vimeo is where it's at

I'm entranced by this video that Alisabeth found. the music is "Lost in a moment" by Shrift. Perfect title for the video as well.


lost in a moment from dennis wheatley on Vimeo.

Newspapers take one too many

Newspapers are dropping below the fold and migrating off the back page and into oblivion. The latest is the Rocky Mountain News, nearly 150 years old, which has bowed (while still furiously scribbling) to its corporate overlords and, I'm going to go ahead and say it, stopped the presses forever.

For years technologists have been saying there's no place for newspapers now that blogs exist. There's no viable business model by leaning on advertising, expecially in the current economic climate. Content is "appropriated" almost as soon as it's posted, and readers can view it in a thousand different places, with different slants that feed their prejudices.

It's been estimated by an editor at Salon that up to 80% of the content that is available, (or spun, or challenged, or riffed off of) through online sources originates in newspapers. There are at least two concerns: the reduction of budgets that allow the resource-intensive investigative reporting that may be essential to a a functioning American democracy, and the absence of journalists as signal men, able to stay alert for years on bureaucratic beats, where once in a while, someone tries to pull a fast one. Examples abound--small town boards of education that in some cases regularly try to replace science classes with creationism, and all but invisible city departments that somehow repeatedly manage to put money before public safety.

I don't think all newspapers will fall. But I expect there will be an increase of small towns that will have to "self police." The concern is if journalists are replaced by new media people that are cherry-picking their news to feed a specific agenda (in a less sophisticated and more egregious way than some corporations already do), and don't have the resources of training or legal backing to replace newspapers.

Yes, it's a snowballing worry. But it has some merit. It's possible that small, lightweight news organizations (not sure they'll be newspapers) will step up and take over. But before that happens unchecked graft will get through without anyone listening, or the wrong person listening.

brooks leather saddle. ichiban

Brooks leather bicycling saddle. Buy one for commuting, touring, casual riding. What's more, buy one with springs. Why? When it comes to bicycles, as usual Sheldon Brown said it best.

In short, it wears forever, it molds to your body, the springs save your hindquarters, and the stretched leather saves your tender parts (a real problem for men) better than any gel or cutout or special shape solution.

This is one of those "older is better" moments that you can savor everytime you ride or even look at your bike. Don't cheap out, just do it. Be old school. Be Tintin.

HuffPo leaves a greasy mark on my mind

I have a secret. I scan the Huffington Post headlines almost every day lately. The format draws me in. I'm not immune to the sensationalism of many of their articles and their easy and constantly updated mix of entertainment, politics, and world news. As with any successful media outlet (and maybe HuffPo should be called a clearinghouse), it's been interesting watch the format, tone, and choices change as it grows.

I can't comment on the blog posts that occur there, as I very rarely read them. There's just not that much I find of interest. It's a rare opinion expressed in a post that hasn't already been worked over a thousand different ways by other bloggers or reporters, at least one of which has made it through the noise filter and risen to the top to take the majority of public attention. I'm not going to read two posts by non-luminaries that both cover the general topic, of "boy, our economy really sucks, doesn't it?"

What I do use HuffPo for, is as a quick scan of the headlines for topics that interest me. Now I won't go all elitist on you and tell you what they are. But I can tell you what they're not. To take this evening's headlines: anything about "Octo-Mom" is out. "Montant governer polks fun at Palin" is no good. I could make a long list. And that's the problem. HuffPo is drowning in sensationalism, scraping any story it can find to drive agenda, and is increasingly reminding me a of a poor imitation of a combination of USA Today and People magazine.

I'm sure there are great excuses. I can hear them. "We give people what they want . . .times are tough, and we can't always focus on the in-depth stuff . . . our goal is to provide as much as we can to our broad spectrum of liberal readers, and we don't expect to please everyone" And more privately "we have bills to pay, and we mean to pay them, if that means we become a version of National Enquirer, then so be it, we'll cry into our vintage wine a little."

And then there's the small stuff. They reuse the same images for different stories. That's bad cost cutting. They have a terrible yellow glow that happens when a new headline appears. They make curious editorial choices about what news items to leave up. Now that i write that, I'm thinking it has to be driven by the number of past readers. Or an expected connection with an upcoming news story or cycle or slant. I hope that's the reason, and that it's not just an editor or five deciding on instinct and "experience" what should stay up.

Ehh, they're an easy target. I just get excited when some new slant on a media model seems to be working. But like so many that grow fast in a very hard market, what looks so promising when it's young doesn't always transition well into adulthood.

smile you're on security theater

It's such an apt phrase for what happens in our airports. Take off your belt and shoes. Kindly remove the metal plate from your head. Hold your arms out while I run this beeping rod up and down your body. Perhaps the theater is a burlesque but most assuredly it's absurd.

Now the UK has a law that allows police the discretion to decide whether a photographer should be allowed to take public photographs of police. Will such a law be abused, or will police carefully regulate their natural desire for privacy and their understandable level of paranoia? It's another example of a government making laws that are at least a decade out of step with the way the world works. Cameras are everywhere. It's a simple enough fact to understand. After all almost every cell phone has a camera.

And the law is ostensibly to stop terrorist activity. This is where the theatricality emerges. True terrorists, such as those that devasted New York, or those that so recently attacked Mumbai may be legitimately considered evil, but they're not idiots. If you are exceedingly lucky you may catch a terrorist that is also an idiot with such a law. But succcessful terrorists, those that plan and wait, will not be caught taking photographs. They will simply think for 30 seconds and then implement elementary precautions, like integrating their camera into their shoulder bag or jacket and using a remote.

Security theater doesn't demonstrably make us safer (although I expect a Homeland spokesman would say it does make us safer, but we can't tell you how or why as it needs to stay blanketed by "National Security"). It reduces our freedom of movement and action, our liberty. Our ability to do all of the little but essential things that make us feel human and unconstricted. Our abilities are torn away in a societal suicide of a thousand cuts, small enough that you forget them after a while, until we worn down and permanently bound by our fears. It's very easy to take something away, and very difficult to get it back again. And then who has won?

Moments of the day:

Tavi is teething, and slept many hours today. I leave the office to get water, to smile at Alisabeth, to grab an apple, and pass her as she lies on the futon wrapped, eyes closed, breathing gently.

I strap her in a front pack and zip her into my jacket and we walk to the cliff. The morning is bright and fresh. It's late February and flowers are blooming.

Alisabeth is out getting her hair cut, and I'm making a stir fry. Tavi watches me from her chair on the kitchen table. Watches very carefully. It's hard for me to look at the vegetables I'm cutting, at the tofu I'm sauteing.

anniversary of our first date

It's been six years since my first date with Alisabeth. In that brief stretch of years, we've fallen in love in San Francisco, married each other in Big Sur, moved to Portland Oregon for deep walks in the fern grottoed forests, moved again to Santa Cruz for the deep bonds of family, the sequoias, and wide Monterey bay. And had our beautiful 4 month old daughter Octavia.

I can't wait for what comes next!

push squat crunch

Oh by the way, I'm starting something almost not worth mentioning, but I will anyway, as it may help with motivation.

There's a site called 100 Pushups that provides you with a schedule based on your ability to enable you to work up to 100 pushups in a row. There's also one for 200 crunches. I'm starting them. And also one I made up that doesn't exist yet for squatting.

I like that it's something I can do at home in a short period of time. In other words, it's something I can do to stay strong as a new father.

I'll be continuing with a daily hour plus of fast walking with Tavi. And occasional running.

I'm intrigued by the simplicity of the Crossfit program. It's all pretty straightforward stuff. Aerobic calisthenics and compound weight movements. Here's a lady that's been doing it a while. Pretty impressive:

Worth more than a thousand words

Apperently the stock photo industry isn't getting dragged under the wheels of the recession. At least not yet (anecdotal from one photographer). There is a digital ton of cheap stock photos out there, and although ads have seriously dried up, it's a huge industry, and people still need to sell their products and services.

I thought it was all hobbyists, and that just the stock sites were maybe making money, but there are career photographers that just do stock photos, sometimes making as little as a quarter when someone choose their photo from istock.com, or one of the competitor sites. But those quarters can add up if you have a large enough body of work available at the sites, and more importantly of course, that your work sells. That you can think like an everyman photo buyer. Most photographers can't do it consistently (it's not an easy sounding task), and so they make just a trickle of cash. But at least it's a fairly consistent trickle for the last few years. I like the idea of guiding tributaries together untilt they make a consistent stream.

I wonder how long it will last though. I've heard that agency workers will sometimes use flickr as their stock pool, and pick something interesting and use it without notifying the photographer or getting a model release. It happened very publicly a year or so ago with a lady whose image ended up plastered on, I believe it was, bus stops in Australia. She noticed and I expect she was paid. It's low risk for big companies to take advantage. If they're caught they pay a little more. But mostly I imagine they don't get caught.

But no one would deny that photography is exploding and there are websites that can make an amateur photo interesting--at least to another amateur, i.e. most consumers. For instance, I have a facebook image of myself that looks like a cartoon. I just happened to run across a site one day, when I wasn't even looking for one, that turns your photos into a cartoon image. There are various options, all free and all very easy. Much easier than photoshop. If there aren't already, I expect wildly popular hd phography, where 3 or more images are taken with different settings then merged into one photo and manipulated will become largely automated through a free site soon.

Of course pro photographers say it's composition and tonal values and so much more that really matters, and that amateur work shows. I think that's true, but does the public care? They may not care enough. Before we know it 5 million new photos will be loaded up on flickr and picasa and on blog posts throughout the net, and almost all will be amateur work and perhaps many processed for free at a site like the cartoon site I used. In other words, they may look good enough for the price of free. It's an interesting market that I expect is going to change in unexpected ways over the next decade.

One side of everything

I'm at the age now where I can't just eat a chalupa or gnaw on a pencil and feel energy. I need to think about fuel. But I still want to sate my unnatural desires for all things trashy and delicious:


















Glazed donut bacon cheddar burger
(from thisiswhyyourefat.com):

after batman: a scalding shower, and zazen

I was just watching the latest batman movie, the one with Heath Ledger as the joker. He makes a genuinely frightening villain because he doesn't care if he's caught, or punished, or hurtled off a building toward his death and saved at the last second. He goes down laughing, not bitterly, but gleefully, maybe thankfully. Add intelligence and the usual idiocy of the good guys, and the joker owns Gotham.



So, about these good guys: why leave such gaping holes in their defense? Do they just have too much to think about? Batman is a bazillionaire with awesome equipment he's always developing, and yet the joker and a few thugs just waltz in to his penthouse (later referred to as "the safest place in Gotham"). Ok, that's just silly. And in a movie where so much goes right. Many of the action scenes combine gritty pyrotechnics with moral ambiguity and keening tension. One main character is made and reborn and unmade. It's an ambitious movie. So how do the editors fail with the little stuff? Was it rushed out the door? Did they run out of money? Did they just get tired?

Batman feels unfinished and over-full. Still, it leaves me a little roughed up by the emotional mess, and hyped up by the adrenelized action and slightly bowdlerized violence. And that may be all the studio wanted--to jam the gutters of viewer's minds so full, that they emerge from their caves feeling like they've at least experienced something, even if they didn't like it.

a priest, a politician, and an astronaut walk into a bar . . .

Alisabeth and I have been watching "30 Rock" on Hulu for a few months now. The first few shows were pretty consistently funny, but the last, I don't know, 5 shows or so have been hit or miss. Sometimes there's a joke that has an acceptable set up, and bearable timing and delivery, but the writing is so flat, cliched and unsipid that not only don't we laugh, but it breaks the spell. We get a little annoyed. It's as if you were watching a film performance of King Lear and in a scene cut they suddenly replace the cast with muppets. Ok, that's ridiculous, but you get the point. When the spell is broken, you haven't just thrown away a line, you've created a situation where you're behind the eight ball, where you have to rebuild the trust of your audience.

As a member of the audience I want consistent entertainment. There's just too much competition for my interest. If an entertainment source isn't producing, then I'm gone. It doesn't have to make me roll on the ground and laugh until I choke. In fact, it doesn't even have to make me laugh at all, but it has to keep me entertained.

So how do lines that fall down so hard make it into a show that is written and run by some very sharp comedic writers with a huge budget? For instance, there's a scene in the most recent episode, "Generalisimo", where a main cast member who plays an ambitious, egotistical actress meets a nurse who is helping to translate a telenovela script (that doesn't involve the actress), and offering ways to improve it to the another cast member (the head writer). The actress says to the nurse (to the best of my recollection)

"Are you an actress?" (because the nurse is beautiful)
"No," says the nurse.
"Oh, well if anyone ever tells you you should be an actress, don't listen to them."

That's it. That's the punchline of the over-long sequence. So what happened? Do writers just count on the actor making it work through timing, tone, and inflection and that when combined with the camera work, film editing, and soundtrack the joke will sell? I don't see it. Jokes can be very complex in that there are so many ways they can succeed and maybe even more ways they can fail. But in this case, I think the writers failed to give the cast anything they could use.

And now, for your entertainment:

the sound of the ocean at night

At last, the rain. Tavi woke me in the night . She cries out sudden--sharp and short, as if she were having a bad dream. The rain thrummed hard on the roof, and a block away the ocean was roaring. I try to imagine what the ocean looks like when it's that loud, but it only seems to happen after dark. Images of white-capped waves yawning open above deep trenches, crashing, forming and reforming, all under low clouds thundering down rain. And yet it's just a common little storm. Not a hurricane, not a cyclone, not even a water funnel.

In the dark I have to acclimate to the sound, to understand, as I lay half asleep, that the waves will not rise up above the cliff and push inexorably forward, wasting the brittle homes before it like so many pick up sticks. The water won't push against the wall next to the bed until the window buckles and the wall breaks in. We are safe.

And yet there are fisherman out in small boats working to catch enough to feed their families, fighting this very moment to stay alive in raging seas. And there are those desparate to make it to a new shore, like the Senagalese migrants who were carried from Cape Verde to Barbados, in three months of water turned to leather, bone, and dust.

We are safe. Or is it just a habit of mind we can't quit? Our financial markets are deeply broken, as are the economies of almost every other country. We are experiencing a national brain drain as people leave the country. We lost nearly 600,000 jobs in January alone. California is mandating furloughs for government employees that will reduce their wages by 10%. And even though we finally had a rain, we're experiencing a major drought. Education somehow continues to be cut. Home prices continue to fall, new building is drying up. A list would fill a book. And yet the idea of safety is so very firmly ingrained that it's hard to change, even a little bit.

But we must. Our idea of safety is a dangerous illusion. That sounds a bit like the writing of a paranoid crank--one of those guys with an unkempt beard and a twitching brow that lurk in public libraries.

I expect things will get better. The question is how long will it take, and how low will we go? Right now there's a massive chunk of work to be done, and it requires fundamental shifts in perception and action that just won't happen until we're forced by circumstance to shift our eyes away from our amusements and begin to act as if we were all in this together.

tangled wonder

Having a baby has given me an entirely new idea of what family means. My brother in law, pithy and to the point, said it best; "It changes everything". It has reduced my cynicism, and increased my wonder:

25 random things

1. I've cleaned, fried, and eaten a rattlesnake.
2. I read paperbacks in the shower.
3. While bicycling from NM to NY, I had a naked face-off with a racoon. It won, taking all my food.
4. My baby daughter will smile and stare at you until you giggle and pee with happiness.
5. I like to run up mountains until I fall on the ground sweating and gasping for air and water.
6. I have a darker tooth from an epic collision with a skateboarder (I was on rollerskates and bit him on the eyebrow).
7. Bad poetry makes me break out in vituperative sarcasm.
8. If there's water, I'm going to get in it.
9. Dog owners that leave steaming piles on the sidewalk are on my s**t list.
10. My wife is the Natasha to my Boris.
11. Years ago I was face to face with a damned llama, and it french-kissed me. It had beautiful fur.
12. I've gone to 14 different schools, including the once renowned "Peanut Butter & Jelly School".
13. Years ago I climbed on a Tibetan buddhist stupa, making an elderly lama so mad he hopped up and down.
14. My desert island book is the compact OED.
15. My 94-year-old grandma can make your head explode with her curses.
16. I've worked as a garlic farmer, sous chef, carpenter, liquor clerk, pizza slinger, dishwasher, apple picker, book dealer, waiter, writer, web monkey, mediator, manager, and for two days at a 7to11.
17. I took business class to Hong Kong, and would give a kidney never to travel coach again.
18. I want to get funky on the dance floor with you.
19.I 've been stomped, thrown, and tricked by horses with brains the size of grapefruits.
20. When I was very young, my family nickname was "pickle".
21. These days my heroes are scientists (Dr. Norman Borlaug anyone?).
22. I make a mean omelette and a dangerous martini.
23. At the end of a marathon poker game, I bet my pants against the house we were playing in and won with a pair of tens.
24. When I was a child I wanted to grow up and become a disco version of James Bond, replete with chrome gun and white denim jumpsuit.
25. Alas, my hairstyle has been co-opted by supercuts, and is now called "the mitch".

the church of dirt, trees and sky

My parents never urged me to eat the body of Christ, although I did once when I was eight. He appeared before me as a bleached wheat cracker and a plastic thimbleful of cheap red burgundy.

I knelt down on the hard linoleum with a line of other folks, and a man in black put the saltless cracker in my mouth. I wondered if his hands were clean. It was dry, and I started to chew demurely, in keeping with the others. We had to wait until everyone got a cracker before the wine was passed out. By that point, and I'm sure I wasn't alone, I was working to choke down my holy cracker, and so the harsh swallow of wine was a blessing.

Years later I went to a babtism service with my aunt and cousin. I was a bookish teenager that liked to draw, listen to reggae, and go on hikes in the hills surrounding Santa Fe. At one point in the service we had to rise, then kneel on a board attached to the high-backed pew in front of us. I did, and my knees began to hurt, and when we were done singing, everyone stood up just to sit back down again in the pew. So being a teenager, I skipped the standing up part and went from kneeling straight back into the pew in a lunge that ended with my back hitting the pew hard.

But I hit something else. Something about the size of a pork chop. I turned around to face an elderly nun and realized that she had braced her hand on the pew to stand, and that I had smashed it hard when I had lunged back. She was trying to smile as I whispered an apology, but she didn't look happy, and she had the square jaw and giant forehead of a professional wrestler or a football defensive end. She had such a large head, and her huge fingers, while I was crushing them, had felt like antique slim jims, dried as hard as iron. I still wonder if she wasn't the captain of her order's football team, but I recognize I'm close to sacrilege to have such a thought, and so will try and unthink it.

The service went on. We'd been there for at least two hours, and I was starting to get jittery. Sit stand kneel sing, pray, stand sit pray, kneel, lunge. Lunge? Oh no, I had hit something again. I didn't want to turn around but I had to and there she was, lifting her giant hand up slowly in rebuke. I had smashed her hand again! In the exact same way! Smashed a nun's hand twice! I couldn't believe it. I whispered a thousand apologies, I tried to look abject. But she trained her eyes on me just like an elderly nun eyes a young pagan fool who has caused her pain twice in the space of an evening. Her mouth was grim and unforgiving, and I imagined her thinking uncharitable thoughts involving a candlestick and the back of my head.

Finally the service began to wind down. The pastor brought a giant lit candle down the aisle--it looked like a novelty prop--and we all lit our small candles from it. I couldn't look at the nun anymore. I needed to get out now, so made a weak excuse, and sidled out in a fast trot. Once I was outside in the parking lot I looked up at the clear New Mexico sky full of stars and felt so good all of a sudden that I ran down the street and kept running past my old truck and into the neighborhood. I was free.

music everywhere

Who's your desert island musician? Your single album? Although it's painful to have to choose, I'd have to go the The Goldberg Variations played by Glenn Gould. The version from early in his career, when he was playing with manic energy and barely controlled passion.

There's music everywhere online. I'm a regular Metafilter reader, and came across this link of favorite songs from their interesting and culturally diverse members:
http://ask.metafilter.com/112531/So-youre-listening-to-what

Step 1. Click link above and listen to the youtube links on the metafilter thread.

Step 2. If you love it, but want to try it out before buying, use G2P.org which is a simple search site based on inputing more advanced google search parameters to find music in open web directories (not everything is available).

Step 3. Use Firefox. click on the song title you're interested in. You should see quicktime (a thin grey bar) load in a new blank page. You can listen to make sure it's complete, then when it's fully loaded click on Tools menu then Page Info. Select the Media tab. It will show you what media is on the page. Click once on the one that says "embed". Usually it will have the title of the song. The select the Save As button at the bottom, and choose where to save it.

Step 4. Dissolve into your new favorite song.

Step 5. To purchase, use Amazon mp3 download. There's no DRM. That means you can buy a song or album and play it on any and all of your computers and mp3 devices, stereos, burn it to cd, etc.

the lion, the boy, and the empty moat

The lions at the zoo, a male and two females, were kept on a small island surrounded by a deep and empty moat. Encircling the moat on the outside was a low wall that I leaned against, studying the ragged mane of the male. He lay comfortably on his haunches, a lazy and confident predator. A family with a young boy passed near me, and out of my peripheral vision I saw the boy start to run toward another exhibit. At that moment the entire body of the great cat flinched, and his eyes followed the child.

If he had leapt, he would have fallen in the moat. That's what's supposed to happen anyway. But not so long ago at the zoo in San Francisco, a tiger escaped a similar enclosure and attacked two men. But that's another story.

The day I watched the lion gird itself to leap I remember thinking there would be nothing I could do. If the lion got out I would just have to run. Now that I am forty, I have a different take. I just might try to grab that lion by the tail, or something equally preposterous, like kick it in the shins. No, the years haven't made me very brave and I hope haven't added to my already illustrious level of foolishness. But they have brought about a fierce protectiveness of children. The feeling has grown in me over many years, and now I am a father living with my tiny daughter. Children are our gift to the world. Each one an amazing wealth of possibilities and energies to be cherished and enlivened, to be buoyed and nourished.
But words pale. Once upon a time, this video would have bored me. Now I keep watching it with a silly grin on my face:

finding meaning

Sometimes I hear a song or a watch a scene in a movie and it changes everything. It never lasts though. It's like a flower that blooms once, and that by next morning is a crumpled bit of color on the nightstand.

I was driving once with my mother in Santa Fe New Mexico. The sun was beginning to go down, and it was a typical mind-blowing New Mexico evening. The clouds turned the color of burning coals, and the slanting light bathed the juniper and pinon in golden light, and I said something really profound like "Wow, that's pretty beautiful." And then something funny happened. My mother looked out the window and said "I can't really see beauty anymore. I can't feel it."

Well, that was an eye opener for me. She had lost touch with how to recognize beauty (this was many year ago, and she's found beauty again). It brought home a simple truth for me that I have to relearn all the time: you have to practice.

getting past go

For the past week I have been writing to amuse both you, dear reader, and myself. I have been writing in the light and easy tones of a typical blogger or newspaper columnist.

There may be some merit available in gently humorous description, but not a great deal. There is no grappling with what really matters. I'll leave "what really matters" open-ended for now.

And so let me begin with a short rant so commonplace as to be invisible: we have forgotten. No, let me begin again: I have forgotten what it means to deeply engage with the issues and challenges, the ideas and realities that fill the world outside my comfortable little nest.

Instead, I've become incredibly adept at entertainment. I have literally developed a thousand ways to amuse myself to death. What do I do? It doesn't matter, except to say that you don't need a television to waste time. I've spent more than a dozen voracious years consuming. And in doing so have embraced a shallow and vast dilletantism. If you'll excuse the obvious metaphor, over the years I have become not a deep and clear well of knowledge, but an endless mud puddle filled with disjointed snippets of news and culture.

I'm going to stop here for the evening, right at the very beginning. But before I go, let me ask you, are you doing all that you can to stand up for what you believe? When I ask myself that question, the answer is obvious and immediate and depressing.

-to be continued

Kirby comes calling. gets curbed.

Today a Tongan man named Vili tried very hard to sell me a chromed Kirby vacuum cleaner. Pleasure Point must attract the entire west coast horde of over eager door-to-door proselytizers, all the glued-on-smile con artists aghast that you can't live without more magazine subscriptions, and even a few standard old soft-sell artists, like today's Kirby dude.

The trouble was that I liked this guy, in part because he seemed so miscast in his role. His long hair was tied back and he smelled like he'd just put the bong away in his jacket. To top it off he was wearing checkered Vans. Later I learned this was his first month on the job. That explained why he was still possible to appreciate as a regular person. He had yet to attain a professional salesman's impenetrable affability.

20 minutes, he said, and I'll vacuum and shampoo your carpet and get the spots out. Normally I have a powerful urge to turn the garden hose on people that come to my door and wash them back into the street. But he caught me at a weak moment. And we have white carpets.
So he left, promising to be back in ten, and I went and googled "Kirby door to door". Hundreds of unhappy people who were talked into a expensive product they didn't want. Oh well, I knew I wasn't going to be buying anything.

So up rolls a beater minivan, and out pops Vili and another guy. Vili lugs the two Kirby boxes into our back room, and his "team leader" Chris tries to size me up. I ask him for his driver's license, and write down his name and number, just in case the going gets weird. Chris already has me reaching for the hose.

But he leaves, and as Alisabeth and Tavi are out for a walk in the Pogonip, it's just me and Vili. Tubes and bags, chrome bits and plastic attachments are assembled into a vacuum shape, and the dance begins. But I'm not really interested, and he isn't practiced enough to keep me on point. So we chat about his school, and, if you'll allow me a little poetic license, the blinding optimism and raging desolation that makes up the average day for a Kirby salesman.

I almost asked if he'd ever seen Glengarry Glen Ross, but thought better of it. Sometimes it's good not to know too much. Vili, and who would've expected it, didn't want to clean rugs, as much as sell me a really shiny Kirby for the low price of $2200.00. For a vacuum slash rug shampooer. Umm, not so much. So I cajoled him along, pointing out spots he'd missed, bringing him water and paper towels and letting him use my phone when his failed, and listening here and there to his comprehensively dull but good natured shpil about how each little part works.

Chris would stop by from time to time and see how the sale was going. He was the big guns, but I only had to explain twice that I never make major purchases without quite a bit of research, and wouldn't be buying a Kirby today. He pressed on, but I just nodded and stared and looked skeptical until he went away.

So the 20 minutes turned into an hour and a half as Vili lazily shampooed our rugs, then lovingly cleaned and housed his gleaming machine. When he could no longer stall for time in the fading hope that I'd come through with a massive check, he carried his huge boxes outside and stood at the end of our driveway waiting for Chris to pick him up.

Alisabeth and Tavi were back by now, and from time to time we'd glance out and there he was, trying to look happy. An hour later, after I had returned from a trip to Trader Joes, Alisabeth told me she had lent him her phone, and that he had finally unbottled at Chris on our porch "You're a f***ing idiot!" he yelled into the phone, unleashing a little of what hides in a door-to-door salesman. Soon after, the minivan pulled up sharp, and away he went.

Rest in Peace, Updike

In my middle teens I lived with my father in a house on the Rio Grande in Embudo New Mexico. There was no computer and the small tv had very poor reception. The house was between the main highway leading to Taos and the river. It was far from everything. But the land is beautiful, and I would frequently run up the steep hills and search for arrowheads, or climb down into deep cracks in the volcanic rock.

At night I was restless. My stepmother would watch tv, or talk on the phone, or sometimes read books that instilled in me a very rare desire to burn books (one about neuro-linguistic programming comes to mind). My father would always seem very busy even when just sitting there reading. I could feel his mind working. They had already said goodbye to each other in some essential, unspoken way, and I responded by backing into myself, becoming a stranger. I took refuge in his wall of books. I would wade through shelves of linguistics and poetics books looking for something that would bring me a more immediate pleasure.

Updike's books, especially his short stories, were one of my ways out. I read all of my father's books of his, and looked for his name in the weekly New Yorker. His prose was poetic, but not self-consciously so. His writing was accessible, cosmopolitan, aware. He wrote with a great fluidity, a fluency in expressing his own thoughts. He wasn't interested in expressing complex ideas, and yet in the space of a couple of sentences, he can lead you somewhere and show you something beautiful that is absolutely brand new to your experience. And it's all done without showing the wires, ever. He had the lightest touch, as if the words were just flowing on out, like a clear stream runs down a hill. At least, this is how I felt when I read his work.

At the time I became aware of his writing, in the mid 1980s, the prevailing current in the short stories I came across tended toward a heavy handed, sparse intensity. Writers like Raymond Carver, that carved stories out of the bodies of people whose lives were bad and getting worse. Updike, who seemed immortal, showed a way to write that didn't rely on showing the great heart of the writer, as much as showing a very active estate of the mind.

bounding beast and band-aid

Tavi went to bed at 10pm last night. Then was up from 1-2, from 3-4, and from 5:30 to 6:30. I was only awake for the last part and just lying there. And so Alisabeth is tuckered out today, and took a quick nap right after I emerged from a long day of barraging recruiters and applying for positions on the computer in "the cave" (my office/Tavi's room).

So I strapped Tavi in a front pack, and walked down to the water. The tide was very low, and a man was throwing tennis balls for his dog using one of those tennis ball throwing devices, a kind of modern day atlatl. I love that an act as easy and natural as throwing a ball has been made even easier, and probably made some company a ton of cash.

Anyway, the dog is a huge bounding beast--some kind of pitbull great dane hybrid--and when he leaps all his muscles emerge in stark relief until he lands, ball in mouth. Again, he returns the ball and again he runs and leaps, this time out on the tidal flats. He lands in a wide pool, and even with the sun gone and a cold wind, you can see he's ecstatic with the sweet relief from the heat of play. He drops the ball and crashes sideways into his bathtub, sending hermit crabs scrambling, and giving the sea anemones a very bad day. He proceeds to lull about, then finally rises, finds his ball, and gets back in the game.

It's too cold for a little girl, even against her father's chest. So we return for a jacket, then get back outside for a stroll down to a dead end lookout point. I walk toward the rail to find a college age guy with pink and green swirled scrub pants, a raggedy beard, and black slippers. He locks up his old 3-speed bike, and gingerly makes his way down to the short sandy beach and out on to the tide rocks, carrying what looks like an old full size portable tape recorder. Then he wanders about on the rock, looking like he needs to lower his meds. I wince thinking about all the life he is crushing under foot, but the sunset demands attention, and a young boy is galumphing about at a small pool, incensed that his mother refuses to come see what he has found. She is busy talking to a friend, then I hear her ask a passing stranger, "Do you have any band-aids?" He has a kleenex, which she accepts. I remember I have one in my wallet, and pull it out, and yell in to the wind "Excuse me, did you want a band-aid?" She looks up at my unshorn face under a watch cap, unsure of my intent. "Because I have one. Here, I'll drop it." Her wariness turns into a friendly smile. "Ohh, she says, I didn't see you had a baby up there." I drop the bandaid, which falls like an leaf, and she tries to catch it, moving her hand back and forth, saying "Yay!" then as she puts it on her boy's finger says to him "what do you say?" a small "thank you" floats up, and for a long second all is in harmony.

patterns of home and child

I search for patterns, trying to learn Octavia. I want to know what makes her feel good, what makes her feel safe, what I can do to see her astonishing, sweet smile again.

At dusk she's often upset--not tired or hungry or in need of a change, just upset. And I carry her against my chest or with her head resting on my shoulder and walk back and forth in our living room from the wall of books to the kitchen. Back and forth until at last she settles, as if she can feel the sun setting.

I search for patterns but can't really find any. She is so young and quick to change. Each day brings new expressions, new sounds. Yesterday her first real laugh! Alisabeth made silly faces and noises at Tavi while she lay on our couch, and up, like a spring, her bubbling laugh. We recorded it.

My wife Alisabeth lifts her out of her electric swing (her nest) and walks slow and smiling in to bed. I understand her smile. It's a new one that means "look at this sleeping beauty in my arms."

We've spent the evening sitting next to each other on the couch, each with a laptop. I've found a trove of eighties tunes, and Alisabeth reads blogs by photographers and artists.

She asks me to put my hand on her to keep her warm. I look at her profile, elegant, awake, beautiful, and put my hand on her neck. I am blessed.

Tavi's assumed names

Octavia.
Tavi.
Baby Ta.
Tavi Two Tone.
Tavi Terwilliger.
Little Berry.
Little Mountain Goat.
Little Tavi TuTu.
my little organic cotton kinigit.
miss O.
Cheerio.
Little Boo.

faster than a speeding billet

"In the winter dawn I will face

My fortieth year. Borne headlong

Towards the long shadows of sunset

By the headstrong, stubborn moments,

Life whirls past like drunken wildfire."

-- Tufu, (trans. Rexroth)

I am forty now. And tomorrow another winter dawn.

we will, we will, greet you

The coffee is nearly scalding, but the toast is cold and hard, and I try to time my bites so I'm not chewing when I pass anyone. Everyone but the most sea-minded surfer greets a man with a stroller walking in the half-light of dawn. We travel on, toward Capitola village. I practice beginning French lessons with the ipod "Je vous present ma fille. Elle s'appelle Octavia".
In the neighborhood there is no sidewalk, and giant gleaming trucks pass us, always too close and too fast. My arms tense, and I stare hard after them. But soon we're at the top of the hill leading down into the village, and I stop and take off my jacket and take in the morning. Far down the coast, fog pools in the wooded hills above Aptos. Seagulls whirl and bicker above the promenade beach. And people sit in their cars at the overlook parking lot, at least one always starting the day with loud classic rock.

pleasure point zombie society

After wheeling Tavi's stroller just a few yards down the street her eyelids grow heavy, and begin to flutter. By the end of the block she's asleep, and we're on the path along the worn cliffs of Pleasure Point. Today the sky is plastered with low dark clouds and a spot of orange where the sun will rise. The ocean is churned, and long, even waves curl toward the rocks. A stocky golden retreiver passes close, sniffing the verge of grass. This one growls and belongs to a small Asian woman with a puffy down jacket and a loud voice full of hard cheer. One of the regular early morning walkers. Almost all of them have dogs, except one older woman always dressed haphazardly in purple who shuffles along with the look of someone who is tired of almost everything. It took two months of me smiling before she began to force, almost imperceptibly, the edges of her mouth up.

idylling in dim light

In the Beginning: making coffee and toast before dawn, I try to move silently as my wife and baby daughter sleep in the next room. I measure out four heaping tablespoons of coffee into a cone and wait for the pot to whistle. Outside, a surfer in a wetsuit pads down the street toward the cold water, his board balanced on his head. His eyes, I imagine, begin to glow.

The window grows brighter, and I want to watch the sun crack above Moss Landing across the bay. So it's time to speed it up--spreading marmalade, tucking a midget pair of mittens into my back pocket, wrestling the fancy stroller out of the laundry room.

My wife lays tumbled across our bed, her long legs sneaking across the border onto my side. Her hair curls wild about her head and pillow, and I fight the tractor-beam pull to get back in, to forget the long walk. Forget everything. But there's Tavi, all three months of her asleep in her low crib pushed against the bed. The air whispering through her lips a kind of song to her parents.

The top of her head smells like soy sauce and honey. I bend and lift her up and out, cradling her head in my hand as a gaurd against my clumsiness. And soon she is tucked and strapped and almost disappeared and grunting a bit under blankets in her stroller, her head wrapped in a thick white fleece hat. Coffee, phone, ipod, sunglasses, and a cold piece of toast balanced on a paper towel. Tavi's awake now and watches me, serene yet expectant, through a clear plastic window in the stroller, as I navigate us out of the backyard and to the street.