I considered writing something that would make you worried yesterday. But I didn't. You are far too valuable for me to take lightly ever again. If I haven't made this clear up until now, I'm sorry. I really am.

I want you to know that you mean more to me than I tend to let on. It's just me being me when I hold back from saying just how important you are to my life. I'm sorry if I ever behave in ways that make you doubt that. I don't know what is wrong with me.

I do want to be a better person for you. You deserve that person. You make me aspire to better things. I should remember to be grateful more often for that. It is in these quiet times of contemplation that I realize just how valuable you are to me. I hope I'm not sounding too effusive. I need to remind myself of this as well.

I hope you have a nice time with the newlyweds. They must be quite a cute couple. What will the future hold for us? Only the best I hope. Only the best.

Note: the angst expressed in this daylog is of the mock variety. While I certainly would rather have been at the gathering than not, and would rather have more money than less, it is not necessary for you to /msg me with either expressions of concern or stern admonitions to "stop feeling sorry for" myself. I appreciate that you care, but I am actually in a rather good mood. Love, Quizro.

I just got off the phone with the gang at the Oakland noder meet. I would like to believe that this somehow makes mine the first aftermath writeup for that event, but in my heart I know that that would be a shameful lie.

Now, all you Wired-reading, McLuhan-spouting college twerps can say whatever you want about the Vast Interconnected Global Electronic Village. The reality is that they are in Northern California getting smashed on Ouroboros' magic brew and eating barbecue and laughing uproariously, while I am sitting in my bedroom in San Diego with my cats, wearing bedroom slippers from Ikea, wondering if a second can of RC will keep me up too late, and looking forward to watching a tape of Battlestar Galactica I checked out from the library. DAMN ALL OF YOU TO HELL!

But of course I speak in jest, and do not truly wish that you go to Hell. It was great to speak with misuba, Templeton, and Igloowhite, and had we not been eating up all the long distance minutes on misuba's cell phone I would gladly have said heighdy to all and sundry there. And I'm dying to know what will happen next! Will panamaus ever show up? Has The Punch Thyself played yet, and how did/will it go? Will Factgirl finish eating that orange, and what will she do with the peel -- discard it in the trash, or run it down the garbage disposal so as to give Michael's sink a fresh, orange-y scent? I think she will do the latter! Factgirl is so considerate.

Hmm. I seem to have run out of steam here. Truth be told, I think that phone call was the high point of my day. What am I going to do now? Honestly, at this point in my life is Battlestar Galactica going to hold my attention for more than fifteen minutes? Two of its major characters are named "Boxey" and "Muffet the dagget" for God's sake. Agh! What the hell is wrong with me? I'm thirty-four years old and have no life! I bust my hump all week long, and what do I have to show for it? I might as well be throwing money down a well for all I get to see of each paycheck anymore. Sure! First the government takes its cut. Then the credit card companies take THEIR cut. Then the landlord takes HIS cut. Well this Joe Sixpack's had enough! I'm on a giant hamster wheel that keeps going aROUND and aROUND and aROUND. SPINNING and SPINNING and SPINNING, and I'm gettin' off! A new life is starting for me right HERE AND NOW.

Oh, wait. That would mean we'd lose the apartment and the car, and maybe go to jail. I don't think my wife would be too crazy about that! Plus, how would we feed the cats? Yeah, WHOA there Mister Let's-Have-A-Revolution, Mister Punk Rock Anarchy Man! This Palooka's heard about enough of your rabble-rousing talk for one day. Why don't you take your soapbox somewhere else? Me, I'm gonna watch Richard Hatch kick some Cylon butt! Kapow! Wheet! Zing!

Today was such a turn around from yesterday.
Example: I'm happy today.

Mark came over and we hung around and talked about computers and music and shared a good amount of inside jokes. Yesterday we were both depressed because of the way my mom was acting. He left me a CD of some good songs that he burned and then we took him home. That was all I did today other than some meager chores, but I feel like it's such a great accomplishment. To be happy, for me, is almost non-existent. So I congratulate myself on that.

I wonder if I'll ever do this again?

I took a nice long walk this afternoon, as I'm wont to do when I have the free time. This week's the first in months that the weather has been nice enough for me to do that, and I hadn't forgotten how much I missed it.

Taking a walk through the residential areas, with only the noise of the wind and the birds and the occasional distant car and conversation to break it. White noise, the best kind. Very constructive when you're trying to clear the other kind of noise out of your head.

I don't tell any of my family this, because it wouldn't help and anyways, the ones who care can probably figure it out from my attitude, but I'm going a little nuts here. Not literally, duh, but just... stressing out. I'm never comfortable in places where there's a lot of talking and moving and doing things that I'm not into. Suddenly I'm living in a house where four other people are constantly doing just that.

It might not be so bad if I had a room to retreat to, all by myself. I used to do just that, and it worked just fine most of the time. Now I'm married and there are three teenagers and a wife sharing my house, so I no longer have an office or even a bedroom all to myself.

I'm not used to this. It occurred to me, in the brief philosophical minute I always have on my long walks, that getting married is like getting exiled. You permanently change your entire life in such a way that you can no longer be who you once were, ever again. For brief afternoons I try to be -- by listening to my old CDs, reading my favorite kinds of books, taking long walks by myself. But I keep having to come back to this house; it doesn't last.

And I know, suddenly, today, that I'll never be a real part of this family until I'm content to let that old life die. But nobody likes to change that much, do they? It's who you are, for your entire life it defines you and makes you the person you're comfortable with. Moreso than most people, I think, I decided who I would be, because I was never that comfortable in the company of others and consequently they had a lot less to do with shaping the person I now am than (I imagine) is the case for most.

So I'm now awake to the realization that I have to let my old self die, everything I ever knew I was and liked and did, so that I can become the person I need to be, that my family needs me to be.

I don't know if I can do that. I honestly don't know how I'll do it. I know myself well enough to know that I will do it, eventually, because I'm persistent enough to make it happen. But I'm also a procrastinator, especially (big surprise) when it comes to things I don't really want to do.

So this will take longer, and hurt more, than it probably needs to. But at the same time, I'm sure that's the way it needs to be.


Almost nobody starts a journal in the middle of a story, because that runs against the grain of how a story ought to be. It needs to have a beginning, every story does. I've always resisted keeping any journal for myself because of precisely this reason.

It occurred to me as I wrote the last paragraphs above that this may be just the reason I'm writing this as a daylog, now, under a new and distinct nick so that I can stay a little hidden from myself. I realized today (well, yesterday; it's just after midnight on Saturday/Sunday as I type this) that my old "me" needs to die so the new "me" can... what? Be born? Begin? Live? Take over? It doesn't matter, the idea of my personality, my mind, my self dying and being replaced is appalling no matter what kind of words I wrap it in.

The point is that because I realized this today, my old "me" began to die today. The new "me" began to live. And that's as close to a beginning as I'm probably going to get.

Shit, I'm scared.

No one ever said marriage was easy. But nowhere in the entire library of humanity was I given the indication it would be like this.

I'm going to... no. I started dying today. Someone I don't even know yet is going to replace me.

Very well, then. Let the funeral arrangements begin.

back -- forth

The Flight

So, I'm not the best flier around. It's by no means a phobia, or anything that severe, but I have to remind myself to breathe normally, that everything I'm feeling is normal. That sudden dip - planes do that sometimes. The wings are still there, we're still flying normally. I had a bit of a breakthrough landing at Melbourne last Friday though, one of those moments that's so absurdly ironic, that you can't do anything but laugh, even when you're gripping the hand rest, and your heart's beating more quickly than normal. After an event free flight, the plane's descending for landing. I've watched the flaps extending, felt the landing gear thump into position. All those strange noises that disconcert, while comforting you that everything's going to plan. I formulated a bit of a theory about fear of flying half way between Canberra and Melbourne. I think that when you're at 33,000 feet, and feeling things that you're not used to, you tend to act as though you're in a car. So when feeling a strange vibration, or thump, you think as though you're feeling that while driving, and most of these things would be a very bad thing to feel in a car. They're probably perfectly normal in an aircraft, but it's easier to link the unfamiliar to something you are familiar with, and tension ensues. But I digress... We're fairly low, it's not too far to the runway. The plane's obviously slowed down a great deal, the flaps fully extended, wings gaining as much lift as possible.

Then we start rocking.

A window seat overlooking the wing allows me to see everything that's going on. The ground on the right hand side of the aircraft coming into view, then disappearing, visible, gone. All the while, the ailerons lift, retract, lift, retract, as the pilot tries to get us back on a flat glide path. People in the cabin are starting to look at each other, this isn't exactly normal. I'm definitely getting edgy - my grip on the armrest's testament to that. A little earlier, I'd switched the audio channel from the news that had finished, to the music channel. At that moment, I notice the song coming through the headphones...

"It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine...."

I don't know what my neighbour, looking a little stressed himself, would have thought if he'd looked over at me, grinning like an idiot and shaking my head. It was just too perfect, and I knew that everything was going to be just fine.

The rain

Melbourne has a reputation as a depressing city, constantly raining. The truth of the matter is that Sydney has a higher annual rainfall, however Melbourne has more days of rain. I have an idea now of why it's called the dreary city by some people. I love the rain...I see a storm approaching, and anticipation rises in me. I wake to hear rain falling outside my window, and I actually find it easier to get up, I feel more motivated to rise, not wanting to miss a moment of the rainy day. It had been dry and sunny up until the time I got into Melbourne on Friday. Friday night, the rain started to fall, and left me unsatisfied, and tense. It was as though the clouds were struggling to break free, to really let the rain pound down. In small, drizzly amounts, the streets gradually got damper, gutters ever so slowly started to fill. It never quite got there though.

Rain for me is a cleansing force, it's as though the air itself is washed clean. Friday night, it felt as though the job was only half done. As I lay in bed in my hotel room, I listed to the wind howling, seven floors above the street. And I heard the rain against the window. It sounded like a stinging blast, like someone was flicking water from their hands. As I woke the next morning, I went to the window to see what the day brought. The streets were damp, but the rain had never increased, it was still spitting a little from a grey sky. Eventually that stopped altogether, and an uneasy balance lingered for the rest of the day. The release never came.
Today has been a very good day for me. I went out to a party last night, got a good bit of homework done, cleaned my room, and last, but certainly not least, went to a Stuart Davis show at People's tonight.

This was the first time I'd been in People's since I turned 21 (I was there for a Local H concert my freshman year), and was fairly impressed. It's very much a Greek bar, but their prices for Jack and Cokes are fairly decent.

As always, Stu put on an excellent show. Including all the banter and tuning (that guy turns tuning a guitar into entertainment), he did one three hour long set of 34 songs. Unfortunately, I didn't bring a pen with me, so I'm going off memory for the set list here, but hopefully I'm pretty close:

  1. Dresden
  2. Grace (Unreleased)
  3. Inventions (Unreleased)
  4. Doppleganger Body Donor
  5. A cover of an 80s song that I don't know the name of (She was right there with me and she was...)
  6. Ladders - An interesting song talking about evolution, and "Will the id become an angel?
  7. Savoring Samsara
  8. Universe Communion
  9. Atavistic Viking
  10. Sugar Bullets (Unreleased)
  11. Amsterdam
  12. Seven Wonders of the Soul
  13. Fall Awake
  14. Unknown, unreleased song
  15. Unknown, unreleased song
  16. Whisper
  17. Unknown song
  18. Nothing in Between (Unreleased)
  19. Infinity Hymn
  20. Unknown Song
  21. Immanence
  22. Eclipse
  23. Your House
  24. Mermaids
  25. I'm Dead, a cover of an Elvis Costello song]
  26. Veronica, another Elvis Costello song I believe
  27. Windmills and Wheatfields (Unreleased)
  28. It's all Just Because
  29. Swim
  30. Drown
  31. A song I can't remember that starts with I
  32. A song I can't remember that starts with P
  33. Jonah
  34. A cool combo of Rock Stars and Models and Only Changing Drugs. He asked the audience to applaude for the one they wanted, and since they basically tied, played both, more or less at the same time.


Overall this was a great show. It was the first time I'd seen Stuart at People's instead of the Maintenance Shop, and conservatively the fourth time I've seen him. Sorry about all the songs that I can't remember, but like I said, this was done through my memory (and a healthy dose of mnemonics). I'll add any that I think of later. If you've never heard Stuart Davis before, I strongly suggest you at least give him a try. There are samples at www.stuartdavis.com
I peeled the orange and ate its smiles.

I saw the boys on the phone with Quizro.

I put the peel in the trash.

I don't know what came over me.

How can I feel clean again?

Damn you Quizro.

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