Friday, December 11, 2015
(transcription of typical morning journal writing at SquidHQ)
Gratitudinals: I am grateful for stop lights--what a mess without those. I am grateful for sharp cheddar cheese, enormous bullfrogs, hobby rocket kits, colored markers, notebooks, blank cassette tapes, and 3 terabyte hard drives. I am grateful for those who are muses to me and grateful if ever I am a muse to someone else.
Curiosity: Are there parallel universes? If there are infinite possibilities is it not a fractilized honeycomb of potentials more than a straight line parallel? Ten trillion trillion light years from here this moment in all its detail is a potential--but I could be wearing a different shirt. Just in shirt choices alone, how many potential honeycombs of manifesting iterations are there of this moment? And how many trillions of trillions of light year for a reiteration of this shirt, but missing a button?
I'm glad its Friday. Last night Tracy worked at Tannin so I fed Joe and Susan's dogs, walked our dogs, ran myself, and then went down to Brookside and had dinner at the pub down there, I forget its name but they are somewhat well known for their hot dogs and fish and chips. At first I looked in the window and saw great banks of TV's and thought it was kind of a frat place, but I walked around the block and rejected other options and then bucked up and went in, a man alone anxious about eating alone in a crowded bar. I think it's a nice neighborhood pub, well-run, with good food. They have Firestone Union Jack IPA on tap--that is a major plus. I'll go back there for sure, the nachos looked great.
I ran 3.3 miles last night, up around the Nelson and down Main to 51st and up the stairs through UMKC. It wasn't a terrible run; it felt good at first. There were a lot of traffic stops that probably amounted to 30 second on my splits. I'm feeling the difference with daily exercise--I JUST DO IT, and if I catch myself worrying about "will I be able to keep this up? what if I quit?" I just focus on DOING IT today. There are some things in life that require vision and goals and strategy but among the things you can just do every day without a lot of doubt is get 45 minutes to an hour of exercise. It becomes an anchor--an anchor that keeps you moving. The other thing you can do for 45 minutes to an hour is write. The other thing is make music. The other thing is talk to a friend on the phone--all of these add up to needing just a part time job that pays the same as a full time job, with benefits as good as the gridlocked U.S. Senate gets for doing nothing, so you can do these things.
My record collection turned into a monolith in the last year--the color and forms and moods inside it went to sleep. I even considered selling it, for the money to pay off a credit card, but lately pulling out random things has brought it back to life--Joni Mitchell with Jaco Pastorious; Leaving Trains--anything really. Overall my big kick has been Steve Reich--I've been listening to his music a bunch. I have a cd but mainly I've been listening on Spotify. It's good music to listen to for half an hour in the midst of a busy fabrication shop that sometimes goes many directions at once--figuring out weldments to be subbed out and how they fit together; renting a truck, canceling it because it's too big, then discovering that UPS has claimed every cargo van in town for the holiday, and re-renting a truck but smaller; tracking down an elusive engineered drawing of a plaque that someone assumes I understand because it was like that one from a project six years ago. You need subtly dovetailing marimba patterns and a few deep breaths to go seven directions at once.
