Information Blues.

Today was the first day of the winter that required full finger gloves to bike to work in the morning. It’s been chilly and my heating system is wonking out: my hands are frozen, my toes are numb and sweaty. My forehead is hot, but I don’t believe I’m sick.

This evening I disfigured my inner workings over a few hours of MTV with Liz. Those shows are like bad drugs, with killer side effects that weaken the containment field on one’s reality. To watch them is to rollercoaster through the contemporary teen, a pulsating trainwreck of lurid, self-conscious judgements. My forehead is sore from squinting in pain, frowning in horror.

I’ve been wearing my chocolate wranglers just about constantly. Today I grew thrilled when I realized I hadn’t worn any white, black or blue for the last two days. Nobody seems very impressed by this, but I keep sharing regardless. Come on, I bet you’re wearing all three colors right now! And I’ve become the brown/green/yellow-orange man. I’ve broken through to the other side.

There are a few abstract chores I should do, loose ends that matter. These kind of things wreck me, they block me off from all forms of real satisfaction. The longer they sit unresolved the more I feel cocooned by futility.

I got #1 on the high score list of my favorite pinball machine today but it didn’t seem to matter.

I’ve been so corrosively introspective lately that it occurs to me it’s as if my body is digesting my mind.

(Hey, that’s quite melodramatic.)

The tough thing about introspection is that it tends to yield so much data it leads to buffer overflow. And that the data doesn’t have a long shelf life. After floating around in one’s own hot air balloon for a while I think the natural impulse is to seek balance: get corporal, eat some ice cream, etc. Or just zone out from exhaustion. Then the data evaporates and you’re left with a vague sentimental checksum of the work you’ve done. And nothing happens.

But having a rich inner monlogue is neat. I’ve noticed a new feature in the last few months: whenever I have a revelation, it strikes me inside like a water balloon exploding against my head and I make funny pondering noises, I go, “Hmm! Hmm!” It’s a chirping sound.

I find myself craving feedback. I want to know what people think of me, how they’d explain me. It’s a short cut. I want to know how my data seems from the outside.

Today I took a fifty mile ride up the Bay Trail, same basic route as the I feel awright ride. Around the Richmond Marina I saw a teenage pelican learning to fish with his mom. He had a fuzzy head and flew a little funny, but he was getting the hang of it.

I saw the same kingfisher out at his spot on Point Richmond and he chattered at me then flew away. I was happy to see him, even if he wasn’t so eager to hang out with me.

On the way home I decided to connect the route through West Oakland, out to the new Middle Harbor Park. This boosted the mileage from 40 miles to 50. I bushwacked a route through West Oak, even though I was a little nervous; the last two rides I’d flatted, with one occassion right in the middle of the funky ghetto. And historically, I tend to experience flats in bunches. Last time I’d been working manically, calculating my likelihood of getting jacked as I manipulated the tire iron and decided it must be 50/50. So two ghetto flats may be statistically sure trouble.

The Middle Harbor Park is impressive. It’s giant and artful with a spectacular view of the Bay Bridge and San Francisco; it’s so far west you can see the whole bridge (from the south!) and the city seems so close you could skip a rock there. I was a little worried I’d encounter the beast with two backs, like the last time I visited, but it didn’t happen.

But this park is great, it’s a giant U shape along the bay full of carved out coves and scenic vistas. It’s my favorite new, secret place.

One of my favorite reality dissolving thoughts is to compare the size of my body to that of a Blue Whale.

See, there’s a poster in the bathroom at work depicting oceanic visitors to the Farallon Islands. Along the sides are scale drawings that depict the size of each creature next to a human, and the comparison between the man and the Blue is just mind blowing. What would it feel like to be so big? Or more realistically, what would I feel like to be standing next to one?

The closest I’ve come to living this comparison was a visit to the Calaveras Big Trees state park last weekend. My word, those sequoias are gigantic! Strolling through the North Grove, I started to think about what their roots must be like, how hotrodded their extraction systems must be. I imagined water and minerals being sucked up the trunks into the sky, imagined what sound that should make.

I’ve climbed a few trees in my time; I was struck by the urge to climb a sequoia, to sit 300 feet off the ground in a barky citadel. The light was different at the top, the trees stood over everything in the forest, collecting gold. My Aunt Kebi said they looked like the tree in the Return of the King movie, and I knew exactly what she meant: The White Tree of Gondor! You know, at the end, when it’s glowing silver, so happy that the King is back?

There used to be a particularly big tree there called the “Mother of the Forest”. Apparently when they first discovered the sequoia redwoods the rest of the States didn’t believe how big they were, so for one of the World’s Fairs they skinned the Mother of the Forest (!!!!) and reassembled her bark there. (The bark on the sequoias is very thick; when you knock on it, it sounds hollow. It’s like they’re wearing a stringy suit of mulch armor…)

The heart of the Mother tree is dead but still standing. It looks horrific, like the physical manifestation of a blackened, tortured soul. It definitely seems haunted, like something that died a slow painful death then refused to leave the scene.

I’m still shocked: how could they do that? And why didn’t the trees (and you can include the whales!) rise up in revolt, skin a few stupid 49′ers? Maybe one day.

I’ve been spending time contrasting states lately, remembering how it felt to live in love, then comparing that to how it feels to be me now. The two seem particularly clear to me lately, so I’m going to try to write them down.

The subject deserves an essay, but right now all I can produce are a few sketches!

When you’re in love it feels like you have a blanket in your head. It’s a cozy thing that cushions your falls, keeps you enveloped in warmth. It’s so comfortable just to be around that person, it’s easy satisfaction. All of that comfort inspires one to nest, get fat and even warmer, buy pillowtop beds and develop one’s own special language.

But being single is more wild. Right now it feels like I’m a broken muscle car on blocks in the driveway. What I mean is that I’m working on myself. I’m prone to hotrodded introspection and high horsepower mood swings with accompanying self evaluation. I can’t stop thinking about myself, cannot avoid wanting to make myself better. By yourself, you’re the only currency you have.

I’ve been inviting my friends to come stand around my driveway, check out the work in progress. Dudes, I think I’m going to try to install a blower:

I’m going to cover myself in chrome!

It’s weird, I’m trying to get self critical, but so many of my friends are lying around in bed. They’re in love, they’re warm underneath their own blankets. They look at me quizzically. It’s easy to turn my high octane on them: dissect their illusory beds from the outside, examine their blissfully stretched constructs. I’ve logged some time in a false true bed too!

Not surprisingly, I don’t think they want to listen. So hey, stare at this sweet roll cage I installed for a while. And the next thing are the wheelie bars…