My heart is burning within me...I just had my first taste of art history, an excerpt section of film discussing the discovery of the use of perspective in the early renaissance period. Did you know that until 1413 A.D. no one had ever used vanishing points or any form of real perspective in art? The thesis put forth by this film is that the idea of perspective is conventional and cultural, and not a natural inclination. This makes sense because if you think about it, you know intellectually that the road before you is actually two parallel lines, no matter what it looks like; so when setting out to draw it, you would naturally tend to draw what you know it to be, not what it tricks your eye to be. Yet this is not what we actually see. The passion I feel for this subject is as powerful as was unexpected. All I want to do right now is move to Florence and study art history while being tutored in classical painting. Then I could spend the rest of my life teaching art and decorating churches. But seriously, I feel as if I had just been treated to the finest and sweetest wine...

Dz's living room. The Face is stretching. Smeagol prances about the house, upstairs and down, jabbering is his own wonderful language. Wireless connections, hungry friends, four hours in the church, and a moonlight caper up a foresty hillside. Hot Yerba Mate, hiding in the garage, and a fancy camera. (She doesn't appreciate the Mate goodness). Exhausted, but happy...so happy.

What a great film

Just spent the last hour or so reading blogs of friends, strangers, and people I used to know well, and I feel oddly depressed. So many friendships have diverged while life has marched on; words and promises lost and forgotten in the pressures of daily life. Old wounds unexpectedly re-opened by a word, a recount, or just a sense drawn from the tone of a post. Things change so much...I don't want to relive anything---the present is filled with too many precious things to feel regret for the old times; still, change never ceases to be disconcerting...

Well, tonight marks perhaps my first real [cooked] bachelor dinner. I scavenged the fridge for odds and ends that would be suitable for consumtion, and found: Two (2) eggs; Four (4) hot dogs; Three (3) whole-wheat buns; Various () condiments. Cooked the eggs (first time I have ever cooked eggs), boiled the dogs, slathered the buns, and threw it all together with a pinch of garlic salt and black pepper. Most excellent.

Dreaming of a life of
Road trips and cilly nights
Of long hair and cigaretts
Forgotten on a highway of

Dreaming of a life of
Few friends, fewer possisions
Tattered clothes, a pencil stub
No home to speak of

Dreaming of a life of
Freedom from what the world calls success
Delving into the sweetness of life
Free from the slough of

Dreaming of a life of
What? Those things of beauty
What God wishes us to notice
Love and compassion of

Dreaming of a life of
Not loneliness and strife
Of romance and reality
And perhaps a wife...

Careening carelessly along Monday morning freeways, bleary-eyed and happy at the prospect of coveted sleep...A forlorn Lucky smolders merrily between my lips as I smash the accelerator toward the dark, secret places under the dash in the Travelette. Did you know that a 1968 full-size truck will do 80mph in second gear? I love Internationals. Tired enough to feel very, very happy, and want to stay up forever...I admit I curled up behind a printer for about an hour and a half while Sweet-Cheeks (don't ask, he's a Catholic) kept watch for the Melting Snowman who always shows up to work at 5:20am. Now that's absurd. So why am blogging right now instead of sleeping?

Roslyn hates me. Her nasty little red light glowed stubbornly from the recesses of my dashboard this morning, and hopes of sleep and relaxing Sunday company drifted away like the morning fog. Like most women, she thinks she hates what she needs the most; no matter how often I tell her she can't live without oil, she remains obstinate. Kicking the gear from the end of her oil pump into the sludgy depths of her oil pan, I told her, was just plain silly. Now you must undergo surgery, my dear, and you know how that pains all of us. She will sit alone tied to trailer for a few days, until time and energy afford the necessary procedures. Perhaps in that time she will rethink her ways, and remember all that I have done for her. Foolish girl...

Dos Mas Horas...

I decided that after drinking so much Yerba Mate recently it might be a good idea to know a little more about it. This is what I found:

'Mate is as tea like beverage consumed mainly in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and southern Brazil. It is brewed from the dried leaves and stemlets of the perennial tree Ilex paraguarensis ("yerba mate"). The name "mate" derives from the quechua word "matí" that means cup or vessel used for drinking. The scientific name Ilex paraguarensis was given by the French naturalist and botanist Auguste de Saint Hilaire in 1822, the tree belongs to the family Aquifoliaceae and grows between the parallels 10° and 30° (South) in the Paraná and Paraguay rivers basins. It is a plant typical of the Alto Paraná region, Alto Uruguay region and the Argentine NE. It is a tropical or subtropical plant, needing high temperatures, high humidity and up to 1500 mm of annual rain. On average, 300,000 tons of mate are produced each year.



In the wild, the plant needs about 25 years to develop completely, reaching in that case a height of up to 15 meters. The leaves are alternated, cuneiform, elliptical or oval, with the border slightly serrated. It flowers between the months of October and December. The flowers are small, polygamous, dioicous, with calyx and corolla in a tetrameric disposition. The fruit resembles a pepper berry. Among several varieties, there are three that are the most important: "angustifolia", "longifolia" and "latifolia".
Mate has a characteristic mature flavor which is somewhat sweet, sour, withered leaf like, and cigarette-like, similar to that obtained from tea (Camellia sinensis)[Kawakami]. Of the 196 volatile chemical compounds found in yerba mate, 144 are also found in tea. The infusions of Ilex paraguarensis are less astringent than those made of tea.'

'...the caffeine content of yerba mate is about 1-1.5% in weight you can expect about 500-750 mg of caffeine in a mate. The repetitive extraction with hot water seems to be an efficient way of extracting the caffeine, so you might expect to get that same amount of caffeine in a mate "session".'

'In comparison, a 7 oz cup of coffee contains about 80-175 mg (depending on the brewing method) and a cup of tea about 40-60 mg.'

-Copyright © 1997 Omar Stradella

NailINcoffin's aerial pictures of Ye Olde Homesteade appealed greatly to me, so here's where I live; except the picture was taken in 1991 and our house was built in 2003-2004, so...I drew a green house, a blue driveway and a yellow dotted property line (it's neary 20 acres). Man, we live in the middle of nowhere...



O, and here's the college in 1994

'Alice did not much like her keeping so close to her: first because the Duchess was very ugly; and secondly, because she was exactly the right height to rest her chin on Alice's shoulder, and it was an uncomfortably sharp chin...'

Well, the last two times I have tried to post, the net went down and lost what I wrote, hence the recent (apparent) lack of posting. Life grinds away as usual; I finished watching Brideshead (the 660 minute one) and was no less moved than when I read the book. The execution was virtually flawless. Isn't it interesting how people live from goal to goal---whether that means 'When I finish college' or 'When I move in with so-and-so' or 'Well, I signed on for a year...' It tends to make one uneasy when there is no start or finish to things. I guess we are all reaching for something every day...We have to if we hope to someday raise that end out of the world and up to heaven.

The evening sun plays over the strange little valley of Ojai. We sit in the shade out front and eat bacon-and-egg sandwiches. I sip on a hot cup of Earl Grey and Jamison. Do things get any more idyllic?

WORK

I just spliced into Kinko's satellite stereo system with my trusty MP3 player. Now the whole store must listen to anything my whims might dictate; I am the Kinko's music god, behold: I hold complete control of their audible faculties, BWWWWWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!

Muddy shoes and cuff betray
As much as clothes in disarray
And tousled hair, panting chest
Sprinting to shady cover, lest;
In dusky twilight out a-haunting
Down a forbidden way a-jaunting
Feared lights rounding yonder bend
Bring detection and forced amend
So leaping over the grassy hillside,
Scuttling, crouching; Hurry! Hide!
Light is dim, stars wink down
Benevolently free of judging frown
Dirt and rock, and water clear
A friendly orchard; a cautious peer;
The slap of rubber soles echoes
Overtaken nearly by such foes
That prowl sunken roads by night
Trespassing fools to harry and blight...
Glistening lawns now welcome home
The grinning skulker from his roam
Tumbling over for a moment's ease
With books, nettles and muddy knees
Holding tight, comfort and prayer
I will not tarry long from there...

Now my wonderful co-worker is making fake IDs. I give up.

One more dime to show for my day
One more dollar and I'm on my way
When I reach those hills boys I'll never roam
'Cause one more dollar and I'm comin' home

-G. Welch

These nights are killing me...

...it was neither the quality nor the quantity, but the mixture...

Not enough sleep, not ever...!