11 february, 1998

11 february

i woke up at 9.08, stetched a little and went to breakfast with wilson, who lives across the hall. i wore only a button down van huesen blue and white checkered ginham shirt from honduras with an old christmas gift sweatshirt over it, because it is astonishingly temperate here for february. for pants i wore a pair of gap kahkis that i ripped climbing over a barbed wire fence to break into my apartment i was housesitting from vivianna, on valencia street in the mission.
at breakfast, i ate a blueberry pancake with peanut butter honey and yogurt while i waited for greek vicki to make me a spinch a cheese omlette. i also ate and mostly squeezed and drank two graprefruit halves that were a tad bland.
we sat with sean peterson, a nice tall young fellow from north dakota, and talked about our summer/future plans. sean is to middlebery to learn russian to someday hike in the caucuses, wilson is going to europe travelling with his brother. i'm looking for a job and living with my girlfriend in oakland.
then we returned to our dorm, talking about global warming and el nino. wilson and i worked on the spring schedule for wsrn some. instead of a computer printout, we're making an illustrated, hand drawn schedule. it's more warm, but it's sure a lot of work.
amy sent me some mail, forwarded usair esavers fares - $250 to sf. she offered to pay for a good chunk if i would come this saturday. it'd have to leave monday, and i'd miss a whole lotta stuff here, and that crosscountry trip for so short a visit would waste me, so i respectfully declined. does that mean i'm not romantic? not purely so i guess, but that's okay.
mom called; joi ito's lawyer, who works at her firm, asked how i was, heard she couldn't get onto my site, and upgraded her broken compuserve browser (circa 1995) to internet explorer and she called because she couldn't rightly find my thesis from my front page.
then i tried to work on my thesis,
i read over manifold manifest to see if there's anything to salvage
sent email to gk to see if he thought we could turn my thesis into a book
sent lynn email about my aunt mildred whom i've never met
read over rheingold's brainstorms some, where i've posted some of the ideas behind my thesis and howard finds fault in them and i respond; rinse, repeat.
then i start this web page about my day today, i think in part to inform my mom.
i put on mccoy tyner, "expansions" loud and walk to the nearby kitchen and sautee garlie and onions in olive oil, mushrooms, sesame seeds, carrots, add water, carrot greens, mix in miso paste, and fix myself a bowl of miso soup. wan ju stops by, asks for some, i make enough to feed him too.
i talk to the maintenance man here about the directtv dish i installed this weekend with charlie mayer, up on the roof. i showed him how to channel surf in the lounge and he gave the operation thumbs up. no nails were used, only strings, five milkcrates and a large rock.
i exchange a series of rapid emails with amy goading her and she me.
it's just after two and ben just woke up. he typically stays up til four or five or later nightly on mortal realms, a mud.
having trouble approaching my thesis, and fearing the other homework i probably have due. i realize that i can't expect to just write, adding parts to my thesis, i need to read, i need some input.
i start reading about the marketing of food (an old book - marketing here means distribution) and get distracted by pine, my unix mail program opened in the background, flashing with job correspondence and wired ex employee mailing list gossip. each time mail arrives, amy's voice says, "hi."
i put on bo diddley, "rare and well done" - vintage stuff, makes me feel like a hip swaggering lover-man. but i have to turn it off to read.
but when i get rolling reading and writing, i start a section on electronic babysitting, elaborate on distribution, search for books: "the stone age economy" (bernie) and "escape velocity" (howard) and "fear of falling" (amy)
and listen to bo diddley which is now sadly near over.
in the midst of my listening and writing madness, a woman from pbs calls. i shared a 1.30am cab with her in san francisco on thanksgiving, and we talked about stuff i might do for them. she's busy so we set up a time to talk later.
next cd is juke joint jump, a collection of old school boogie woogie music. i turn it off for to make a phone call; i don't make the phone call, but i hear ben playing a pvc digeridoo in his room.
wilson arrives back from his japanese art of the edo period seminar visit to a print archive in philly, he sits in his room with the door open drawing on the schedule. i fix us each a cup of ginseng peppermint tea. in the kitchen again, julie falk stops on her way through. you know," she says, "i didn't know what garlic smelled like before i met you. i asked people, what's that that justin hall smells like? garlic, they said." this was two years ago, she says, when i used to carry garlic in my toolbelt, "for your disease." my disease? this pre-rsi. was i sick that much? and smelly?
i work on the schedule some with wilson; i think he's better at off the cuff good looking pencil art than i am, but when i don't worry about it, i do alright.
i notice the book i'm looking at for my thesis right now, marketing - its role in increasing productivity, published by the un food arm, hasn't been checked out since 1981, by harry schulz. that was back when they wrote in the book card who took it out. back when i was seven.
dinner was two kinds of chick peas from the vegetarian line, one cooked with ketchup, one with tomatoes. and a chicken patty with sprouts on it. orange juice and water to drink.
i left wilson and duncan in a booth to talk to people around the dining hall, "hey, what are you doing around 10.30 tonight?" then i'd tell them about when we were kings. andre, the guy who brings out clean cups and snappy phrases ("florida got the lemons, but you got the juice") asked me, "what are you promoting?" we agreed that ali was the baddest.
then i returned and watched the mcneil-lehrer newshour. crazy comprehensive news. so focused - five or six stories for at least five minutes apiece, cojant experts allowed to speak at length on issues. nothing like network news. no sports, no weather, no murders at the mall, mostly politics and ethics and economics. respectable.
meanwhile wilson and i worked more on the schedule; some girl wanted to watch the olympics so i got to see some ski jumping. where's the honduran ski jump team? world cup soccer seems more representative of larger, more diverse nations. it's funny to watch people on tv talk about nothing while they're stalling for an event that's been postponed by the weather. updates on stuff more meaningless than usual.
i think amy's a little pissy because i turned her down on the visit. i called her to touch on that, and she said i'm making it worse by bringing it up. so, i/we got off the phone quickly. at least keep the damage low and wait for something more heartening to communicate about. it's amazing that it can seem like the relationship of my life and strangely endangered within days, hours. finding employment seems easy in comparison. that's what happens when i reflect on it too much.
so instead, i'm going to do some old english homework, to boogie woogie piano music. i pass out in a chair curled up without pretense toward productivity. i am woken up by a woman who wants me to fix the vcr so she can tape south park. i then to the library searching for books on primitive economies and food distribution and the body & technology.
there is rain here today and tonight. not so many show up to the movie as promised, as before. but charlie mayer and abigal schade show up with ordervs from some other function - good stuff - meat and cheese. and the people who watch when we were kings liked it very much. ali is a compelling hero of a man, destroyed by what he loved to do. wilson was going to armwrestle some guy before the film started but the guy claimed he had baseball practice until after 10.30pm in the rain so the match was postponed until next week when the film will be streetfighter with sonny chiba.
at the dorm, amy and i carry on our emotional landscaping in email, line by line building a script of love/less lyrics. the tone grows increasingly pitched, and familiar as we quote at each other songs we both know. something strange is happening, i mean i most always know what she's feeling and in this case i have some faith and strength but not the kind of faith that takes my hands off but makes me want to lay my hands on the situation and heal it. i consider a secret journey (the police song) but my reasons for staying here are practical and this is a minor snag, right? not for me a sign of wild diversity of personality. anyways, i respect her as an adversary in arguement and enjoy the speaking whether offended or caressing. it is sad to not be with her, but i will see her again before the ides of march.
i discuss things, amy, physics, mormon ex boyfriends with julie from lincoln. she's nice, i missed her in nebraska over christmas. she's making chocolate chip cookies for her seminar, "postmodern religious thought" study break, the kind you cut from a pre-mixed roll, and bake. she's a physics/philosophy major, religion minor. man.
wilson and ben invite me in to join them i am to drum on a stolen 5 gallon water jug as the two of them diggeridoo. i riff, abstractly, a slightly inebriated john tull watching says "to my own drummer." ben says, you listen to rhythmic music chester, can't you keep a beat? and so i pick the one rhythmic riff i've imitated most in my life likely, chip away by jane's addiction. i hold that one for some time, well enough, and lose the urge to improvise beat structure and instead enjoy playing with tempo and tone. i skip pace a little when john begins some kind of native wail.
i return to my room, listening to bjork and work on this page. it's nearly two, and i'd like six hours of sleep. this is going to require some good linking. fortunately for full paragraphs requires less design work. pictures is beyond me tonight.
fishbone takes bjork's place, truth and soul to shift the mood. the exchange with amy seems to have ended in this timezone, she's logged off. it sure is fascinating to watch her when she gets pissed - pull away and hurl some little hostilities when i turn down a dream of hers. here i am working and not feeling too bad. i think my health has something to do with it, maybe the phase of the moon, probably el nino. who knows. will i marry this woman? i don't have to decide today, i realize. looking for jobs in the bay area is fun. so is fucking her. and my thesis. and fishbone!

notes from previous days surfing the web for thesis stuff:
i've always been interested in people who resist vaccinations:
"why i fight for health freedom"

Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 09:41:01 -0800 From: wayne @ www.harlem.org To: justin Subject: funny as heck http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~adam/LEAD/details.html youll love this one.

wired's such a trip man,
they runa story on grocery checkout automation
and console the workers that they won't suffer repetative stress injury no more.

more rheingold community goods: phone switch site

i was about to go to bed, checking links i read some old stuff, thinking the last day or two, elizabeth cho invited me to read some poetry on her poetry radio show here (she found some old stuff online). i used to write poetry. i like poetry. i compose small things regularly for amy, and occasional daze here, but the kind of exempted contemplation of a moment frozen i have reduced those moments.
this before bed:
i've largely foresaken the blues for earlier bedtimes
or if i stay up late i'm working, i communicate online
no more leaning over dumpsters both of us on drugs
confusing myself for a denizen of a different world
i've realized i'm nowhere
organs of myself i put and place around here and there
between my pubes and sternums at times in your bed
i leave behind little hairs
here i have my brain,
there my arms
i am rended by remembering
i mean these poems i wrote
when i was a different man
my corazon in the barrio
it was a willingness to engage scary passionate people
and now i have found another blinded horse i love
like myself i work to break it for a longer ride
it all means i don't want to die young, right
maybe if you hang out with older people who have professions you don't risk as much
except being attacked where you stand by the revolution you used to rally for
now there's a rally in my mind
a fistful of ideas, and a few ideas more
the latter for selling the former
i got to make a living
the young fighting son of a prophet said,
the reason they don't have the blues is that white men have money to keep their women
so i'm working on being a white man?
i was born one. i feel more like one every day.
but i'm learning to keep a beat.

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