Journal Entries
Foggy San Diego Evening (1995)
Posted Feb 6, 2000
I love the fog, especially when it is cotton thick and sticks to my skin like sweat. i love the fog because it reminds me of Santa Cruz redwoods and midnight shuttles slicing through the whiteness with twin yellow lances.
I love the fog as i sit on the balcony and imagine shadows forming and dissolving, dark and light blended such that one can not tell which is the paint and which the background.
I love the fog because i can walk into it, be surrounded, and I can forget the rest of the petty world. in the fog i imagine being the last person and everything else has been destroyed by the bombs. In the fog i am bogart and you are bergman clinging one more time before you fly from Casablanca.
I love the thick white coastal fog. Not J. Alfred Prufrock's erotic yellow fog curling about London chimneys. Not the brown haze of LA. I love the fog when you speed up Highway 1 to San Francisco, barely seeing beyond an armslength to either side. Your only visual guide are the yellow globes projected ahead and the yellow and white flashes from the reflectors in the center of the road.
Fog is beautiful. Fog is my friend.
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Latest reply: Feb 6, 2000
Driving Music (1995)
Posted Feb 6, 2000
[a monologue in one part]
Yesterday, I decided to take a break from the universe. I drove east up I-8 from San Diego at a comfortable pace, cruising through Mission Valley, La Mesa, El Cajon. I've put on Sting's "Ten Summoner's Tales" to give me just the right mix of beat and mild pretensiousness. As I pass Alpine and exit onto Route 76 into the Rancho Cuyamaca State Park, I change tapes again and put in the "Laputa: Castle in the Sky" soundtrack by Jo Hishashi. The opening of the tape is perfect in reflecting the lush of the hills and vales I am slowly cruising through. As I enter the mountains proper and the trees and cliffs close in around me, the tape moves into the more sinister and melancholy tracks.
In the Cuyamaca Park, there is an abandoned mine site near the lake. I get out here and take in the scenary. I stomp around Lake Cuyamaca amidst the trees and ducks and duff. I find a quiet tree from which I can sit and watch the lake and the clouds undisturbed by other hikers.
Now the only music is the whisper of the wind like a lover's sigh in my ear and the beat is the lap of the lake. I read and I write and take lots of pictures.
As the sun began to fade behind the clouds, I get back into my car. The Laputa soundtrack climaxes and ends just as I pass through Julian and into Santa Ysabel, home of Dudley's Bakery (YUM!) The tape flips over to the "My Neighbor Totoro" soundtrack. It's also by Jo Hishashi. I pick up a few loaves of bread at Dudley's and have a hot dog and bottled iced tea. Having left the mountains, I speed along Highway 78 headed back west through rolling hills and horse and cattle farms toward Ramona and Santee. My ears are filled with happy music evoking the Japanese countryside and children's play.
Just as I begin the rapid descent into civilization and the Sun is beginning to set in the hills and clouds of the west, I put in the last tape, Enigma. And to the dance-beatified chant of monks I end my day in the mountains and crisp breezes and puffy clouds and fresh bread.
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Latest reply: Feb 6, 2000
Whence a madbard?
Posted Jan 31, 2000
I've been using the alias The Mad Bard and its varients since 1983. That's when I bought my first modem for my Commodore 64. The name resonnates for me in a many different ways.
*My first "successful" Dungeons and Dragons character was a bard named "Nick Rocs".
* I've always fancied myself a Jack of All Trades: Poet-Scientist, Student-Teacher, etc.
* Bard is the name of the archer in The Hobbit who fires the arrow that brings down Smaug the Dragon. Not bad company to keep...
I've only come across one other madbard on the Net who isn't me. So really I just keep running into myself (just like a Ray Bradbury story...)
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Latest reply: Jan 31, 2000
madbard
Researcher U64325
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