Journals: 2002(4)
by Ric Carter
Journals: 2002(4)by Ric Carter |
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Journal: Autumn Notes |
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Damn, Still EmployedWednesday, 25 September, 2002, NovatoAh well, Maureen is NOT laid off, so we get to do this every two weeks 'til the end of the year, maybe beyond. Ah well, so much for grandiose dreams. So I'm back to doing my requisite chores and tasks, chores and tasks being: building shelves and probably landscaping and that stuff, as well as building a network and a studio. Thursday, 26 September, 2002, VolcanoOur little early-week junket is over, Maureen's still employed, I'm building bookcases, everything else is going on as usual. The pauses here are because I'm sneezing. But wait, there's more! Or is there? Some chores to be taken care of, some partying or something this weekend, and maybe invite Beth and Brad back over real soon. Then the little wheel spin and spin, big wheel turn 'round and 'round... |
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27 September, 2002, VolcanoAnother day coming. More shelves to build, defects to note and fax to the dealer, more time to occupy, more stuff to grok. Grok. Ah yes, I've just read the uncut original version of STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, and I started rereading it immediately. A lot of sloppy pompous writing comprising a very good story. Such a paradox. Or is it?The RV is almost unloaded from the buying binge earlier this week. So much stuff to put away. So much stuff to integrate into our lives. And a bit to return because it's not quite appropriate. So, now it's this early hour before dawn Friday morning, I'm laying back in bed, the cat on my belly, Had wasabi peas, red wine and a ham'n'cheeze holy tortilla wrap with beer for dinner, and I guess I'm feelin' pretty good! Other than being unable to breathe, and this cat sitting on my belly, contemplating. We went out for a local drive last evening, been trying to do that at least once a week. After work we hop in the car and go take care of business, go to the post office, whatever. And then go on an exploratory drive. Last week we were going up Defender Grade and Old Defender Grade Road, rode alone the north side of the Mokelumne River up to Tiger Creek Dam, Tiger Creek Afterbay. Last night we went down a road that should have been Soda Springs, Salt Springs, whatever but it wasn't. An extension of Vista Road, it eventually crossed another creek and led up to another PG&E dam. Very beautiful and quiet up there -- we'll go exploring around there some more... Also need to get authoritative local maps so we know where the hell we are. We were cruising around like that. So much new territory up here to inquire into, poke around at. The cat is starting to look grumpy as I'm breathing in'n'out, raising her up and lowering her down. Well tough. It's about time to go back to sleep now. 6 in the morning. Good night. |
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Late September: TRAPPED!30 September, 2002, stuck in LodiI left Volcano about 7:30 this morning, heading towards Emeryville to the Ikea store to get more bookcases. As I cruised along 88 down in western Amador County, in the rolling hills, by the fence by the road stood one single emu, watching traffic go by.As I crossed on, what was that, Peltier Road, actually I might have started on Liberty, anyway around 99 north of Lodi, the speedometer started flicking all around and then the OVERDRIVE OFF light started switching, flashing off'n'on, then the CHECK ENGINE light flashed on. So I crawled into Lodi and I'm at Geweke Ford waiting for repairs. Uh it's now close to noon, it might be another half-hour or more. I'll be a little late getting into Emeryville. So I'm standing across the road from Geweke under a row of olive trees here, the ground is littered with thousands of olive seeds. It's, it could be worse, it's a nice day to be hanging around the service department. I was talking with a guy from Alaska, heading towards Yucaipa to play in a band, he plays bass, they do square-dance tunes at an apple orchard there. We talked about food and his art of, he makes art out of butterfly wings in glass, travels the country dealing in that, as well as playing music. Hu hu hu... OK it's a couple hours later and now I find that the problem is more serious than anticipated, and more expensive, and will take longer. So, Maureen will be driving the RV down from Volcano and taking me back home and I won't going to Ikea this week. And um, tedium. Well at least it's a pleasant day. Well it's sunny now, what else is there to say? Boogers... Footnote: It took another day and hundreds of dollars to resolve the problem, a cheap plastic gear that wore out. Returning in the RV to retrieve the Explorer, we drove into a frightening headwind blowing sand and smoke in such quantities as to be nearly unbearable, like the worst of the Dust Bowl combined with widespread brushfires. Firetrucks were out in force. Scary... |
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early-October - rollingTuesday, 8 October 2002, Santa RosaTuesday, somewhere in October. What is it, the 6th? Somewhere around then. Santa Rosa, 2002. This is the second day of the second two-day excursion for Maureen's telecommuter's onsite presence. Two weeks ago when we were down here it was high-stress, lots of work. This time it's pretty easy, except for some desired shops being closed. So - next time...So, we scoped-out Ikea upstairs Sunday evening, we'll scope'em out downstairs tonight, pick up whatever goodies seem appropriate, as well as the next full batch of Billy cabinets. Boy that'll be a lotta fun, loading and unloading those. 6 of those are just about a half ton, maybe more. Weather has invariably been quite hot when we're down here, cool when we're back up the hill. (That's not just elevation, it's the regional pattern.) Don't know if that'll stand the next time we're here, in another two weeks... Other than the same old same old, and the beating of drums for war, things are pretty much the same. The roads here suck. Well the other thing to report is that I just can't think of new songs. I can think of things that I'd like to do with the synthesizer and mixer, ways of presenting some of my old lyrics, but new lyrics just aren't coming to me. Another one of those blocked periods, (sigh). Bother, Actually not as much blocked as exhaustion, just been too tired to let words conjure themselves up. Would being stuck in more slow traffic help? Make note to get a copy of Lynda Barry's latest book, which I believe is called 100 DEMONS. I heard an interview with her last week, and apparently in the end of the book she has a postscript giving her, talking about her method for writing and painting. She paints with Chinese brushes, ink brushes, for a very non-erased interactive sensual feel to the art. And for the writing, she talks about a method she learned long in art school that she uses as the basis for doing her comix strips. Which is I believe, is that she has a pack of cards with a word or phrase on each card, and each day she pulls a card and bases the story, the narrative on what it contains and the memories it inspires. Yah, that sounds interesting, I should take a look at the book, see if it describes that, and maybe try using that to get around these blocks or exhaustion blocks, whatever they are that keep me from writing, I know that having some entity to focus on is very useful for creating any kind of art, as I found out when I was doing my Tarot song-cycle, and even the Saints song-cycle. So it could be very useful to find collections of words to apply to cards or whatever, to use as visual stimuli for songs, stories, whatever it is I'm trying to create. Ah, the Highway 101 Experience -- once past Auto Row heading south, speed picks up tremendously. Excellent. As for groups of words to stimulate songs, one could just look at newspaper headlines, could not one? I seem to recall that a fellow named Bob Dylan used to use that method. But newspaper headlines can be so depressing, unless one only reads THE HAPPY TIMES or some such... Ha! Just get a copy of the BAY GUARDIAN, look thru the music section and compose a song whose lyrics are based on the names of the bands back there, nice rude names. Could end up with some nice opaque lyrics that way. Early afternoon, PetalumaCorrection on today's date, today is Tuesday the 8th of October 2002. I'm coming south thru Petaluma just after one o'clock, having finished all the northern business. Been listening to Dr. Dean Edell, his show where he's talking about a report on aspects of terrorism, one of which is that a major implication has to do with peoples' fears of disrobing in public. That is, that chemical and biological agents often stick to clothes, and the fastest way to decontaminate is to get your clothes off. There have been cases where people at stores and such have been exposed, they all get stripped down and hosed off, hopefully in a tent. So Dr. Edell suggested that what corporate America needs are: DRILLS. Just like duck'n'cover, evacuation, fire drills -- they need to have DISROBING DRILLS every now'n'then, to see how fast you can get naked. Ah. Boy, I'm looking forward to this one! G'bye.Meanwhile in the news, Bush has ordered a court injunction to open West Coast ports. Somehow it's strange to see how commercial news media manage to spin that as though it is a longshoreman walkout rather than a shipping company lockout. Ah anyway, this will hopefully have some effect on the amount of merchandise sitting on the Ikea shelves, but not today. Hopefully when we come back in a couple weeks, or I might even come back next week, hopefully there'll be more merchandise there and I can fully stock up for the next load of goodies to install in the living room. Still have to work out a plan for what to do with the 4th wall. Thinking about that... Meanwhile it's yet another hot afternoon, I'll hopefully spend the balance of the afternoon after finishing shopping at CostCo, finish the afternoon sitting out in the shade in Pioneer Park, Novato. Again. Same as yesterday. Transcribing tape notes. Oh booger, I should have thought to stop at the Petaluma Factory Outlets, stop at the bookstore, see if there's anything good there. Nyeh well, so it goes. The one thing I definately want to find, probably have to be a college bookstore, would be a book on producing radio journalism, especially in the field, audio journalism that would be... Well since it is so hot, maybe I'll just go down to the Friends Of The Library bookstore, look around in there, stay cool, then go over to CostCo and stay cool, into Target and stay cool, and just try to ride out the afternoon, even though there won't be any more, I won't be able to, I will not be transcribing any more tapes today. Yeah, looks too hot and miserable out there to be sitting around in unrefrigerated air. So that's how it will be. |
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mid-October - yawn...Monday, 14 October, Columbus Day?Et cetera. Now I'm in Novato. Yup, Novato, another Monday of the new regime, the third one. Hopefully, well, the last Monday was easy, the last one down here was easy but hot. The one before that was very hard, all three days were hard. It should be pretty easy today and tomorrow. A few chores, a little shopping, a bit of time for myself. Maybe write some more songs, yay-ah, while I'm relaxing in the park.
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Sonoma County Again...Tuesday 22 Oct 2002, Petaluma[Sebastopol, Tuesday morning] - Look again at SonomaLibrary.Org and then see if Amador county has a library with an online presence. [<==YES] And get a library card there, yeah! Tuesday noon, heading out of Santa Rosa, south on 101. 101 south of 12 is, much of the work is done, they still only have two lanes open, but the paving and the center divider are done. Here's a brand new center divider, and it already has grafitti tags on it. Ha ha. Boy they don't wait long... I'm listening to a TALK OF THE NATION about depression, differences between male and female depression, and a woman discussed her husband's suicide and how he was apparently mistreated or inappropriately treated by psychiatrists before that. And this gives me the idea of doing a song-cycle about SUICIDE! And maybe a song-cycle about different alcohols. And try to find a copy of Van Dyke Parks' album SONG CYCLE.
Novato. Saw a bumpersticker I wanted to take a picture of, well not a bumpersticker but a window decal I wanted to take a picture of, but the verhicle [pickup] drove off before I could.
Once again I'm ending up this Tuesday as I did last Tuesday, perusing the cheap books at the Friends Of The Library Bookstore in Ignacio, not that we need lots more books but that means I can be very selective... Walking down the sidewalk is a fellow in a flag t-shirt, an all-American bullet-headed Saxon mother's son, waving a flag around and staring off vacantly into space, duh... almost dragging his knuckles there... |
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HALLOWE'EN HULLABALOOHallowe'en 2002, Thursday 31 October, Sebastopol.We're down in the Bay Area for three things: Troy & Jodeana's masquerade wedding tonight; see a lawyer tomorrow, try to keep Maureen from being terminated without benefits; and hang around someplace relaxing and de-stress a little. There's been a lot of stress associated with Firemans Fund's latest clever little ploy, to dump Maureen. On top of the move, the acclimatization, and all the rest, things have not been easy or calm lately.So Maureen's at the dentist's right now, and I'm walking the streets of downtown Sebastopol, killing time til she's done. Then we'll kill some more time en route down to Fireman's Fund, don't want to get there too early, we'll get there just in time, around noon when everybody else is out to lunch, so Maureen can print off a bunch of vital documents - emails detailing the machinations and shenanigans. It's a very cold morning, the first real cold snap of the year. We camped in an industrial park in Rodent Park or Cotati, it got down to around freezing, the work crews came in around 6:00 or 6:30, started making a lot of noise. We won't stay THERE again. And if things go well with the lawyer, we won't be making many more of these trips down here, to spend a couple days every couple weeks at the Fund. And if it DOESN'T go well, we may end up camping in the Fund's parking lot a week at a time while Maureen labors inside the office. Luckily she can schedule alternate weeks of vacation for most of the rest of the year, so it won't be too intolerable, at least for the next few weeks. Since this is indeed the beginning of winter, camping down here would definitely be chilly. We'd thought about spending the weekend up around Ft Bragg and Mendocino, then decided that would be a lot of miles, a lot of fuel, to expend to get back to turf that we're already fairly familiar with. So instead we'll probably hang around Marin, walk the streets of the towns and go out to Point Reyes -- we'll be camping on Tomales Bay of course, unless it's REALLY cold out there. We'll think of something. We've been here so many years and really haven't done much in the way of exploration of the spectacles of Marin. So maybe out to the Marin Headlands, and Mill Valley, San Rafael Mission, we'll find places to see. |
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DAY OF THE DEADDay of the Dead 2002, 1 November, Novato.The wedding party last night in San Francisco was splendid, it went much better than I expected. I had a reproachment with Jodeana, spent a great deal of time talking with her oldest adopted sister Chris, and others of that branch of the family. We met her social mother, all the adopted family that's alive who came; and friends... Hardly talked to Troy, he was occupied.The wedding was in the Regency Center at Sutter and Van Ness in San Francisco, a HUGE gothic hall, attended by about 100 people in full masquerade mostly. Some, a couple of stupid-to-outrageous costumes but mostly full masquerade. It was a glittering splendid event with a huge meal following. The wedding service itself was a sort of Celtic-Gothic-Christian ceremony, with a processional and all -- the theme music was Bach's Tocata & Fugue in Dm, issuing from the pipe organ built into the hall. I'll have to lookup this place online -- Chris the elder sister who with Duane runs a campground and kayaking outfit in Yuba City, says that she looked it up online, there are 3 vast halls in that place that are for rent, all being quite different. Anyway things well. We didn't have time for a dance afterwards but Jodeana may get in touch in the future. Wonderful. I must write up a fuller description of the evening, more than I can just dictate here. Oh I should mention that the dinner after the wedding was, and all the lead-up to everything, was soundtracked with techno-disco-beat music, often at high levels. It was indeed a sonic experience, not necessarily appreciated by the older of us, but what the hell... In other news, I'm reading SfWeekly.Com for, vol 21 num 39, Oct 30 - Nov 5 2002, an article on a collector of ephemeral films, documentaries and documents. The article is COLLECT CALLING, it's about a fellow named Rick Prelinger -- see his site: http://www.prelinger.net -- and many of the films he's collected can be downloaded from http://www.archive.org -- looking at this reminds me that I need a compact shortwave and emergency-band scanner radio and a GPS receiver. Friday night, 1 November 2002, Tomales Bay.We saw the lawyer, exchanged $1000 for some reassurances, let's see how this plays out. I choogled around all day, voted at the last moment, cruised on out through the complexity of Sir Francis Drake Drive. Now we sit at our accustomed campout spot over Tomales Bay. Who knows what the morrow may bring?Saturday November 2nd 20026:30 a.m., a beautiful sunrise over Tomales Bay, 35 degrees outside, 42 inside, time to turn on the heater.Noonish: [foghorn sound recorded] Pt. Reyes light, foghorn, early afternoon, Saturday 2nd November, here comes the horn again... [ambient & foghorn sounds recorded] Sunday in Inverness.We had a beautiful day yesterday, wandering around Pt Reyes. Went poking thru shops in Inverness Park and Inverness, drove out past the radio farm out to the lighthouse at the point -- didn't walk down TO the lighthouse itself, not quite in shape for that, but soon... We sat at the old lifeboat station, went out to Drake's Beach -- a wonderful display at the Visitor's Center there, on mapping California in the 1500s and 1600s and 1700s, a display about the Manilla galleons, it felt like you were inside one of the galleons. Came back, wandered around Pt Reyes Station, and back out to our usual spot. Today, another beautiful day, it's just been gorgeous weather here - no fog, no storms. Today we'll head out thru the Tule Elk preserve in the north part of the Seashore, then maybe out to Limanour Beach.Hot Note: Preparatory to going travelling a great deal we need to refit the RV rather completely, check our old notes on what we wanted in a new RV and see how much can be retrofited to this, rather inexpensively. And also check for the schedule of events in Quartzite and Gallup, the various shows there -- whatever we find online, put links to those on my SkeptiPot page so we have a rather complete resource of links to events of interest, along with the NOTES FROM NATIVE CALIFORNIA events list. Back in Inverness I got a kite-in-a-pouch, a foldup kite. This is in keeping with our philosophy of foldup hat, foldup windbreaker, foldup pants, tiny camera, tiny radio, tiny everything. AND IT FLIES! Now we're out in Tomales Bay State Park, Heart's Desire Beach -- OH, what a lovely place.
[Maureen:] And don't forget the part of the new philosophy about
play more and be silly.
[Ric:] Oh yeah, that too. And buy things to USE, not just to HAVE.
[Maureen:] Yeah!
[Ric:] Yeah!
[Maureen:] Yeah!
[Ric:] Yeah!
[Maureen:] Buy things to enhance our life activities.
[Ric:] Yeah!
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Leaving Point ReyesMonday, 4 November, Tomales Bay.A quarter after 6:00 or thereabouts in the morning.Look outside, it looks like a damn plein-air painting, with clouds and the fog and the misty lights and the dark greens of the oyster beds in the bay, yeah, a damn plein-air painting by one of them damn plein-air painters, the kind with twitchy whiskers, oh yeah, smelly guys with, unkempt guys with twitchy whiskers and absinthe breath. Yeah. Don't know why I thought of that phrase but what the hell... We had a beautiful time at Pt Reyes over the weekend, all the days. Let's see, yesterday after getting that foldup pocket kite, we went down to Heart's Desire Beach, then out to the historic Pierce Ranch, and toured the ranch, saw what the dairy operation on Pt Reyes had been 150 years ago, starting 150 years ago. Then took the VERY steep Limantour Road, out to Limantour Beach and then back to the hostel. That day I tried bicycling out there, if I'd had to bike from Pt Reyes Station to the hostel I woulda DIED! Those roads are just, those are killers. Had beautiful time on Limantour Beach, drawing labyrinths and walking them, flying the kite, strolling along, watching the dogs and kids play -- a wonderful place, We found a new spot to camp on Tomales Bay, just down the road from the usual, a bit more screened from the road. It was much warmer last night than a couple nights ago. I think, Friday night was our first night out there, and it was, at 6:10 in the morning it was 35 degrees, this morning it was 51, so I guess that was a cold snap back there. Still I'm gonna hafta bring longjohns and other preparations for cold weather for the next time, IFD THERE IS a next time. We have a provisional schedule of being back here in a couple weeks, but who knows if Maureen will still have a job then? We shall see... Back in Santa Rosa again.Meanwhile today it's back to Sonoma County to try to get money from Robert, and pick up our mail in Forestville, and do some shopping. And try to find new places to camp, in case it turns out that we have to be down here in the RV during the week every other week for the rest of the year, for Maureen to work... More driving on these rotten roads, doing the usual business...Meanwhile, the day's getting warmer, the season's getting cooler and glummer, I'm thinking of the political news, the prospects for the elections tomorrow. I am not sanguine about things going well. It feels like 1968. As it is, no matter what happens, either politically or personally, I'm likely to have much less time to devote to online discussions, I'll probably have to withdraw my presence from InTheShadows pretty soon. If we'll be spending every other week around Novato, my only way to contine doing online stuff will be thru the, having the cellphone wired into the old laptop, use that... and I don't know if that will be affordable. At the very least I'll have to configure the, well I should do this anyway, configure the mailsystem to reject all the LIKELY SPAMs, just shitcan them immediately. Or RETURN TO SENDER as LIKELY SPAM. And so I perceive that the times we'd be home, I'd be frantically trying to build up the infrastructure there, and at the times we're not home, sitting around Marin during the week while Maureen's working, I'll be reading a lot and maybe playing with the computer and its toys a lot, music composition, yes, writing, yes, that kind of stuff. Image manipulation. Activities that won't consume online time. http://www.kepler.edu - Kepler College of Astrological Arts and Sciences - check it out |
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It shows the Bad Little Boy, looks kinda like Calvin [of Calvin & Hobbes] I guess. Um, and he's jumping around bare-assed, and it says: LIFE IS SHORT - PLAY NAKED -- sounds good to me! Nearby was a car with the personalized licence plate NIT PICD -- nit-picked,