Toast for Brekkie

Here we Gogh again

Yes, this is filller, but I thought it was funny. I embellished a bit from the original email forward, adding a few puns. Nevermind that some are horribly anachronistic.

Van Gogh's Family Tree

The dizzy aunt who loved volleyball and the color green................Vert E. Gogh

The German cousin with a love of prunes.........................................Goethe Gogh

The brother who worked at a convenience store...............................Stop N. Gogh

The playboy grandfather from Yugoslavia..........................................Hugh Gogh

The latina cousin from Illinois who loved the color orange.............Chica Gogh

His magician uncle who moonlighted as a rapper.........................Where "Diddy" Gogh

His friendly, French/Mexican/Taiwanese cousin...............................Ami Gogh

The nephew who drove a stage coach.................................................Wellsfar Gogh

The constipated, philosophizing uncle...............................................Kant Gogh

The bronze-skinned, ballroom dancing aunt.....................................Tan Gogh

The birdwatching uncle prone to spontaneous combustion...........Flamin' Gogh

His nephew psychoanalyst.....................................................................E. Gogh

The masculine, fruit loving-cousin.......................................................Man Gogh

The flyfishing aunt who taught positive thinking................................Wader Gogh

The athletic, bipolar goth poet nephew............................................Poe Gogh

His sister, who loved funk, boots and Asian boardgames................Go Gogh

His Milne-reading niece who traveled to San Fran in a van...............Winnie Bay Gogh

His vertically challenged, sign-making cousin....................................Low Gogh

His millionaire Rastafarian uncle from Monaco...................................Monte Gogh

And there you Gogh. Please add your own to the comments. Bonus points for double, triple and quadruple (!) puns.

Tomorrow

Is the dawning of a new day.
I will see you in Chicago.
And we shall rejoice.

Reconnected, recharged

I swam in the ocean today. With the fish and the whales, the sharks and the squid, the waves and the foam. I caught three overhead waves today. The first was beautiful: smooth-faced, fast, and with a long break that I rode twenty yards down the line. The second I caught far too late; I took a ride over the top of the falls and surprised myself by landing it and riding out the bronco in the foam rodeo. The third was one of the best of my life: enormous, with a clean northward break. I literally rode it into the sunset, porpoising my way out in front, staying with it until it beached me ashore. It's exhilirating, the moment when you transition from pushing yourself through the water to being pushed by the water. Reading the break and cutting left or right, riding the edge of your board as the face of the wave cants up, up, UP until it's perpendicular to the horizon, digging your board ever sharper into its curl, picking up speed and riding it out as the foam crashes over your shoulders.

Big ups to hurricane Florence for using its heat engine to churn up some water, then blowing its wind across the ripples that slowly grew into waves, traveling all the way across the Atlantic to crash on our shores. I realized today, only after reconnecting with the sea, a few of the reasons why it holds such appeal. Beyond the joy of being immersed in water or the memories of childhood. Beyond the infinite capacity to support our endeavors, whether shipping massive cargo, sailing, or surfing. Beyond controlling the weather, tempering the climate, recycling our water in the grand cycle, or supporting the web of marine life from which we reap a bounty. Beyond even being the key ingredient of life itself, or the place from which we arose, the cradle of primordial soup that spit us forth onto the land and exists to this day, teeming with all manner of life.

What struck me tonight, after the sun went down, is its continuity. Calling it the Atlantic or Pacific, Indian or Arctic, Mediterranean or Caribbean is just our way of categorizing, compartmentalizing, and conceptualizing the great big reality we find around us. Naming brings things into terms easily understood by the finite analytical machines we carry around in our skulls. The truth is that when I step into the Atlantic, I'm dipping my toe into every ocean, and by extension, every un-dammed or non-landlocked river or sea in the world. It's only our names that separate it, just as it's only our names that separate us. The ocean sees no difference; from the Ross Ice Shelf to the glaciers of Alaska, from the turquoise waters of Tahiti to the Maldives, the ocean is one. Billions upon trillions upon sextillions of water molecules just rubbing up against each other, sliding all over each other, holding in suspension countless minerals and chemicals, giving fish oxygen to breathe, making the surfer and the tanker float equally. When I swim in the ocean, I am swimming with every other human, every other creature in the ocean. In daytime or nighttime, for pleasure or for their very lives, we swim together.

The ocean is a metaphor for life, for humans, for the universe, for God. It is the mother of all metaphors. It is simultaneously hot as an undersea volcanic vent, cold as the sub-freezing water of Antarctica. Clear as the waters of the Bahamas, turbid as the mouth of the Amazon. Clean as the open Pacific, dirty as the rivers and ports we treat like landfills. Alive as the Great Barrier Reef, dead as the Rio Grande. The ocean, at any given moment, supports rogue waves, tsunamis, hurricanes, typhoons, and waterspouts. It drinks our dirty rivers and spits them clean into the sky again. It carves our coastlines relentlessly, leaving behind the beaches of Florianopolis, the grottoes of Capri, and los arcos del Cabo. It kills, it gives life. It destroys, it restores. It is angry and calm. Furious and smooth. All at once. All the time.

I love the ocean.

My lips are on fire

Main engines off, tank separated.

We're floating in space.

It's Saturday, my favorite day, and already the Shuttle has launched and I've watched The Fearless Freaks, a documentary on one of my favorite bands, The Flaming Lips. Boy, my high school English teacher would love that last sentence. I can hear her saying now, "The commas! TOO MANY COMMAS!" Interestingly enough, my friend Denise was actually skydiving during the launch. Hopefully soon (much sooner than I get photos online, at least) we'll see some photographic evidence of it. Still on the agenda today are the chores of domesticity: the lawn, the cars, the house. But they're not so much chores as evidence of the good life.

Thank God for dirty dishes.

Thank God for being on this Earth.

To the humans of 3006

I know you'll never read this
But I'm writing to you anyway
I know you haven't heard of me
But I beg of you to listen

We're working hard back here
At least a few of us
To build bridges
Rather than burn them

I know the internet is a footnote
In your texts on the early 21st
And blogs are so antiquated
As to be quaint

I'm sorry for what we did to the climate
I hope it's been fixed by the time you were born
I know the rock of the Earth is still there
But I hope you can still breathe

I hope the lightning still amazes you
And sunsets make you cry
I hope your technology doesn't isolate you
And you live balanced lives

I hope that even though you can zip across the sea
You still find the ocean vast
I hope that even though you're traveling the solar system
The universe still leaves you in awe

What keeps me going
Is imagining that you enjoy peace
And appreciate life
And are free

I hope you love each other
And help each other
And teach your children
That we are one

I can't fathom what you've accomplished
But I hope you're better than us
I hope you still exist
I do my best every day so that you have a chance

If you haven't made contact yet
Don't worry
You will
And I hope you can help each other

I know you know more about life, the universe and everything
But I assure you it's still nothing compared to what is
So keep reaching
But be humble

Please please please
Tell me there's no more war
That women and men are equals
That everyone gets a good education

When you look back
Try not to judge us
Because we are you
Just a little less mature

Say hi to your neighbor
Kiss your wife
Hug your children
For me

And next time you get in your rocketcar
Leave me a spot
Break into a grin
And punch it.

And the splot thickens

There is no end to the utility of borrowing the "sp" from "spam" and applying it to the myriad ways in which hucksters and mucksters go about trashing the good name of the internet and blogosphere. According to Wired, with the advent of splogs and spomments and sportals, this problem is spiraling out of control.

"The blogosphere is growing fast," Finin says. "But the splogosphere is now growing faster."

In fact, they say, we should be skeptical about the rapid growth of the blogosphere. Millions of the new blogs are either stillborn or splogs. I guess this means I'm going to be screening my comments from here until Web 3.0.

Also from Wired, an interview with my favorite solo artist.

On one final note, I just completed a 14-hour drive from Nashville, leaving behind a jam-packed, crammed-to-the-limit, full-to-the-gills, 1.5 day weekend. On Sunday alone we went to church, had brunch, went to the junkyard for parts, fixed my new (used) car, rock climbed for three hours, had dinner, went horseback riding, enjoyed the jazz festival in downtown Franklin, and went home have popcorn and ice cream while watching a movie. And you wonder why I'm always exhausted after my vacations.

Viva Nash Vegas!

ROAD TRIP!

I'm breaking my only travel rule with this one: always spend at least triple the transit time at your destination. With a 12-14 hour drive each way, the 36-hour stay ain't gonna cut it. But I'll be trading cars, climbing, traveling with friends, and seeing the fam, so it's all worth it.

Have a great Friday, everyone!