Complement

My PhD thesis is nearing completion. I’m excited and stressed. I’m fairly certain I am developing carpal tunnel syndrome and have initiated steps to combat it. It seems like forever ago that I was in San Francisco running up and down hills, making observations, and relaxing. Since then I’ve been to Boston twice, Michigan, Canada, Britain, and Scotland, but San Francisco was somehow the most relaxing–despite the fact that I was overwhelmed by a terrible cough.

At a conference in the UK, during the conference dinner, a speech was made wherein the attendees were asked to stand if they were at their first conference in this fifth in a series of conferences. I was at my third so I remained sitting. Then those who were under twenty-eight were asked to stand, again, I remained seated. Then those who had been to three or more and were over forty were asked to stand. Seated again. There were no more calls for attendees to stand. Does that put me in limbo? In the gaps of Venn Diagram of those who are worthy of being called out. The complement of the union of all that matters… mah ha ha.

Regardless… ugh, wrist… regardless, I feel as though I seem to often reside within these gaps.

Revelations from Edinburgh

Edinburgh, Scotland — Subterranean garden porch at Wellington Coffee, above me, luckier patrons have a street view. In my view are a ring of doors, in full “pick a door, choose you fate, only behind one of these doors lies salvation”. These are half-sized doors made of brown-painted wood and probably give access to under the street. Neil Young’s Cinnamon girl is playing on the cafes sound system. I am taken back to high school and listening to the classic rock station which played full albums overnight. I would set a tape to record every album. If I feel asleep, I would try to wake myself up in thirty minutes to flip the cassette. I often failed. Hence my collection of half albums. 

Cinnamon Girl was the last song I managed to record from that overnight piracy session. Helter Skelter is the next song and I defintely do not have that song on that cassette, it wasn’t until college that I heard that song. If this is the album I recorded then and if it is playing in order, which seems to be the case as I haven’t recognized the remaining songs, then Sugar Mountain is also on this album. I remember writing down the lyrics to Sugar Mountain during a free journaling session in my high school senior English class. I didn’t know what to write, just as now I often find myself staring at a blank page thinking of writing, and this comes out “today I went to the store for a quart of milk and when I paid the woman at the counter she asked if I wasn’t a little too old for milk, which caught me off–this is stupid and boring, my journal is stupid and boring, why do i even bother! Why am I so boring!?” Thus, in one such instance, in high school, the one time where my life should not have been boring, but in fact was very much so, I opted instead to write down the lyrics to Sugar Mountain:

Oh, to live on Sugar Mountain
With the barkers and the colored balloons,
You can’t be twenty on Sugar Mountain
Though you’re thinking that
You’re leaving there too soon,
You’re leaving there too soon.

It’s so noisy at the fair
But all your friends are there
And the candy floss you had
And your mother and your dad.

After the lyrics I posed a series of questions: just what is this sugar mountain? Heaven? A coke-induced nirvana? I think there were other questions but I have since forgotten. It turns out Sugar Mountain is a town in North Carolina.  Following that, some speculation and analysis.  Thus was born the haphazard and oftentimes pigheaded and wrong critic you now read; living up to, if not epitomizing, the all too true adage, “Those who can’t, criticize.”  

I write best when I criticize myself honestly, somewhat honestly.

The Lake District at Night

After traveling over the Atlantic, immediately transfering to a train, walking around for three hours looking for an address on no sleep, two beautiful bouts of slumber, and a constant attempt to comprehend the language, I lie awake in my comfy B&B in an idylic part of the United Kingdom. It is 10:30pm on the eastern seaboard of the United States, plus five where I lie.  Jet lag can explain some mysterious things, but it cannot explain that moments ago, as I slept, I dreamt of an email from a friend, upon waking I received this email. This and the facts that the sunrise is creeping upon me as I type and that the evening resides in a perpetual twilight, leave me to wonder if I am not still asleep.  I can’t help but recall how twilight looks best reflected off the face of a lover.  

Wardrobe Disfunction

There is a wardrobe that can bring me to my knees. A veritable closet full of bittersweet memories. It exists for the time being; until moths or friction evaporate the fabric.

After my favorite pair of pants exploded, I am now reporting that my second favorite pair of pants are disintegrating.

Waterloo is terrific, but not quite ready to be pulled out of the oven, in a few years, it will be spectacular.

Finally

I’ve finally posted all the pictures from my trip to SF… all two weeks later. Hey, leave me alone, I am getting a PhD.

For those familiar with the Mission District, doesn’t this head look like the trees on Mission Street?

Mmm, Rosamunde.