Driving the bus. 4 minutes down on my third trip of the day. The 4th trip at 8:30 can be crazy on a Tuesday. All the kids go to their Tuesday classes, I guess. I say to myself, “I better pick up these 4 minutes or I’m going to get slomped.”
“Slomped.” Where did that come from? I thought about it for a few seconds and figured it must have been some kind of a synthesizing double elision between “slammed” and “stomped”. I thought about John Lennon’s advice to George Harrison about finding the right word for a lyric – “you just keep saying the line over and over and saying whatever comes to mind in the empty place.”
Something in the way she moves
Attracts me like a rutabega
I thought of Pete Maravich’s game when no one, least of all Pistol Pete, knew what physical genius was about to instantiate.
Stevie Wonder’s melisma. Charlie Parker’s phrasing.
And then I thought, “hey, I bet my elision was actually between ‘slammed’ and ‘swamped’.” I hadn’t even had immediate access to my own thought processes in retrospect.
Take a flyer.
Trust the universes to provide for the completion of the gesture.
Embark upon the worthy gesture at a moments notice.
We have some history with Chipmunks at our house. I think we’ve captured and deported four in the last four days. They’re incredibly cute – but they invade our house.
There’s a feeling that comes over me from time to time – funny enough, more often than not on Friday night. I remember nights in Los Angeles, leaning on the edge of the world, lonely as hell.
Drink a beer. Take a walk. Drive twenty miles to walk on a beach and listen to the waves, a thousand miles clear.
You live you learn.
OOOeeee the Wild Night is Calling
(this is an old draft that I could not bear to throw away)
Earlier this evening I watched some home videos of my kids when they were little – precious stuff – and I got to thinking how I’m richer than Napoleon.
The Emperor could never see his children as they were five years in the past. Not for all the money in the world.
I had an interesting exchange with the guy who was attempting to restore the files in my computer earlier this evening. I said something about how not having the computer at 100% over the weekend would be akin to some kind of silicon lobotomy.
He said that this is why lots of people never can accept computers into their lives. They fear dependence.
I said “yeah, it’s as if accepting the computer as a simbiotic appendage implies some surrendering of sovereignty as a human being – but they’re so powerful…”
(By the way, the deal with my computer is that the hard disc was damaged and bumping and clicking against the widget (read/write head?)that reads the hard disc – or something like that.
I now have a new hard disk (with a bit more memory), but most of our files are still on the old disk, which I must wait until Monday to access, as the parking lot at the computer place is being paved tomorrow and they will be closed. All my preferences are gone. I’m in Safari without bookmarks.
It could be a lot worse. I am backed up pretty good, I think – the files are just not back on the computer yet. Wish me luck…)
These last few days I’ve been having problems with the computer and have been unable to focus to post at theWheel. Today I’ve been backing up what I can.
Tomorrow it’s in to the shop for diagnostics.
Then we’ll see what comes after that.
It’s scary when your surrogate brain is on the fritz.
