071209

About four years ago or so I started taking a medication called Remeron and in so doing got the first real sleep I'd had in ten years or more. It was _huge_ to be sleeping again, to be dreaming for the first time I can remember in my adult life, to begin each day (actually have a beginning and an ending!) well rested. At first the dreams were so enormous I found them frightening but eventually they calmed down; I don't hardly remember them at all anymore. So valuable has this sleep been to me that I have kept myself rather strictly on an early-to-bed-early-to-rise regimen. It has done me a world of good to have kept myself on such a tight leash but now I'm feeling I can let loose a bit. I've tested it, and I really do still need the drug if I'm ever to fall asleep (otherwise my mind does not stop racing and I lie there tossing and turning, which is really bad sleep hygiene) but I'm not so worried now about when I take it and what time I fall asleep. I can hang out with friends, go to shows, and be a regular person again!

_____

One might have fun exploring here:

http://www.urbansketchers.com/

*Home*

I got a desk/shelving unit that's really out of sight. It's based on the original designs of George Nelson for Herman Miller and is infinitely customizable; it seems everything great in modern design happened at the middle of the 20th century. My unit has a desk with drawer and three shelves above on the left, along with four more shelves on the right. The best part of the design is this: though it looks like a built-in, all parts are held up on three poles which are spring-anchored between floor and ceiling. I expected the drawer to be shoddy; it's anything but, made of solid wood instead of my most-hated chip wood. One can get all sorts of fine cabinets, and any sizes that suit one's needs, in addition to a variety of finishes (I got mine with black poles and black mica). The cabinets and shelves can be arranged absolutely any way the heart desires. Nothing is attached to a wall, the poles are rock solid, and one can pack it up and move it with very little effort.

This unit has the effect of turning my somewhat crowded apartment into a spacious, open, well-balanced home. A big part of the enlarging effect is that the unit concentrates storage and utility from floor to ceiling on a previously unused wall, the wall opposite the main part of the room--it's like adding a whole new section to the apartment. Now when you sit at one end you really marvel at just how big this place is; it really feels like all of its 800 square feet. The tension-pole system is so ingenious they (http://shelfshop.com) have got a customer for life in me. The stuff works excellently well, is extremely well made, and is highly aesthetically pleasing. The variety of possible combinations, shelves, cabinets, glass doors, garment racks, desks, is stunning. My arrangement altogether was about $600! Best thing you can find anywhere for the money, and it looks and works great.

*Poem*

My Tie Rack

I have a little story about

a tie rack I once owned.

It was perfect in

every way and snazzy to boot,

with a shimmering chrome bar

that folded out to display

some 60 or more ties,

elegantly hung on small hooks

which each had a little red tip.

It was one of my

prized possessions.

One day I moved,

and there my prized rack

sat on top of a box

in my new home,

in the front room.

So important was this item

to me that I was aware of its

presence, there,

on top of that box, just as I

became aware of its absence

the moment it left.

Even after I was fully unpacked

the rack never did appear again.

I've gone over it a thousand times,

what happened, who was there,

whose hands it could have

slipped into, and there is nothing

and no one. I now believe

the loss of this great tie rack

was a cosmic lesson to learn

one important fact:

I miss the tie rack

more than I miss my ex-wife.

Most days anyway.

"Quotations*

Meaning is not something you find--it's something you make.

[From The Closer on the subject of the meaning in a completely random, accidental murder]

Philosophical/religious discourse should have one great aim: to define the questions for which religion provides answers.

[From Numbers on the subject of ?]

Democracy is only as good as the voices of protest she protects.

[Rickie Lee Jones on revoking The Patriot Act]

People really like bass players who can play eighth notes, especially if it sounds good.

[My old friend and teacher Dan Schulte on playing bass well]

Perhaps increasing health span rather than overall lifespan might be a better goal.

[Dr Lynne Cox on the possible impact of the use of rapamycin to improve longevity]

It's not possible to advise a young writer because every young writer is so different. You might say, 'Read,' but a writer can read too much and be paralyzed. Or, 'Don't read, don't think, just write,' and the result could be a mountain of drivel. If you're going to be a writer you'll probably take a lot of wrong turns and then one day just end up writing something you have to write, then getting it better and better just because you want it to be better, and even when you get old and think 'There must be something else people do,' you won't quite be able to quit.

--Alice Munro

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

--Oscar Wilde

I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.

--Andy Warhol

There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.

--Anais Nin

The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

--Jung

*China*

When I was in mainland China, I was taking time off from working myself sick in Taiwan; I was just wandering around finding whatever I found. One evening, not too far from Hong Kong, my first night in the mainland, I came across a carnival of sorts, a kind which was at the time as popular as noodle stands, on both sides of the Strait. They involved daredevil acrobatics, the stacking of many people on top of each other, and lots of spinning dishes, in addition to numerous other activities meant to distract and possibly entertain. It was in a small concrete stadium. I took my seat near the entrance after I'd bought my ticket, and after a few minutes I saw an older man in the row ahead of me look back then lean over to his friend and say, "Ta kan bu dong. (He doesn't understand what he's seeing.)" The man, not being very worldly as far as I could tell, obviously assumed that no white person could possibly understand him.

Needless to say he was startled when I immediately leaned forward and said, "Kan de dong, ah. Dzemma kan bu dong? (I understand. How could I not?)" He let out a little squeal, "Eih?", which was the sound of a Chinese person in complete surprise. The three of us ended up having a good talk, about acrobatics, about where I learned Chinese, about what I was doing traveling alone (I never did find any good excuses). If we had been in the comparatively rich Taiwan, we would have all gone out for drinks and a meal. We were more than happy to sit there half watching the (incredible) acrobatics, chatting, and, every so often, calling over one of the purveyors of mini-hot-dog sticks, or cigarettes, or baked yams who wandered all around. Simple times I will not soon forget.

*Nonfiction*

I was living on East 12th Street in the East Village in Manhattan in the early '90s, working at a health-food store on 1st Ave. I had a series of major realizations, about my life, about my health, about the world, that made me flee rather suddenly up to Maine with the intention of starting a self-sufficient homestead on family land. I was inspired by names like Thoreau, Helen and Scott Nearing (grandparents of the back-to-the-land movement, who had their own homestead very close to me), John Jeavons (the main man behind Ecology Action and author of How to Grow More Vegetables than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land than You Can Imagine), and many others. I went up there with a new girlfriend, Nicole; we'd met only a couple of weeks before yet she agreed to give up everything and come with me.

The furthest we got was to start a small garden and build a cabin. I planned to head off for a second trip to Taiwan to earn money for the homestead; the furthest we got was Seattle. I remember the west-coast mesmerized me when I first got there (actually I had already lived in Berkeley CA for a year)--it's only some 17 years later I can see in fact the west coast cast a wicked spell on me, one which lasted some 15 years. I used a book, and my father's expertise, to build the cabin; the book was Building Thoreau's Cabin. I still have my dog-eared and dirt-stained copy of the book; my old friend Andrew's phone number is scribbled in the front; I still remember the day he came over--we had just finished building the platform on which the cabin was to sit

From Building Thoreau's Cabin by Stephen Taylor:

""The purpose of imagination," wrote Martin Buber, "is to imagine the real." Exploring the implications of that tantalizing, multilayered aphorism could easily be the subject of an entire book, if not a life's work. Yet building a small building--not reading about it but actually building the building--can be, in its own special way, another means toward accomplishing some of the same thing. I'm not saying you ought to build an outbuilding in order to understand more thoroughly what Martin Buber meant (although that might not be a half bad idea). But if you do decide to go ahead and build, you may find that, indirectly, Buber is offering at least as much help as you'll get from me.

"I should explain what I mean. Most of spend a sizable portion of our lives surrounded by wires and windows and heating ducts and pipes, by structural support members fashioned of wood or metal or concrete fastened with nails or rivets or bolts, by sheets of paper and plastic and plywood and sheets of paper soaked in tar, perhaps by tiers of bricks or mosaics of shingles or matrices of boards, and, strangely enough, we call this condition "being at home." Of course, when we _are_ home, we seldom take the trouble to imagine how all those materials fit together. As long as they leave us alone, we're usually more than happy to leave _them_ alone. But sometimes one or more of those materials assert themselves. They rot or burst or spring a leak or otherwise malfunction, and suddenly we're called upon to give them our attention. All along they've been quite real, but their reality's been passive, concealed by the scrim of god only knows what other competing concerns. Now, abruptly, their reality springs to life and makes us oddly anxious.

"Probably the anxiety we feel is of two kinds. The first kind has to do with all the questions of how bad the damage is--how much it will cost to fix, how soon it can be got to, how uncomfortable or inconvenienced we'll be until it's taken care of; all the obvious considerations that ensue when something crucial doesn't work. But the second component of the anxiety is much more vague and maybe just as troubling. It's the component of mystery, of things no longer being in control. What's gone afoul in the walls? Just what is it that's happening in there?"

When I left New York for the would-be homestead I was determined to confront the mystery of which Mr Taylor speaks above. I wanted to know better what was happening inside the walls, of my house, of houses, of skyscrapers, the everyday walls of the world, of what makes the world go around. The essential antiestablishment and ecocentric penchants I started with have served me very well. I can say now it's been a long strange trip. I've been led to places I never would have expected. In the end, I have discovered the most important details to fathom are not on the outside; coming to terms with the various walls inside yourself is far more important.

*News*

By Nikki Jecks for the BBC:

"Ten years after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), Lori Schneider decided she wanted to scale the highest peak on every continent. She achieved this last month by making it to the summit of the world's most famous mountain, Mount Everest. Climbing Mt Everest is a challenge for anyone--even if they are young and in the peak of health--but the 53-year-old from Wisconsin is the first person with MS ever to reach the summit.

"Ms Schneider, an avid climber, first dreamed of climbing Everest 16 years ago. But a diagnosis of MS in 1999 was a blow for the former school teacher. When she first got the news, her initial reaction was to run, rather than climb. "I ran away, I was fearful of what I thought I was losing in my life," she said. "I didn't want people feeling sorry for me. I was doing plenty of that for myself at that point, I was feeling like my physical life was over." Ms Schneider first noticed something was wrong when she woke up one morning with numbness in the leg and arm on one side of her body. The condition progressed to the side of her face, and eventually both sides of her body.

"Doctors initially thought she might have had a stroke or be suffering from brain cancer. It took several months before she was correctly diagnosed. After overcoming her initial fear and panic, she says the diagnosis actually empowered her to reach for her dreams. "For 20 years I taught children: 'Don't be afraid, take a chance, try', and when I was doing these climbs trying to climb the highest peak on each continent, I thought I'll do them all but Everest, because that's too hard for me. When I got diagnosed I thought: 'Just don't be afraid to try, do the things in your life that maybe you dreamed about'." Her aspiration has not been without its costs. Following her dreams meant leaving behind a 20-year teaching career and a 22-year marriage.

"Three years ago she climbed the highest peak in North America--Mount McKinley (also known by its native American name of Denali) in Alaska. For those in the mountaineering know, it is considered the coldest mountain in the world with temperatures overnight capable of dropping to -50C. After Everest, Asia's highest peak, and Aconcagua, South America's highest peak, it is the third highest of the so-called "Seven Summits". After coming back down she started to lose some of her vision, another symptom of MS. But that did not deter her. To climb Everest, the cost was financial, rather than physical--she used all her savings, sold her home and took out a loan.

""I've been very, very fortunate the last several years. My MS has been pretty stable and quiet in my system," she said. "I think the real hardship on Everest is maintaining a positive attitude for two months." Climbers of Everest face some of the most treacherous conditions imaginable; along with battling hypothermia, there is also altitude sickness, physical exhaustion, and the isolation of being up the mountain for so long. But with the help of letters and photos of friends, family and supporters, she kept herself positive and after more than eight weeks, fighting through a blizzard, she made it to the top. In achieving her goal, she has joined some of the world's most accomplished climbers and bested many others.

""It was very surreal, you couldn't see anything [because of the blizzard], so I couldn't see the beauty that surrounded me. We had to rush down so fast, but I did get a chance to give my father a call and yell: 'I made it, I made it'. It wasn't until the next morning when I woke up in my tent after climbing for 17 hours the day before, and then all of the sudden I thought: 'Oh my gosh, I just climbed Mt Everest yesterday!'." But she says making it to the summit is just a bonus. The real achievement, she says, is that in coming to terms with MS and the possibility that she may one day lose her mobility, she has been able to face down her fears. "Who you are inside; that's what's important. That will always be there," she said. "Whether my legs carry me up a mountain or not, I'm still who I am deep inside."

*Music*

One of the very best jazz vocalists ever is a woman named Irene Kral (_no_ relation to Diana). My jazz vocals teacher from Seattle, Kelley Johnson, turned me on to Ms Kral. You can't be sure you've heard the best until you've heard the recording Where is Love. I am not saying Ms Kral _is_ the best necessarily, I'm just saying there is a chance she is, or was. Unfortunately, she died young of cancer. She recorded Where is Love in 1974 with pianist Alan Broadbent, a young Alan Broadbent, and every track from beginning to end is miraculously good. She redefines some standards (Love Came on Stealthy Fingers, Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most) and revives some more obscure numbers (I Like You You're nice, Never Let Me Go). Every song is definitive in one way or another. My life simply would not be as rich without this recording. It's beautiful and heartbreaking; I found it a particular bittersweet kind of joy when my ex-wife deserted me. Highly recommended, especially before, during, or after break ups.

Peace, love, and ATOM jazz