Good morning internets. Pics & work habits.

Sometimes I forget about this here internet thing. What with real life and all. My social networking skills (read: obsession) are falling by the wayside. But I still have awesome dreams and I still take great digital photos... If I can ever remember to post it on the internet that would be swell. I only seem to remember at the beginning of the month when my flickr account has been refreshed, and I realized I just lost a month's worth of potential storage. Then I don't upload anything out of frustration and the cycle continues. Now I stare at a multi-GB backload of photos and procrastinate uploading them in favor of work.

Which I also don't want to do. I was speaking with M. last night, and told her of my terrible habit. When I'm overloaded with stress, instead of doing something for myself that would relax me or be fun, I say "oh, I have work to do, I cannot possibly take time away to have fun." But then I don't end up doing the work anyway, and I feel I've wasted the day or evening. I could have at least enjoyed myself and not done the work. I'd have ended up in the same place but feeling better.

garlic, my love

Soup: 2 cups chicken stock 2 cups water 1/2 mediumm onion 3 cloves garlic 4 crimini mushrooms 1 small sweet potato 2 harvest gold local farmers market potatoes 1 parsnip 1 carrot 1 1/2 cups lentils 3 leaves kale shredded mozzarella sage rosemary cumin salt pepper The Cars Greatest Hits High Note 2008 'elevated' Malbec Sourdough loaf = so good.

In the Mountains

Dreamed I was in the mountains, snow snow everywhere. Not like here in Rhode Island. There's just wind and rain. Winter settles-in in my dreams even though I haven't lived in Vermont for almost three years.

And such wind. Its a Rhode Island commodity. We could export it. On the plus side it's good for sailing if its not too fierce.

I realized in the small hours of this morning that I haven't been writing to the void because I haven't been alone in a while. I used to write more when I was lonely. I suppose its not a bad thing, to not be lonely. I had grown so used to it. In some ways I enjoyed my solitude, but I am discovering that you don't always have to do things on your own, despite the American value of self-reliance. Its a value that I adhered fiercely to, and I'm trying to give it up.

Hello New Year. Hello Blog.

It's been a long time since I've typed anything into livejournal. The last six months I pretty much abandoned most of my internet haunts. I spread myself too thin, and then last semester was a beast. Excuses, excuses.

There was a time when writing was almost as frequent as breathing. I've missed it. I've developed a dislike for reading on a computer screen though. Two things have convinced me to return to LJ. First, I've read three books in the four weeks I've been off from school. Nothing of consequence, but man, I really missed the paperback. I'm starting in on a fourth already. Second has been my application to Harvard. Between fabulous new vocabulary for the GRE and writing and rewriting my essay, I remembered why I used to write in the first place.

I am quite rusty though. I'd like to be able to hone up my fiction skills again, to where they were, and beyond. This is my final semester of college though, pending grad school acceptance or not, and I'm going to dedicate myself to making it count. So I'll journal when and where I can. But no more multiple online journals. The thought of chronicling my life in several places became daunting, so I just quit altogether except to one-line journal my life through facebook. It's more satisfying than speaking to the anonymous internet. Friends and family who care to keep up see daily the minutiae of my life.

So, life. The most consequential event of the unchronicled past is that I'm dating again. Which has had its ups and downs, but overall has been quite nice. Another bit about LJ that I've avoided is being completely candid. I fear that if I speak the complete truth that someone I know will read about it and get back to me with phantom judgments. Perhaps its an irrational fear, and that's the little "lock" entry mode's purpose. I'm going to start writing my dreams again in as vivid detail as I care to elaborate. I just hope it doesn't sound like some trashy sci-fi novella.

Last bit for tonight: I am having reservations about the upcoming job for the Navy. I was adamantly against it when I was first offered the position, and then I figured that it would be a different challenge to take on something outside of my normal comfort zone. Now I'm wondering if I should have listened to my initial gut reaction. Time will tell how this little story will play out.

I lied, one more. Communication has been tricky-iffy-WTF. Some is my fault, but I see it universally around me. My apologies to those who I care about deeply and have left in the dark, though most of you won't be reading this anyway. And those with whom I have deliberately severed ties will just have to deal with it. I can't be nice to everyone anymore. I fear that I'm being an asshole. Still, in the end, it will only matter to me, and I couldn't handle taking on everything anymore. This semester will be a test of how well I learned my lessons last semester.

I've stopped with the caffeine too. I was drinking so much tea during projects last semester the chemicals were getting to me. It's decaf from now on.

Slave to the Computer

Why should we continue to invent new technology? I demand to know, when increasingly we are it's slaves. We are fooled into serving it. It's great lie, is that it will free us. More and more we create that which is supposed to grant us more time. What it allows, is for more to be done in less time.

The cruel paradox is thus: We are expected to do more in less time. We are held accountable to these great expectations by employers, teachers. We're doing it to ourselves, the technology itself does not inherently demand more from us. And the time that is left? We are expected to continue to put in as much as we had before. Which means we are producing much more in the same amount of time, but we are being sorely taxed for it. The human mind and body was not meant to multitask as much as we are being asked. The mind focuses on one task at a time. Our neural pathways don't cross wire mid-task.

What are the total societal consequences of such a pervasive mentality?

Mental break-down, stress, depression, anxiety, sickness, violence, suicide.

This adds up to a huge monetary and humanitarian toll on our society. Is it worth it?

Utility Work in Hell

Dreams... again.

A serpent queen, regal in white cloth. A hall, or palace in golds and browns with a feel of a Mediterranean climate. She see through deception, calmly and without malice she meets out justice.
--
Venomous snakes guard the entry to a cave or tunnel. I wish to pass without disturbing them, but I cannot and I am bitten. I kill one trying to pry it from my hand, and I am sad for the loss and damage that I have caused. The world is underwater... sand cool sea green and rough brown cave wall.
--
I'm in the employ of an adventuring company, trying to set up a portal in a layer of Hell but I'm all out of balloons. I feel daring enough to walk around here, the denizens occupy other parts, and I spot a friend of mine doing line work near a pit of fiery tentacles. (Hell is high tech these days.) We chat for a bit and then I see a Moloch coming this way and I have to run.

I'm in a corridor in one of the less classically looking parts of Hell now. That is to say, not all towering gothic architecture and fiery skies and pits of lava. This is cool white-grey walls and stainless steel. LCD panels line the walls in 8" squares, occasionally displaying video of the dystopian society that lives here... mind control and totalitarian government state. Herringbone like off to the sides of this hall are rooms full of people. They are here waiting, anxiously and frustrated and some angry. They all know they are waiting for something important, but none of them can really say what it is. Just crowded isolation, none of them really paying attention to anyone else.

--Hell is other people.

Like a Lion

Last night, among other things, I dreamed of lions. They seem to be making their way into my life. I see their corded muscle bodies and feel the coarse fur. There's a danger and a mystery and a power to them.
Another less clear reference in the dream, was a Victorian house in Vermont where a lion personality lived that has since disappeared from my life.

Monday I visited Newport with my sister, and I commented at all the lions at the gates. I always wanted lions at the entrance to my home, even if I don't have a massive mansion overflowing with old wealth. They were present throughout my childhood in CT, a symbol in many places, and I even drew lion-headed fountains into my imaginary world.

And this morning, to bring back the memory of this dream that I had forgotten upon my waking, I tune into NPR and Garrison Keiler's deep rich voice reading the poetry of the day, "Aperture" by Gary Short, just at the moment of the mouse lying still before the cat, and the reference to Livingston and his experience in the jaws of a lion.


In the African journals, Livingston tells
of the charging lion that knocked him down.
When he was held in the lion's mouth,
the human body's trance-like response
was to go limp in an ecstatic giving up
that saved. To assume death

to stay alive.


Do these symbols have meaning in my life? We are not yet upon Leo's time. But the solstice approaches and the Lion of Summer will be here soon. I will have to think more on Lions today.