I like people, I just hate being around them.

It’s morning. I hate mornings, not because of morning, but because it means I have to get up and go downstairs and start my day amidst people. Living with other people is good for me because we can all share responsibilities, but I just wish I could magically live alone for the first half of the day, and then the housemates could file in later.

It’s not personal. I like ‘em all, or they wouldn’t be housemates.

This morning was different, because we have a houseguest, and another friend was here. Two extra people for me to work to ignore while making coffee. Strong coffee.

While I was travelling, I always ate a big breakfast. That was my routine, no matter where I was. Now that I’ve returned, I’m back in the habit of making coffee and existing off that for the first 4-5 hours of my day, then getting some lunch. I do that because it minimizes time in the kitchen. My mood was better while travelling. My body hates me right now, and wishes it could be fed.

I could walk down the street to the cafe, but I’ll end up paying $10 for a two-egg breakfast, and the staff always tries to engage you in a conversation. I don’t mind being engaged in conversation, after I have blood sugar, at least.

Grouchy old phart in the morning, that’s me. The housemates know to steer clear.

I’m undergoing Buddha therapy. Little tiny, almost imperceptible tugs on the curtain that separate what I can see from what I can’t. An implication here, and consideration there. Small things, a few small things.

They might add up to something. They might add up to yanking the rug of meaning out from under large chunks of my life up to now. Or they might just be what they are: Points of information, slightly changed attitudes, incremental movement in and of itself.

Buddha therapy. Peeling away the bullshit layer by layer, like an onion, until there’s no more onion and you’re left with a pile of discarded layers. What was the goal here, again? Oh yes, I remember: Finding another onion to start over on!

The preceding post was brought to you by the need to sell my dead Vanagon. This is the narrow definition of ‘need.’

I love my Vanagon, even in it’s currently decaying and decrepit state. Its name is Bodhisattfarhgnugen, or, ‘greater vehicle of enlightenment through the experience of driving.’ I got it at an auto auction a few years back.

Some other guys kept bidding against me. Finally, after I won, they approached me and asked if they could buy the wheelchair lift that was inside the van. They had been bidding on the lift! They got it.

The van has taken me across the nation a few times. It’s just so easy to find a national forest camping area, park the van, and sleep in the back. No motels, no temptation to watch cable TV all night, no 11am check-out time.

I remember in particular driving out to Point Reyes National Seashore, out to the lighthouse, in the middle of a clear night. Sitting in the back of the van eating a sandwich, watching the luminescent ocean lap up against the beach a hundred yards down the cliff. I woke up at 6am the next morning and took a short hike to the cliff edge, and then went back to Inverness cove for the best croissant ever, with a cup of coffee.

All in the Greater Vehicle. Which I now have to sell because it’s been dead for almost a year and sitting on the street or in the yard. Leaking oil. It needs a new engine.

I was gifted with a used Honda station wagon by my dad. It’s nice, and the price is right, but it’s just not the same.

I need $5000.

(For sufficiently vague definitions of ‘need’.)

Every slobbering frog
Every mangy dog
That crosses my path
Conspires to remind me
I love your brain
I love your brain

–Laurie Anderson

Well, geez. I mention my subscribers and someone else subscribes while I’m posting the ‘blog!

Soon I’ll be a rock star!

I want to take this moment to thank all of you subscribers for subscribing.

But I especially want to thank my newest subscriber, happynow, for choosing to subscribe just after tinyrage in the list.

I suppose if the rage is tiny, it’s easier to be happy in the now. Or something.

Link courtesy of Sylva:

[dailysummit.net] instant news and comment from the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

La Musica

Today I found three CDs I’d been looking for.

Laurie Anderson’s ‘Life On A String‘ is pretty much the culmination of everything good about her career thus far. It’s dark and hypnotic and borrows heavily from her storytelling (the best thing she does). Requires attention. Immaculately produced.

Jon Hassell’s ‘Fascinoma,’ on the other hand, is a throwback to his first few records in the late 70s. It’s still and quiet and shimmers off in the distance like a mirage. If you secretly wish he hadn’t put out any records after ‘Vernal Equinox,’ then get ‘Fascinoma.’ It’s produced by Ry Cooter, and has some great playing by a number of musicians, all within the context of Hassell’s quiet world. Once upon a time, in another life, I was a recording engineer, so I also love the fact that this album was recorded on custom-built analog equipment (one-inch two-track tape with custom equalization?). They even built a tube-based A/D converter for mastering to CD.

David Sylvian/Robert Fripp’s ‘Damage.’ This album was originally released in 1993 as a limited edition in Europe of only a few thousand. It might as well have been a bootleg. Re-issued last year in the US. The album is tracks from Sylvian’s ‘Gone To Earth’ and Sylvian/Fripp’s ‘The First Day,’ performed live in London in 1993. The two tracks not on either of those CDs, ‘Damage’ and ‘The First Day,’ are completely worth the 7-year wait. The rest is merely really good.

A really good article from Rocky Mountain Institute.

The thesis is that sustainable economies and resilient design principles go a long way toward promoting national security for both the nation in question, and it’s neighbors and allies. It’s the kind of thing that you read and say, “Well, duh!” but which somehow escapes public debate and policy implementation.

The sidebar at the end of the article is interesting, too. It compares using florescent light bulbs to incandescent ones:

In terms of electricity generated by oil, it saves the burning of a barrel of oil and all the attendant emissions. Or, if we’re talking about a nuclear power plant, one [flourescent light bulb], over the course of its life, will avoid making two-fifths of a ton TNT-equivalent of plutonium plus half a curie (which is a lot) of strontium-90 and cesium-137.

Give everyone in the US a florescent bulb, and we won’t need a barrel of foreign oil per bulb. Can you imagine the debate in Congress over this? “Mr. Speaker, I find it hard to believe that my esteemed colleague Mr. The Brave is suggesting that we can fight terrorism with light bulbs.”