I think I am going to go on a bike ride.

(I just read the Ramdom Englishman's acount of a S.F. Allycat.)

It has been earthquake weather here for the last couple of days...you know, hot, still, humid and overcast. Pretty rare for the end of June in California. Sort of eerie, but fun because it is different from the norm...I wonder which buildings will fall...?

The Matrix ain't so original. It pulled so many things nearly wholesale from other shows...like this one

Don't you love those rare evenings when you get home from work and suddenly find you have nothing pressing to do and you can just sit on the couch or go for a walk or do whatever you feel like doing? It is so nice to really relax for a change, especially when the weather is good here in summertime SoCal, life is going just fine, and new adventures are just around the corner. I spent some of my quiet evening watching the last part of Neon Genesis, a show I can't really recommend as GOOD, but it is certainly impressive, thought-provoking and moving. There is so much in it and it is so beautifully done that I have not fully taken everything in yet. The insights into human nature, and the perceptions of love and loneliness and insecurity are stunning. Nevertheless, as I said the last time talked about it, it is potentially very damaging and misleading philosophically. Watch it with care and discretion---I really think there is a lot of truth to be gotten from it, but don't watch it with your mom: a 90,000-foot-tall naked demi-god girl spilling blood across the universe is more than a little weird.

There have been many times recently when I intended to blog. Cars have been stolen, trips have been made, hearts have been stabbed...I just never got around to writing any of it down. And at this point you can give up the likelihood of my recounting any of it here. However, the frequency of my posting will hopefully pick up a bit. Transition is such a difficult place to be. My mind and heart are no longer in one place or one time. I am disconnected with nearly all aspects of the life that is going on around me and with the doings of my friends; I simply work to get things done, remind myself that I am happy, and struggle for...{[+]} Dreams have stepped down to make room for practicality, and that always sucks. California can be brutal place, especially in the rush and scorch of summer. And I want to go, but it rips the soul a little to think of it, and all the ideas have been crumbling just a bit too much. And now I am stuck once more with a broken car in a place it is not supposed to be, must be moved by Monday, and the bolts are all rusty and breaking...

Relief is too many miles from here---

The sun should not be shining today. There are many questions and spiraling thoughts gripping my brain, and I don't want to leave them for such things as sun and summer and work. My fascination and emotion have been engaged by the so-called philosophy and problems of Neon Genesis, an incredibly well done Japanese animated series. Is it possible to ask too many questions? Questions of the wrong kind? Or maybe it is simply that if God is left out of the picture our questions horrify us because there is no ultimate good. Man's ability to climb inside his own mind and fashion all manner of things out of that confused muck is shocking...it is very interesting that disorder and ugliness come from within man, not without. The human intellect is both beautiful and dangerous---without guidance it is lead to bizarre explanations of the things it cannot cope with; or reduced to sheer primal survival...

Listening to Simon and Garfunkle, up late, thinking about cars and friends and love and life and change. I am so hopeful these days...the tired, lost, confused me has been left somewhere among the empties, spent butts, and scorching sunlight of a distant but never regretted morning. What's next? How will life be tomorrow? Well, I don't know, but the spirit is with me; Jesus promised.

Blogging has been very sparse lately for nearly all of us in the TAC-related blog world. I'm not sure why this is, but I haven't been writing much either. It was such a cult among us for a while and such an enjoyable way to keep in touch...but it has become somehow shallow and warmed-over feeling. I think we could rise again, but do we want to? Sadly, I think perhaps an era has passed.

We spent the weekend in San Luis Obispo, eating good food, quaffing good drink, and enjoying good company. On the way home Aaron coaxed me to go wine tasting at a winery for the first time ever---it didn't take much coaxing. Strangely though, for all its beauty and weather and culture, California unexpectedly feels foreign to me. This happens every now and then, I think most likely because I am not really from here. No matter where I go in the end, I know that California will remain glorious in my memory...On Sunday morning we woke up to pouring rain, which to be honest, I thought was really cool...but everyone else spent the afternoon complaining about it. Oh well, to each his own. I think I must be biding my time...I may know what I am waiting for, but I'm not sure...

Along the coast there is no age
Old and young are together distressed;
By might and salty pensive brooding.
Moss-wound oak and pungent sage
Green brown and musky dressed;
Rumbling with friendly foreboding.
Along the coast one is wrapped
With tragic waves
And terrible beauty forbidden;
Safe for a moment
desperate the next...
Around my feet ideas lapped
Echoed within the skull's caves
Ragged mind now dulled and hidden...
All to relent
All out of context.
Along the coast a smile plays
Dances and sings to the slate sky
Who's grin is this?
What mouth did it forsake?
A mile-post of days
Sometimes honest, often sly
A slow smile kiss
Who now will partake?
Along the coast you are lost
Long later to be found
Caressed awake
Windy tossed
Dying without a sound

Groatus and I went motorcycle riding Sunday afternoon in the mountains. The temperature was perfect, the sun was shining, and the bikes were running great. So relaxing...

I fell asleep last night with an image rolling around in my brain, put there in part by the book I was reading, part by a very dark movie I saw not long ago, and the rest a mixture of imagination and blotchy black-and-white photographs from old books on the War. I'm not entirely sure why it assailed my tired mind or why I couldn't clear it from my head...

It was a still night in winter near the limits of a small town in northern Italy, during the later part of the Second World War. A scrawny adolescent girl was sitting in the snow by herself, leaning casually against a battered brick wall. A sleepy, thoughtful look hung about her half-closed, dark-rimmed eyes. Bundled close about her small body, held in place by obviously chilled fingers was a worn-out wool overcoat, all rumpled and smudged with age. She wore a tired but faintly contented smile and looked rather comfortable despite the harsh night air.
"'S cold," I commented, lighting a Camel. I wondered if she spoke English. She looked vaguely Slavic. She didn't answer right away and I took my first drag.
"Do you have a place to get warm?" I asked. I bent toward her, to hear her reply.
There were holes in her coat. Little tears or rips here and there, filled with rich red-brown syrup, frozen to ice in the bitter night. Slipping from my fingers, my cigarette went out in the snow beside me as I gently touched her face. She was dead.

I recently finished Lewis' stark and incredibly powerful Great Divorce, and am currently in the middle of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, a very very different sort of story, though also powerful in it's own right. The striking thing that ties these two books together is the uneasy sense that everything we do here on earth is ultimately utterly pointless and insignificant. Well, not quite; C.S. Lewis' words flow with hope and joy, promising salvation based on the choices we make throughout our lives; so by his account our actions do have some value. Yet the fact that all our great achievements and endeavors really mean nothing apart from the love and charity that accompany them remains. Vonnegut of course is much more bleak. It makes a person think though, and reminds one that all the struggle for money and possessions and security is pretty empty, despite the fact that it is nearly impossible to live or have any influence, good or bad, without these things. This is another example of where hope and faith become essential, the only means of survival. Without the belief that God wishes us to work and live among his other creatures, to be 'in the world but not of it', we wallow in directionless distraction. Another good comes from these rather dismal thoughts though, and that is the reminder that the only things that are ultimately worthwhile is loving God and others. We can have and enjoy many many different things, we can be entertained, but when life doesn't go our way, leaving ourselves out of love for Christ and for the sake of another is the only true peace we will find. The reward for the gift of self is greater than any prize we may demand or think is owed. But I am just lonely today, and it is still cloudy.

So it goes.