I was asked to be a date at a wedding and that was yesterday. Contrary to how anyone (even myself) would guess I’d feel, it turns out I generally like weddings. I haven’t been to many, I think about 16 starting from adulthood, and they’ve all been a good chance to celebrate something great and deserving.

This wedding was hyper-Chinese in every category: attendees, music, ceremony, food, and especially location. Ah, Flushing, Queens. In the largest baquet hall available. The walls extra lit. The stage extra golden. The carpeting extra red.

The tablecloths: extra red.  The weird baby octopi: extra red.

10 course meal: fantastic. I do have a slightly gurgley gut this morning,  probably from the combination of things I probably ate way too much of.

At this wedding I didn’t dance. Didn’t feel like it. My data went up and had a blast and I hung out with some table mates and chatted.

Turns out the woman sitting next to me is a graduate of my university. Neat.

That guy went on a vacation to bermuda and loved it. Neat.

That lady likes to drink too much and is dancing with a napkin. Neat.

I watched one baby slowly extend his arm outwards towards another baby who  responded by opening his mouth and slowly moving toward the first baby, hungrily. Neat. Little. Animals. Everyone.

Diving into my dissertation this week and am really deep in it now. If only I could just do this forever.

Don’t get overwhelmed with your lives. You have way too many interesting things to discover.

Best wishes for a great week.

Grey October 12 and I love it. Coffee is black and strong and the wind is rattling the windows of my 6 floor office overlooking a giant red oak tree.

The election is a three weeks away and it’s the lamest and most disheartening evidence of the true state of the US. The dark ages are coming, where no one knows what to believe, and people react on basic and primal intuition, and the people who know how to create and manipulate that state of fear take full advantage of it for their own gain. And what an incredible gain it is. Literally all the way to the banks (which they own). The privatization of all profit (“We built this, it’s our money!”) and the socialization of all losses (“Bail us out, we’re too big to fail!”)

Neither candidate is highly appealing, though one is clearly the better choice. The other, a Fuck Face, has proven utter disdain for any thinking person, perhaps believing that there isn’t a thinking person of consequence left in the country. In the opening debate which the media has decided he “won”, he changed his entire running platform, contradicting almost everything his party supposedly stands for, and contradicting himself from just the week before. In short, he lied about every issue he was asked about. I watched with great confusion until I realized what was happening. Compared to the President’s platform, the challenger’s platform would come across as weak and unpopular, and he knew that. So, to prevent that realtime contrast from being made, he changed his platform, just for the purpose of the debate. What you now have is a nation of people who don’t even know what the Fuck Face is running on, but thinking that because he “came across better” on TV, he’ll be a better president. What he would do in office is anyone’s guess.

Of all the commentary on this (and there is lots, mostly describing the same), I think the best I’ve read yet has come from Roger Ebert (of all people):

It is clear to anyone in either party that in last week’s debate Romney cast aside all of his principles and reversed himself on everything he has said he believes. As Hendrik Hertzberg worded it in the New Yorker:


”By the end of ninety minutes, Romney had retrofitted himself as the defender of Medicare, the advocate of Wall Street regulation, the scourge of the big banks, the enemy of tax cuts for the rich, and the champion of tax relief for the middle class. All these claims are spectacularly false.”

Well, they are, aren’t they? Pause with me a moment to recall the campaign before the debate. If someone had handed you that paragraph and asked you which candidate it described, would you have said it fit Obama, or Romney? The Romney who walked into the debate hall was on record for most of the previous eight years as the opponent of all the items on the list. And his running mate Paul Ryan has been even more outspokenly opposed.

I have no desire to debate the pros and cons of those issues. I simply wish to point out that Romney changed his position on each and every one.

After reversing himself on the central issues of the campaign, Romney’s standing went up in the polls. How? Why? Were the members of the electorate paying absolutely no attention to the campaign? Were they responding only to the general opinion that Romney “won” the debate? Is winning, in the pro football truism, now the only thing?

Something that puzzled me is that there were no howls of protest from the Right. Romney now presented himself as the advocate of positions hated by the Right, and there wasn’t a squeak of protest from the conservatives who have been excoriating Obama on the same issues. Did they all reach a common consensus that if it was necessary for Romney to lie, then let him lie? The Right has been advising him for months to be true to conservative issues. That wasn’t working. Now he was being true to liberal issues.

The silence from the Right reminded me of another deafening quiet when there should have been a response recently. On the infamous tape of Romney addressing a room filled with his millionaire and billionaire backers, he essentially wrote off 47% of the American electorate. But not long after, in an interview on Fox News, Romney rolled that back, saying “I said something that’s just completely wrong.”
The rich men in that room presumably pledged a fortune to the Romney campaign chest. Were any of them offended that Romney no longer agreed with what he told them? We haven’t heard from them.

Obama continues in the Presidential campaign in possession of his own lifelong principles. Romney now seeks the luxury of running on both his principles–and Obama’s. What depresses me is that the polls suggest the electorate isn’t alert enough to realize that. What allows me hope is that, given a little time, I trust the American people will figure this one out.

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times 2012 

Anyway, busy weekend with a project partner in town. We’re set to work all day tomorrow on a website, Sunday I have to attend a wedding (probably hate) and then Monday it’s back to busyness. I really need a vacation. I know everyone says that, but if you guys have said I’m uncharacteristically wound up these days. I think I could use some time to recharge a bit. It’ll be nice when there’s no looming thing (like a dissertation) in the back of my mind, always preventing full satisfaction with my status and self.

For now, I continue to rely on training to keep me sane and balanced. Stronger, faster, stronger faster smarter. Let’s go.

… which means too busy to even describe the cause of the busyness. Things will settle after tomorrow around 3p. At that point I can share.

OK it’s a huge staff meeting I’m just starting to prepare for now, because of everything else. It should be OK, but I really need to iron the details out ASAP. I’ve canceled jam for tonight to make sure things are as smooth as possible tomorrow.

This morning I woke up early and took the metro north rail to to the home of my boss, advisor and mentor. It was cold and rainy, Oct. 9th 2012. I had to take a black cab from the station to his house because he can’t drive these days. After two years of surgeries on his stomach and brain to remove cancerous tumors, he’s now dying.

He used to have an office right next to mine and I’d see him all the time. Once he stopped showing up at work because of his treatments and the various physical states they cause, I wasn’t sure how or when to start showing up at his house. Much time passed. I became extremely delayed with my dissertation work because of that, and I started slowing down my work, overall.

Leading up to my meeting with him today, I was nervous. There are very few people in this world who have the ability to make me nervous.

From the moment I arrived, though, any nervousness I had ever had disappeared. He hugged me and we walked and chatted about football for a bit before we went out to his favorite diner for breakfast. Over eggs and bacon and toast, we talked. It was one of the most important conversations I’ve ever had.

Three hours later I was back on the commuter rail headed into Manhattan. I came into my office and haven’t been able to do a thing all day.

I am excited to be starting what I’m about to start.

Turns out my neighbor is a “birther.” That’s how my evening was.

When a person can’t tell you what evidence they would have see to change their position on an issue, or what it would take for them to reconsider the certainty with which they view an issue or political party or ideology or belief system or whatever, when they can’t tell you what their own criteria for being wrong is, then you’ll never win that argument. As long as a person can’t set up for themselves how they know if they’re right or wrong, then they’ll live in a constant delusion forever, never knowing the the truth yet believing they have it.

I won’t waste another minute describing anything having to do with the conversation last night.

Cold Oct. 8, 2012. Feels good. Busy week ahead with serious training just around the corner.

The sun is out and the sky is perfect blue, the air is very autumn. It’s Oct. 5th, 2012.

No plans for this weekend. I am here and I am there. I will read and I will walk. I will train until I’m empty, when I’m at greatest peace.

Great weekend to all, create something for yourselves and remind yourselves you exist.

I have no idea what that means.

Jam last night was excellent. We had a very full house with a new drummer and the usual suspects. The last of the Jonny Walker Black was killed along with pretention and ego.

There are times when the groove has so much gravity you are nearly crushed by it. We hit such huge riffs last night it’s a wonder the building isn’t cracked.

My jam club is finally going the way it’s supposed to. People arrive happy, not stressed. We all know each others strengths and weaknesses and don’t care to have any sort of agenda. We head in with pure spirits and within five minutes of tuning up we’re usually onto something worth exploring. They last three hours and by the time we’re done, our fingers are raw.

I woke up slightly hung over and late. I practically ran to the staff meeting and arrived fairly sweaty. Goddamn this foggy jungle weather in October. Things were going so well.

Today I’m battling the nagging feeling that I’m not reaching my potential in anything I do. I’m above my work place. I’m above my living space. I’m above myself. Looking down. Seeing “just that” instead of everything that was supposed to be.

I keep saying: “I need a change” and “the big change is coming”, etc. And none of it is big. A few side jobs, some personal projects. But none of it is the big thing. The big thing. The big thing.

Here’s my perfect fall moment:

I’m getting antsy, increasingly yearning for days in the woods. I need my second dwelling soon. Too much time is passing with me in the concrete jungle, this shitty place so distant from the nature that created us.

—————-

Two friends over last night and while trying to be musically creative, instead we just got drunk. It wasn’t totally harmful because I didn’t train during the day, but not great because I’m going booze free for a while… er, I was going booze free until last night happened.

There is an open jam tonight at which there will be 7 people with a new drummer who’s just moved back to NYC after nearly a year away. That should be fun.

If I lived in the woods, we could play as loud as the tubes can fire.

Someday.

Busy, fast and complete. Home and alone and OK. Time was congested and pure. I left early, as usual.

I don’t like big parties. I get overwhelmed with information and I’m not built to ignore things, so “tuning out” in a new situation is almost impossible. If I close my eyes, my ears merely grow. If I just ignore everything, it would seem pointless to be there.

I told my “date” I was going to leave and she sort of rolled her eyes and said “fine.” You know, in that way. I know she’s going to call or text later to try to meet up.  But I’m not sure I’ll respond.

I’m a bit preoccupied right now. Last weekend I learned that my official MBTI is INFP. There have been no suprises within just about every description I’ve read so far, save for a few blips here and there.

INFP

For those of you who know me well, go ahead and read the profile and let me know if there is congruence. In addition to the short wikipedia entry (linked above), I’ve found there are tons of other, similar and more detailed descriptions.

The official MBTI description is here. If you search around you’ll find plenty of others of varying depths of interpretation. INFP descriptions differ by gender, too.

INFP on the Keirsey role variant metric , and here.

Though it’s somewhat uncomfortable to know how much of my “self” is categorizable, I really can’t say I disagree with most of what I’ve seen so far. It’s a scale, of course, and everyone is a little bit of everything, but overall my location on the metric seems mostly right.

One thing that is not represented, though, is my penchant for physicality and sometimes risk– either in fighting and battle or other things. I yearn for intensity in almost all areas, but the INFP types described here seem more removed from that side of life. I do have a pretty intense inner-directed life, but my physical self is an extremely important part of me.

So. There’s that. Not sure.

I added a new menu item, check it out.

While building it, I thought of mom. Yes you’re family, just a different kind.

It’s true.