written on 10.18.2002

geek in the ghost

the overweight man sat down next to his coworker, peeling off his grey overcoat with the effort of moving heavy weight. i sat a seat's width behind and to the left. an attractively stitched yarmulke sat comfortably on his head; it was the only prominent feature on him, jolly corpulence aside.

the other man seemed to be subtly uncomfortable, feigning a kind of uneasy truce between the desire to disappear and the unfortunate fact that he would still have to see his pudgy compatriot in the office on monday anyway. after the two had exchanged greetings, the smaller man seemed to resign himself to the interaction, and they commenced a session of manly jargon-tossing.

myself a former repository of useless computer terminology, i felt a certain difficulty in keeping attention on the book that i was reading to pass the time; every now and then, a peculiar lurch of the train would send the word "dsl" or "desktop" or "rights" [in context] wafting over in my direction. the strangest thing about it was that i was drawn to their conversation not by the content, but rather by the snotty, grown-up geek voice that i immediately recognized for what it was. the tang of intellectual arrogance marinating in self-admiration was unmistakable.

having spent the vast majority of this past summer not writing code or designing anything even remotely related to the Internet, i no longer derive a smug satisfaction at holding conversations encoded in the byzantine soup of computerspeak. and today, i felt no desire to pat myself on the back for being one of the few people who can actually decypher that sub-dialect of not-quite-english.

suddenly, i understood the oft-repeated sentiment that techie people are insufferably boring. my head nodded forwarded, paying an unexpected homage to gravity. heart rate slowing to a leisurely pace, my thoughts wandered, and i slept until reaching my destination. although unexpected, the nap was actually quite refreshing.

oddly enough, though, this morning was the first time in months that i had laid hands on a linux manual, and over the past couple of weeks, the words "information architecture" have suddenly come back to haunt me. but at least i can put this curse to good use; a friend wants me to work with him on a music-related web site for local punk bands and general miscreants who don't get much mainstream airplay.

knuckles crack, lamps set to burn the midnight oil... time to start writing some browser independent multi-platform W3C-compliant XHTML and CSS using some juicy Photoshop techniques and a little Macromedia Flash...

...

noooooo!

audio: dj skribble & anthony acid . feel the drugs

written on 9.30.2002

there is a practical reason for this.

i opened my eyes at around eight a.m., snoozed/thought about the day ahead for an hour, trudged into the bathroom and showered... getting out of the shower, there was one hour before the train left and i would be late for class.

ate breakfast [raisin bran, two english muffins], read email, sent my resume to a couple of companies, put my dishes in the kitchen sink and headed back to the bedroom to get dressed. half an hour left.

dressed, packed my bookbag, ready to bounce. oh no! i've got to poop. lol

five minutes before the train leaves the station. i could see the train pulling in, people shuffling inside, the doors sliding shut, and the train slowly building momentum as it lumbers toward the city. washing my hands, i gave myself a blank look as i peered into the mirror above the sink.

i just missed the first quiz of the semester. why?

reason A [the rationalization]:

i caught some kind of sinus bug over the weekend, and my nose has been running like a leaky faucet for the past couple of days. energy is running low, thus the hour-long snooze and the general slugishness in getting my arse out the door. don't worry, i'll do better next time. really.

reason B [primitive psychoanalysis]:

there is a distinct, well-worn path to the present. the sequence is simple: sleep during the day, awaken at night. even having woken up around seven a.m., my head is cloudy until the sun goes down. not stupid-cloudy, but i just don't feel as if i'm thinking at one-hundred percent. sometimes not until after midnight. i design and write code best at night; i can come back from having been out until five a.m. and not crash until eight in the morning.

to a large extent, my night-living habits began as an escape from the pressures of the day. in the past, and even now, i'm so preoccupied with just keeping all my shit together that i have no time to quiet my mind and just be. my mind escapes into the darkness and quiet of the evening to focus, relax and reclaim itself. the fact that i don't take any recreational drugs makes reaching the unconscious thought processes that much more of an effort. and shit, drugs cost too much ;)

now i'm stuck with this unfortunate habit of staying awake late, and subsequently sleeping late. when i don't stay up, i feel refreshed upon waking in the morning, but that refreshed feeling manifests a renewed sense of tension. throughout the day the tension builds and finds no outlet unless i do something that requires physical dexterity or artistic expression -- something that stimulates the visiospatial, non-analytical mind to reassert itself and ease the push-pull sensation of concentration on the things that i "have to" do during the day. meditation clears my mind [to an extent], but that alone can't give meaning to an effort that runs contrary to deeply engrained self-perception. knowing is meaningless if the mode of expression is divorced from that knowledge. kind of like telling someone to fingerpaint using their eyeballs, or asking a snake to wiggle its toes.

the problem: old habits don't die. they can be beaten into submission, but they will always be there to slip back into. one underlying cause can have as many manifestations as a crown can have thorns. i've made a dedicated effort to be a "productive citizen" this semester and go to school, and most parts of me want to stick to it. but where will my creativity and intuitive mind go if i don't make time for them?

audio: bjork . vespertine . 07 . aurora