Well, today started lousily. Waking up from dreams I really would rather forget into a world of rain and mist. The storms of last night tried to wash humanity, creation, clean from the world, but to no avail, at least...I'm still here...I haven't gone out to check the rest of the world and can only verify the existence of the environs I traveled through today, and other rains, storms, might have driven those things into the primordial mire from which all of this evolved in the first place. The Farmer's Market exists, the Griffon exists, quite eternally, the mall exists, sadly--despite the thrill of strolling the short expanse of shops packed with humanity on most Friday afternoons. The family demesne still exists, or...if it doesn't, then I am deeply screwed, for it is where I am writing, and where I intend to sleep tonight. I awoke mildly confused, with my phone ringing, VNV Nation's "Defiant" blasting from this wireless telegraph's speakers. Alex was calling in a state of panic on the way to get her picture taken at Saint Mary's. She runs a blog here too, The Alexiad, in case you are inclined to read something of a much more academic nature than this...which can be academic, but such things are often reserved for my other blog, at sacredgreenfedora.blogspot.com, just to give myself some press somewhere in the world of the internet. I also keep a livejournal, to show my age, and a tumblr, to pretend to keep up with the rest of the speed of light and cybernetic chromed world of ours. The panic in question turned out to be misplaced, and her photo session went quite well by all accounts. Materializing at the door in a lovely suit purchased for her thesis presentation last week, or perhaps for the portrait, which was originally assumed to be last week, Alex took my breath away. She always does, you understand, by virtue of being herself and being my cosmos. After strolling around with the dog, we headed off for a quick breakfast at the Farmer's Market and then onward to various errands throughout this pathetic excuse for a city. Hiding from the second deluge of the day in bed, napping until a break in the slumber by heading out to the Flat Top Grill in the mall. Having been recommended by several trusted comrades along with other folk who just seem to have good taste in establishments of fine dining, the Flat Top Grill was a blank on our culinary map of the city, otherwise an almost completely charted territory. So, like George Scott in Burma, we ventured out into the unknown with only our wits and wallets to guide us. Entering the Flat Top, we were met with a din that wasn't so much lively as much as it was deliberately noisy for the sake of noise. I cannot abide such chaos. The chaos of well-oiled culinary machine, however, is something else. The clink of forks and glasses and dishes being washed and dozens of conversations flowing at once. That is a symphony of progress, of civilization, of...I don't know...I just like restaurants that are noisy for a reason. The clangor in question, though, seemed to be generated largely by the speakers pouring out various hits from the Eighties, Nineties, and Today adulterated by awkwardly stilted conversations about all sorts of business ventures. Stir-fry buffet style, like O'Sullivan's Crossing used to be downtown, but not as good nor as cheap, the Flat Top Grill presented what could have been an interesting culinary experience and simply watered it down while somehow managing to give me food poisoning of a rather unpleasant sort. I've spent most of the rest of the day in a recumbent state, trying and failing to recover some state of what would probably be called 'Health' by those who name such things and insist on cataloging every aspect of the world into the grand system of said cosmos. Scientists, perhaps we can call them, or maybe Naturalists, or perhaps, if we are very familiar with them, we can call them Charles and Alexander (Darwin and von Humboldt, respectively). I could spend an age studying Alexander von Humboldt, but I shall have to delve into my passions for those protoscientists and men of great learning at a later date, as other things call me away from my keyboard and out into whatever it is that masquerades as reality. Peace to all.

rambles, continued.

Aum Shanti Shanti Shanti.
So we begin our chant. Our prayer. Our boon. Whatever it is, we begin with peace and end with peace.
We must at least attempt peace and mindfulness every day, especially on the days when all we want to do is take up the sword and torch and visit fire and blood upon our enemies, especially on those days, and oh, oh they are many. This blog started as a sandbox for me, an experimental place where things will come into being and then be shaped by me, where I will learn to share my work and be quite willing to let people stomp all over it, because it is just sand in the end. In the beginning, it was rock. But now, some thousands of centuries later, it ends up as sand. That there are industries devoted to making sand, harvesting it from otherwise inert and strong rock, speeding up the geologic timescale--which can take epochs to fully realize itself in the battering down of coastlines into something soft and warm on which half naked Brazilians can lounge with ease--into the course of an afternoon's work. I've been to gravel pits, limestone quarries. I find them equally terrifying in their grand design--harvest the very rocks of which our civilizations have been built...but on a scale that outdistances anything that has come before. Such is the march of progress, the March of Time, as the newsreels would say in the smoke-filled darkness of a wartime theater while Spitfires protected the skies. I realize that the March of Time was, if memory serves, exclusively an American thing, but...well, maybe they sent it over for servicemen to watch before they launched the great Crusade on Europe. My grandfather was a part of Eisenhower's Crusade, landing at Normandy on the first day, getting knocked off the boat by shrapnel which he carried in him until his death in 2004, and surviving to see St. Lo and the Bulge along with the last push into Germany. His bayonet and hat, all that remain of his wartime kit (everything else having been given away by an aunt to whom I still don't speak to for that and other reasons) sit on my nightstand, reminding me of my origins. But enough about that. I want to dwell on...different things, happier perhaps, perhaps more depressing (thanks largely to the major depressive disorder that I try to silence with the proper pharmacist-combined chemicals, and also to my natural Irishness, which tends towards the depressive) things if that is where my mood and thoughts lead me. I haven't written on here in a very long time, but that doesn't mean I've just been off avoiding writing. Far from it, in fact. I've been firing up the typewriter from time to time and remembering the dark old days when I would spend hours punching out an essay on that machine just for the fun of it. None of the essays survive, or if they survive, they have been secreted away, perhaps like the texts found by Poggio...which were never really hidden at all, just kind of sitting on the shelf to the left of everything currently being read. Poggio...makes it seem like a treasure hunt, and to the thinking man, that is exactly what it must have been. Without him, well, I shudder to think where we would be. I probably wouldn't be writing this, that's for sure.
Interlude:
My mother, addressing my father in the next room: "Hey, do you think if we start going at it really loud, John will close the door and make the light in his room stop keeping us awake?" Yep, this is my family, this is why I want to get a place anywhere in the world with Alex and return here once or twice a year to play with the dog and dig through the trove of books I'm reasonably sure I'll leave hidden away somewhere.
Now I'm watching From Dusk 'till Dawn--I actually fast forwarded to the scenes in the bar...largely because the first part of the movie is rather droll once you've seen it two or three times.
And now, before I cut this ramble short, a picture of my  bookshelf...guess which one it is?

http://www.lookshelves.com/lookshelves/?currentPage=3

I wonder about you and curse you from time to time, you vagrant Hun. I expect to see you on every corner, lounging calmly, Zen-posture, cat-like, on every stairway. You didn't seem to understand Zen, or maybe you understood it perfectly. Cats, you liked them when drunk, and otherwise preferred dogs. Severing all attachments is one route to Nirvana, to the Pure Land, to union with all beings, but...it is damned rude to do to those you suddenly stop talking to, leaving them wondering what they did wrong, if they said the wrong thing, maybe they called you crazy--I remember how much you hated being called crazy, when, by all accounts, that is exactly what you are, bughouse nuts, my friend, bughouse nuts.