Wonder if this will work?
When there is no sun.
Inspired by Sun Ra and John Gilmore
The sky is a sea of darkness,
A blanket sewn of shale.
Loosened from its harness,
A perforated widow’s veil.
Without the sun, there is no day.
There is no day.
There is no day.
The sky is a sea of darkness,
The earth a drying ball of clay;
Adrift without an orbit,
Searching for a vacant quay.
When there is no sun,
There is no day.
There is no day.
There is no day.
Without the sun, the moon will hang,
It’s orbit gone askew,
Its presence only felt by us,
When hiding stars from view.
There is no day
There is no day
There’s only darkness
Eternal sea of darkness
When there is no sun, there is no day.
And now I have no doubt –
My planetary carousel,
Is starting to rust out.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Wednesday, December 08, 2010
Hello, still here.
Well, I'm out of Stanford, (d'uh!) and still dealing with Cancer as best i can.
Here's a cool record I picked up this year by a group from Michigan called the Fun Company. They were a group from Michigan who played some of the tightest funk music I've ever heard!
Killer stuff to be sure. Many thanks to Carl Pellegrino for trading it to me!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7w6PS8dN5U
I'll be back to writing soon!
-a
Here's a cool record I picked up this year by a group from Michigan called the Fun Company. They were a group from Michigan who played some of the tightest funk music I've ever heard!
Killer stuff to be sure. Many thanks to Carl Pellegrino for trading it to me!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7w6PS8dN5U
I'll be back to writing soon!
-a
Monday, August 23, 2010
Getting the Ball rolling again!
This past week, the McCoy's were kind enough to invite me and a couple of Mike's dentistry buddies up to their Cabin on Mullet lake, just a few miles short of the U.P.
Despite the lackluster weather, it was definitely a memorable experience. Acts of kindness like those exhibited by the McCoys feel mean so much to me these days; I can hardly put it into words. The McCoys have recently purchased a new condo on the lake and it is just gorgeous!
While I was there I got a chance to spend a couple hours in a local junk shop that just so happened to be full of records. And whaddya know it, within the first 5 minutes of being dropped off by the wonderful Stacy McCoy, what record do you think I step over, but one of the best and rarest Modern soul records from West Michigan. Seriously, I had to pause when I bent over to examine the 45, because - for only the second or third time in my life - I thought somebody must be playing a trick on me! It was that surreal that my hands started trembling and I began to worry hat the fellow attending the counter wouldn't sell it to me! All, however turned out fine, and I was able to purchase the Cloudburst 45 for the princely sum of $.50; easily my best 45 find of the year and not a 45 I'm liable to let go of anytime soon.
Despite the lackluster weather, it was definitely a memorable experience. Acts of kindness like those exhibited by the McCoys feel mean so much to me these days; I can hardly put it into words. The McCoys have recently purchased a new condo on the lake and it is just gorgeous!
While I was there I got a chance to spend a couple hours in a local junk shop that just so happened to be full of records. And whaddya know it, within the first 5 minutes of being dropped off by the wonderful Stacy McCoy, what record do you think I step over, but one of the best and rarest Modern soul records from West Michigan. Seriously, I had to pause when I bent over to examine the 45, because - for only the second or third time in my life - I thought somebody must be playing a trick on me! It was that surreal that my hands started trembling and I began to worry hat the fellow attending the counter wouldn't sell it to me! All, however turned out fine, and I was able to purchase the Cloudburst 45 for the princely sum of $.50; easily my best 45 find of the year and not a 45 I'm liable to let go of anytime soon.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Hi
Well it's been another year since I last posted anything and I suppose I'd like to get the ball rolling again since my most recent scans have not looked too pretty. On Thursday I'm driving to Ann Arbor for a spectroscopy scan so Dr Junck can get a better look at some areas of concern he noted on the previous scan. I hate to say it, but I'm slowly starting to lose faith in my ability to beat this thing. That's a terrible thing to say, and deep inside I'm not sure i really mean it, but it's been a very frustrating past couple weeks for me.
My headaches have been getting worse recently, and I can't help feeling that they may be heralding the end. Everything's a portent of death these days! And yet my spirits are still generally high. After my last scan, Dr. Junck did the usual field of vision test and my performance was especially poor. So much so that he advised that I stop driving because my peripheral has apparently taken a dive. I told him straight away that it was out of the question, but it made me think...and it made me depressed.. Several days after that discouraging news, I scratched up the side of my Element trying to Park behind Dodd's Records on Division st; talk about slap in the face. Mortified as I was, I don't think it was the result of my compromised visual field, rather it felt like an error I made in my estimation of distancel. The voice of denial is loud and persistent it seems :)
It is not all bad happenings with me though. Earlier this week I had a very lovely and long overdue chat with Vilma, who is now in Brazil continuing her research. I had been worried for a while that she was attempting to cut off contact with me completely, as several initial efforts at contact were ignored/unreturned. We had a great chat though that totally made my day and restored a portion of my faith in the justice of the universe. lulz She's back in Brazil right now doing research for her PhD. I'm sure we'll talk more once she returns.
...And then there was Alex
So a couple weeks ago I flew to California to attend the yearly Dragons Orientation in the Sierras. (I still owe mom a couple hundred for the ticket I think...yikes!) The Orientation was, as usual, AMAZING, but the unexpected presence of the one Alex Kendall made it especially memorable. Alex is a girl I've had a crush on for years and when I found out she was going to be in the Sierras (after I had already arrived in LA, mind you) my heart skipped several successive beats before finally fluttering back into my chest on the soft winds of anticipation. She arrived just as perfect as the picture of her I keep in my head. I had heard that she had recently broken up with her longtime boyfriend, so I was hopeful that I might be able to assert myself tactfully. Of course, within moments of her arrival I learned that she is already in possession of a new, presumably improved, boyfriend. And how could I have been surprised? A commodity so precious (lol) has but a snowflake's chance in hell of staying single for long.
Alex and I spent both free days hanging out together, and it was great. If anything, she's even more impressive than I thought she was. She not only seemed to take a real interest in my birding exploits, or at least her interest in my interest seemed real, but we also discovered a kindred love of literature. We ended up exchanging lists of our top 5 favorite books with the intention of starting up a literary correspondence :)
Right now I'm reading "The Things They Carried" and enjoying it very well. In fact, I think I may postpone the completion of this post so that I may read a bit. :)
My headaches have been getting worse recently, and I can't help feeling that they may be heralding the end. Everything's a portent of death these days! And yet my spirits are still generally high. After my last scan, Dr. Junck did the usual field of vision test and my performance was especially poor. So much so that he advised that I stop driving because my peripheral has apparently taken a dive. I told him straight away that it was out of the question, but it made me think...and it made me depressed.. Several days after that discouraging news, I scratched up the side of my Element trying to Park behind Dodd's Records on Division st; talk about slap in the face. Mortified as I was, I don't think it was the result of my compromised visual field, rather it felt like an error I made in my estimation of distancel. The voice of denial is loud and persistent it seems :)
It is not all bad happenings with me though. Earlier this week I had a very lovely and long overdue chat with Vilma, who is now in Brazil continuing her research. I had been worried for a while that she was attempting to cut off contact with me completely, as several initial efforts at contact were ignored/unreturned. We had a great chat though that totally made my day and restored a portion of my faith in the justice of the universe. lulz She's back in Brazil right now doing research for her PhD. I'm sure we'll talk more once she returns.
...And then there was Alex
So a couple weeks ago I flew to California to attend the yearly Dragons Orientation in the Sierras. (I still owe mom a couple hundred for the ticket I think...yikes!) The Orientation was, as usual, AMAZING, but the unexpected presence of the one Alex Kendall made it especially memorable. Alex is a girl I've had a crush on for years and when I found out she was going to be in the Sierras (after I had already arrived in LA, mind you) my heart skipped several successive beats before finally fluttering back into my chest on the soft winds of anticipation. She arrived just as perfect as the picture of her I keep in my head. I had heard that she had recently broken up with her longtime boyfriend, so I was hopeful that I might be able to assert myself tactfully. Of course, within moments of her arrival I learned that she is already in possession of a new, presumably improved, boyfriend. And how could I have been surprised? A commodity so precious (lol) has but a snowflake's chance in hell of staying single for long.
Alex and I spent both free days hanging out together, and it was great. If anything, she's even more impressive than I thought she was. She not only seemed to take a real interest in my birding exploits, or at least her interest in my interest seemed real, but we also discovered a kindred love of literature. We ended up exchanging lists of our top 5 favorite books with the intention of starting up a literary correspondence :)
Right now I'm reading "The Things They Carried" and enjoying it very well. In fact, I think I may postpone the completion of this post so that I may read a bit. :)
Thursday, April 30, 2009
On the brain: Childhood boardgame jingles.
This is actually the reemergence of a thought pattern that developed as a Freshman in college. My close friend Josh (Brinks) and I were spurred one evening - while living in the dank basement of an otherwise gorgeous house on Oakland st - to try and recite as much of the Crossfire theme (jingle, really) from memory as we could. We remembered all of it. "All of it", it turns out, is 7 words repeated over and over again, but this didn't temper our enthusiasm one iota. There was just something hilarious about it that the two of us immediately appreciated.
Crossfire
For the next week our apartment was aflutter with echoes of childhood and behavioral manipulation. These were some of our first encounters with well-funded child-directed marketing and, though they may be coercive (perhaps to the point of verging on immoral), I am forced to admit that I still find them charming and catchy as hell.
Grape Escape
I wonder, though, looking at them now, whether kids will continue to be engaged by board games. Board games strike me as a singularly middle class amusement, so I'm not confident that they'll still be around once the middle class is gone. Jokes are allowed.
Shark Attack
Crossfire
For the next week our apartment was aflutter with echoes of childhood and behavioral manipulation. These were some of our first encounters with well-funded child-directed marketing and, though they may be coercive (perhaps to the point of verging on immoral), I am forced to admit that I still find them charming and catchy as hell.
Grape Escape
I wonder, though, looking at them now, whether kids will continue to be engaged by board games. Board games strike me as a singularly middle class amusement, so I'm not confident that they'll still be around once the middle class is gone. Jokes are allowed.
Shark Attack
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Do I Really Need the Anti-Nausea Drugs?
Yes. Yes I do.
So, last night, I found myself sitting on Darren's couch in his beautiful SF apartment contemplating whether it would be okay to take my Temodar without first taking my anti-nausea pills, which I mistakenly left over at Nathan's house. To this point, I've had virtually no side-effects from the Temodar, so I reasoned that perhaps I'd be okay just tossing them back. So I did. I then drank 2 glasses of water and went to bed.
All seemed well enough on the inside as I lay my head to rest. Alas, it wasn't.
I woke up to a dark room, looked out the window, and was surprised that I could not catch even a hint of dawn creeping up on the horizon outside. Then I looked at my phone. 2:19am. That's bizarre, I thought, I don't typically wake up more than 30 minutes ahead of my alarm. That's the moment I detected a distinct feeling of uneasiness in my stomach. It wasn't an agonizing sickness, simply a message from my gut that something was afoot...and gaining momentum.
After 15 minutes of lying awake in bed, I conceded that sleep was most likely out of my immediate grasp. When my mouth began to water, I knew that the great purge was upon me, so I lumbered onto my feet and teetered all the way to the bathroom. In moments of sickness in the past, I have typically found that my body awards me a grace period between arrival to the bathroom and bestowel upon the toilet. Such was not my luck last night. Half-a-step onto the tile, I understood that nothing short of a lunge would spare the bathmat the odious task of soaking up several hundred dollars worth of partially digested chemotherapy. I raised my head from the toilet bowl with the dumb grin of someone who has just accomplished a minor feat with considerable but fully unexpected adroitness. That lunge was the only notable victory of the night, but I thought back upon it fondly over the course of the next several hours, as I lurched back and forth to the bathroom over and over again, trying to empty my stomach of contents that were certainly disposed of during my first fit of intestinal spasming.
It's 5pm now, and I'm sleepy, but I managed to hold down a satisfying lunch and I'm looking forward to DJing tonight with my good friend Nathan, who will be delivering, on threat of death, my beautiful, wondrous anti-nausea pastilles.
So, last night, I found myself sitting on Darren's couch in his beautiful SF apartment contemplating whether it would be okay to take my Temodar without first taking my anti-nausea pills, which I mistakenly left over at Nathan's house. To this point, I've had virtually no side-effects from the Temodar, so I reasoned that perhaps I'd be okay just tossing them back. So I did. I then drank 2 glasses of water and went to bed.
All seemed well enough on the inside as I lay my head to rest. Alas, it wasn't.
I woke up to a dark room, looked out the window, and was surprised that I could not catch even a hint of dawn creeping up on the horizon outside. Then I looked at my phone. 2:19am. That's bizarre, I thought, I don't typically wake up more than 30 minutes ahead of my alarm. That's the moment I detected a distinct feeling of uneasiness in my stomach. It wasn't an agonizing sickness, simply a message from my gut that something was afoot...and gaining momentum.
After 15 minutes of lying awake in bed, I conceded that sleep was most likely out of my immediate grasp. When my mouth began to water, I knew that the great purge was upon me, so I lumbered onto my feet and teetered all the way to the bathroom. In moments of sickness in the past, I have typically found that my body awards me a grace period between arrival to the bathroom and bestowel upon the toilet. Such was not my luck last night. Half-a-step onto the tile, I understood that nothing short of a lunge would spare the bathmat the odious task of soaking up several hundred dollars worth of partially digested chemotherapy. I raised my head from the toilet bowl with the dumb grin of someone who has just accomplished a minor feat with considerable but fully unexpected adroitness. That lunge was the only notable victory of the night, but I thought back upon it fondly over the course of the next several hours, as I lurched back and forth to the bathroom over and over again, trying to empty my stomach of contents that were certainly disposed of during my first fit of intestinal spasming.
It's 5pm now, and I'm sleepy, but I managed to hold down a satisfying lunch and I'm looking forward to DJing tonight with my good friend Nathan, who will be delivering, on threat of death, my beautiful, wondrous anti-nausea pastilles.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Fighting Cancer with Food pt. 2
Last night's dinner...
Lemon grass and ginger infused brown rice
with garlic seared kale and carrots.
with garlic seared kale and carrots.
This was surprisingly easy to make and tasted phenomenal. The kale with carrots in particular is something I plan on making again in the very near future. My mom recently expressed to me her ambivalent feelings toward kale. I'm hoping I can convert her!
Brown rice is a major component of a macrobiotic diet, and one of several foods I'm trying to incorporate into my daily routine.
Brown rice is a major component of a macrobiotic diet, and one of several foods I'm trying to incorporate into my daily routine.
Fighting Cancer with Food
Figure I might as well document my attempt to beat cancer with nutrition. Let's see how long I live!
BREAKFAST!
Mom's granola with two tablespoons of chia seeds,
a handful of goji berries, four sliced strawberries, and soymilk.
a handful of goji berries, four sliced strawberries, and soymilk.
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