell you one thing. I'm sure there'll be more surprises before this life is over.

I think that the reason why evolution is more a kind of failed religion than a scientific kinda thing is because you can apply it to anything, even guitars. Science doesn't know anything about life, and so you can apply evolution to things that aren't really alive, and you can speak about them in ways that suggest that they are alive according to those definitions.

Let me say it again, more clearly this time. The Art of Survival. Why does life surge ahead, and spread itself out? Why do these trees make more of themselves? Why do they give, and give, and give, and then one day just break down and die?

What makes life special is not that the forms we have are somehow suited to the arrangement we find ourselves in. That's teleology, and it's bullshit. What makes it special is how crazy it is. Fingers? Freckles? Knuckles? Armpit hair? It's all so nuts. Any of those things are arbitrary, really, and only when you take them all together do they form a kind of 50% solution that get you by. Love is blind, and life is crazy. The artist of our strangeness, that's what gets us places. Evolution is just another way of trying to explain why things that lived have died, because it's a little hard for people to take.

Trust me. I know.

But what perturbs your 'stable' state may get you killed. We aren't just anal retentive in our attitudes and prejudices. Our very biology is dogmatic. Cancer is untenable, unsupportable, and immediately executed if possible.

--A monarch butterfly circles me and flits about.

Our blood cells carry protein tags that set the standard for the only ones allowed. My cells are B-type, Rhesus positive. I can take more B positive, B negative, O positive, and O negative into my bloodstream. But anything else my body will seize up and start killing. I'll get clots and all kinds of circulation problems.

Transplantees have to take a crapload of different medications to keep their body from killing the pancreas they just got. The one that'll keep them alive.

Somehow, we just grip the handlebars tighter when it seems like we might need to loosen up and leave them. We get scared, in more ways than one. Remember, you have to hang -off- the bike to keep from leaving it.

(uematsu nobuo - the castle (piano))
But bacteria? They swap DNA like it's nothing. They'll put anything in their pipes and smoke it. Their survival is all art, no evolution. Things that work for them (which are called 'adaptations' in evolutionary catechism) might not save them from getting killed, or us killing them, for reasons that might be totally unrelated to 'natural' selection.

But for a dick engineer, there's no art, only evolution. For an evolutionary psychologist (what the fuck, eh?), there are no dreams, only evolution. For a logistics commander, there is no beauty, only optimization.

Yet for a tactician, there is art to a beautiful, effective attack. For a gearhead, there is a beautiful engine, pretty pipes. For a wackjob geneticist, there is madness in a seemingly 'useless' mutation.

For someone who 'takes pride' in being alive, not the cold, closing kind, but the open, happy kind, there is beauty in everything. There is no scalpel, only an endless, in-and-outrushing flow.

I'm getting too close to slicing this one up, so I'll quit here. But just remember this. That -that- is what makes living things living, independent of DNA or carbon chains or oxygen.

(uematsu nobuo - fisherman's horizon (piano))
Maybe there'll always be a sun shining for somebody, huh? Butterflies are somebody too.

Ahh, these are the silly things I think about in the lazy sun. I'd be one crazy southern front porch whistler, let me tell you.

(uematsu nobuo - to zanarkand)
The next day Haroon al Rusheed ordered the grand vizier, to cause
proclamation to be made throughout all his dominions, that he
pardoned Ganem the son of Abou Ayoub; but this proved of no
effect, for a long time elapsed without any news of the young
merchant. Fetnah concluded, that he had not been able to survive
the pain of losing her. A dreadful uneasiness seized her mind;
but as hope is the last thing which forsakes lovers, she
entreated the caliph to give her leave to seek for Ganem herself;
which being granted, she took a purse containing a thousand
pieces of gold, and went one morning out of the palace, mounted
on a mule from the caliph's stables, very richly caparisoned.
Black eunuchs attended her, with a hand placed on each side of
the mule's back.

Thus she went from mosque to mosque, bestowing her alms among the
devotees of the Mahummedan religion, desiring their prayers for
the accomplishment of an affair, on which the happiness of two
persons, she told them, depended. She spent the whole day and the
thousand pieces of gold in giving alms at the mosques, and
returned to the palace in the evening.
-A Thousand and One Nights