Chapters closing, opening chapters, turning pages, skimming some, reading others in great detail. How do you summarzie a life in 10 words or less?

The one on the left is more balanced the one on the right is fruitier or more bitter. But when the two were blended together it worked just fine.

*Tea is made from the leaf of a specific Camelia leaf, this is just hippy "tea" all herbs and such.

Getting coffee, or rather going on my morning walk. Since I don't drink that much coffee I just accompany Ryan and / or Bret to go get coffee> the other morning there was a guy that looked really familar in there. It took me a long while to realize why, it looked like an older more grizzly version of Spike. As if Spike didn't move from the East Coast to South California, as if instead of becoming a director he became a hipster, and then stuck with it past his prime. I haven't spoken with Spike for a long while, but I get the scoop on him thorough shared friends. I'm delighted he is doing so well, I love the fact that his work delights me as a fan and as a friend.
Sort of connected... a long time ago I sent a postcard to another sort of lost friend, it made his way to him through three different addresses and eventually found him. Hadji (terrence) grew up with Spike and came out to California about the same time. He used to work as Sin's assistant at Airwalk, so i would get to travel with him and stuff. Now he works at Nasa, which seems very funny to me, but is really very cool.

I had all of the links to add, but I've got to go now, maybe later.



http://www.cherrystreetcoffeehouse.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_Jonze

http://www.imdb.com/gallery/ss/0120601/Ss/0120601/jonze1.jpg?path=gallery&path_key=0120601

I don't see things as photographs but I did see things that I would like to take photos of. I can sometimes envision an angle or a general look I'm going for, but not often, that takes focused time, but I often see things while driving or walking around that I should take photos of, and yet it takes me forever to stop and shoot them. I'm always going someplace or doing something instead of shooting photos, and when I'm home it takes a lot for me to just go out and wander around to take photos.
This window has been calling my name for a long time. It has a spinning light behind it and I need to set up a tripod and shoot it, but the light wasn't spinning so it's different than I expected anyway.

Ella the cat in honor or the passing of Tiberious the cat, possibly the best cat ever, except of course for Lame, Orangey and Evil.

pig, cow, fish, squid, rabbit, deer

not such a rough night for very spoiled Bella

When I was sitting in water, and sitting on a porch for hours on end in South California it seemed like I could type for hours, but now, once I'm home again, it all seems too close to home or nothing is floating around the part of my head that thinks this way. Thus, this page is blank.
The weather also hasn’t encouraged me to shoot photos that are very interesting. But it’s supposed to get hot and clear soon. I feel motivated right now to walk at dusk pointing a camera at whatever looks good.



Bella faces her nemesis, the new neighbors cat

I don't get sleep, i mean that in two ways;

a -- I don't sleep well. Since I've been on drugs I don't stare at the room and drive myself nuts, I just don't get tired, and I don't sleep in.

b - i don't get what is so great about sleep, it's never been a salvation or an escape for me, so I never get excited about it.

when i get gas i wash the windows because i don't know what else to do while i wait?
when i get groceries i put the groceries in the bags because what else would i do?
when i wash the dishes i stare at my hands in the water on the dishes.

I’m settling into being home, I seem to be super busy all of sudden. It’s been pleasant but getting some extra time to hang out at home with Bella tonight will be nice. Plus all the house hold stuff is backing up. I’ve got two day old dishes in my sink, which is pretty much unheard of for me. The rain in Seattle has been great, it’s watering all of my plants for me which is good since I had watering the yard. But mostly it just makes me feel good, even walking around in it has been enjoyable. My knee is still blowing up. I had the oddest pain when I was at the dog park it was an aching pain very intense, I could barely walk back to my car, but not debilitating but it went away, I had all of those misserable thoughts, should I call for help, ambulance, mom (she is a nurse practitioner, thus my health care consultant)? For now I’m sticking to my Advil routine and trying to get the swelling down.
Over my shoulder, out the window the Puget Sound is so dense with clouds and rain that I can barely see West Seattle.

Coming home form LA has left me so refreshed and feeling so taken care of that I feel like I was away for weeks instead of just a couple of days.
Glad to be home, looking forward to more trips.

A flawless morning, the ocean was glassy a slight offshore wind which would have been perfect if it weren't for a lack of swell again. The waves were fun, I think I did something to aggravate my ribs last night while I was reading in bed because they were sore, my knee is all swollen and the water seemed much colder, so it was only a an hour or so surf this morning. There were dolphins again though, and a school of tiny fish that would jump out fo the water sporadically. I had a couple of rides that brought huge smiles to my face, I'm already getting more comfortable once I'm up and going although my wave selection still leaves a lot to be desired. After I caught a good wave and took it in as far as I could go, I did that thing I always think looks cool when others do which is walk off the surf board into the knee deep water, surely I didn't do it with the grace that I've seen other people do it with though. I was walking back through hip high water moving a little South before paddling out out I watched the guy surfing closest to me catch a wave, go to drop in and fall, get thrown around pretty well, or at least as well as a three foot wave can toss you around (which is more than you think). He gave me a big self deprecating grin as we were paddling out, again it's the unspoken gestures that seem to communicate as much as words do in the water. The last wave I caught felt good, a tiny bottom turn, a quick turn off the lip, I tried to slow down to get closer to the miniscule tube behind me, then had to speed up to make the next section, then the wave fell off and I rode the white wash in again feeling it was best to leave on a high note.
Instead of heading back to my Moms house to get ready to leave LA I took the long way home yet again. I meandered through Torrance. The Superior court building which used to be where they had the Torrance rodeo, which of course my father took me to during his cowboy phase and where when they first leveled the ground there and started marking it with flags for construction a friend and I pulled all the flags up to make a bike race track there, we kept getting confused why everyday someone was changing our race track. Past the Plunge, the local swimming pool where I used to spend many summer days, and many summer mornings in forced swimming classes as part of my Mothers campaign to keep Sean and I busy during the summer. Then there was the post Palos Verdes home on Terri ave. After my parents got divorced Mom and Sean and I moved directly down the hill to Torrance, I was there from 6-12 or so. The house we used to live in was in need of a paint job although it looked very much the same as when I lived there. The same brick divider between the drive way and grass and on and on The neighborhood was so drastically changed it was amazing. There used to be a big commercial development full of odd low buildings that did who knows what at the end of the block, which is now all tract houses. There used to be a wide strip of grass that Joe Funk and I would use to play soccer on for days on end, most of the time we'd take shots on goal, and since there was no net let alone goal we mostly tried to kick the ball at the other person so we didn't have to go chase balls all the time. The other houses on the old street were an interesting mix of very recently remodeled while others had never been touched. A couple of blocks away was the Meisel's house, Paul Meisel was one of my best friends and worst enemies depending on the week growing up. He got to second base way before I ever did. Although I do remember trying to slide my hands down Heather's shirt while hanging out with her after school one day. I think I was supposed to ask her to go out the next day, but I didn't and we didn't talk much after that, maybe that was the impetus for my avoidance of one night stands. Then I drove by my old school and Mrs. Jones house, then past Steve's Burgers, which has the best onion rings ever. I even passed an In and Out Burger without eating there, since I'd already had one on Friday. Now I wish I had eaten there instead of at the airport, but it seemed so early then...
My Mothers world is so different than mine, hers is a land of clutter and duplication. She has multiples of everything so she can always find one, thus she is always leaving things wherever she is when she is finished with them. It drives me nuts but it works for her. When I'm there I end up piling things up and moving things around and trying to put things away and I'm sure that it drives her nuts, she scolded me at one point for trying to put stuff away that they use all the time and then she cancelled our plan to clean up the house since it seemed like it would lead to frustration. It's funny that when she is at my house she is so kind about everything and is always picking things up and putting them away, maybe I should be better about adapting to her style when I'm there? But surely it's no surprise to anyone that I'm always trying to have things my way.
Wandering around her house and looking at photos is always fun for me. There are lot of photos of my Mom, Sean and I, a handful of just my brother and I, and a ton of photos that I've taken, and certainly other photos that I don't care about. There is a great one of my brother and I from my long ago wedding (a handful of them of Dana and I relegated to the closest, oddly right next to my surfing stuff so I always run into them, maybe it's a subtle reminder that for everything I've gone through mom has gone through with me as well. ). There is one photo that has curiously been exiled to the garage that I really like. It's taken in Palos Verdes I think, on a rock wall near the edge of our old yard. My father was gone already, it was just me, Sean, and Mom. The hill behind us is bare dirt, there used to be these big leafy plants that smelled funny when you pulled them, and I remember Jimmy and I pulling them all, but surely my Mother had to actually finish the job. My brother and mother are both looking at me and I'm smiling. I look authentically happy in the photo in a way that I haven't seen in many photos since then. I've certainly been authentically happy in photos taken since then, and I think it shows in them as well, but more often I think I have an awkward almost forced smile, or maybe the expected smile, like I know that everyone wants me to smile, and I want to be seen as smiling. I'd like to have that blond shaggy haired, short shorts, red soccer jersey wearing smile I had in that photo more often. I guess that's what I'm always chasing.
I can't think of the last time that I've spend so much time reading, writing and thinking about things and shooting photos. The days surfing was mostly out of the way early and that left lots of time to do other work. It was a great way to spend some time. I'd like to be better about repeating it more often. Next time maybe somewhere new instead of always going back to home, although hell when home is so much fun to go to maybe I should just keep going there.
At home the dog place called to tell me that Bella barked herself horse, the only way to get her to stop was to have a human around her. Dog food was delivered while I was away, an Amazon package arrived, clouds came and went, people came and went, it's all the same and all new. Amazing how a trip away can seem to spark enough ideas to make troublesome parts of life seem better.

Other stuff --

I don't seem to have a phone number that works for O anymore, huh. I missed hanging out with Ron, who next time I'll drag surfing with me. Next time I'll also go to Josh's to get my long board which would be a lot of fun on small days like this week.

The Hill -- my mom lives at the top of a big hill, Palso Verdes is all hills and cliff,s cell phone service there sucks because of it. Two and a half years ago there was a big land slide after a huge rain storm. The house was condemned for a while they couldn't live there for months, then they moved back in but there was a huge pile of dirt blocking their very steep 150 yard driveway. It took until last week for the construction to stabilize the hill and fix the driveway etc. They had to pay this huge amount just to get back to where the house was before, like getting your car fixed afrter someone else hits you,very frustrating. Now my mom is obsessed with re-landscaping it. I keep telling her to plant ice plant, which is supposed to be great for stabilizing hills, but is also one of her least favorite plants. Instead she has all of these other plants lined up. Surely it will look great eventually. Now it just looks like a really expensive hill.

The carpet of the airport where I'm finishing typing this up smells like crap. I got on an earlier flight that was then delayed because of a tire problem. How silly. Maybe it will leave later than my original flight, that would be very apt.

Look forward to less text and more photos again now that I'll be back in Seattle. When I'm home when I sit to write it's almost always more personal or maybe less interesting to the two or three people who might come here. I'm typing this all for myself anyway, so who knows what will be here at any point.

Hey Mom - if you read this and you object to any comments about my trip feel free to holler at me, I had a great time, and I always appreciate your hospitality. And damn, I forgot to fill the gas tank on the Honda, Sorry. Thanks for shipping the box of stuff back too.

Sunset over San Pedro. Fog off over the harbor, tunr right and the harbor ends and the ocean starts and the light fades and opens. Street lights light up the foreground of the park and fade into the darkness of a post sunset bright blue color over the ocean.
Dinner with Josh and Nancy, was great. Josh and I can slip into a friendship again in minutes. We covered old ground and new ground told old stories with huge smiles, talked about present changes and ideas and hopes for the future. He's going to fix a boat he has so that we can go wake boarding. I've always wanted to try. Few things make me happier than connecting with old friends, especially Josh. I feel bad that I didn't see Ed who is off on a tour, or Ron who is off in Palm Springs, or O who I can't figure out which number to call. My mom tried to find out with Jimmy, a young Palos Verdes friend was doing, and she succeeded in finding out that he was tending bar at a place in Redondo, but I couldn't make myself go there and introduce myself.

For the years I've been living in the Northwest I've been lying to myself about snowboarding, telling myself that it's as good as surfing that it's as rejuvenating, but it's not. Sitting in the water for three days now, it feels better and better each time. My body feels amazing right now, although I'm missing yoga, and my head is feeling very well too. In the six hours of so I've spend in the ocean I've exchanged about ten words, most have been good morning, and a couple were about how the waves sucked but it didn't matter since we were in the ocean. It’ s such a pleasant sense of solitude, with the company of others in such close quarters too. There are lots of nods an gestures, but people most keep the lineup quiet unless they are out with friends.
Today I went out in the late morning, it was high tide, glassy but the swell still isn't there. Still had a lot of fun. The dolphins came back, and got really close in today, I saw one pop up about two feet away from one guy, there were several times they were 6-12 feet away form me. When the surf isn't as big they don't tend to play in the waves which is unfortunate because it's amazing to watch.
The slowness of the swells has made it hard for me to catch them, I'm on my 6'2" board which is still too thin for me since I'm not paddling most days in Seattle, so I think I move it around a bit slower than I should be. I also always seem to take a while to gain the confidence to start taking off late. So I've been repeating the mantra "its never too late to take off" every time I'm paddling for a wave. Those late takes offs seem to give way to a nice angled drop in and most of the time the shoulder of the wave is solid enough to get a good ride. The other half of the time the whole wave crashes and just kick out of the wave and paddle back out. I always try to let myself off the hook for making silly mistakes since my timing is so off form not surfing enough. It also doesn't help that I've never been as good as I want to be, maybe some day. One more day of surfing, and only a hand full of months until snowboarding. Despite what I said about snowboarding in the first sentence, I still love it, but I've never seen dolphins while snowboarding, snowboarding doesn't help my nasal passages drain, and it's hardly ever so warm that I stand around with out a shirt on after snowboarding. But I'm still anxiously waiting for Alpy to open up again. Maybe surfing is more fun because I never seem to care about the conditions, I'm just happy to be wet and paddling around. Maybe that would change if I was doing it every day, but I know that Jinxy and Josh and I had some of the best days when the surf was the lamest.

Oh yeah, the surf was bigger today although all choppy because of the breeze and the waves were a bit disorganized but still very fun. I had at least two waves that made me delighted, and again played the one last wave game for a long time.

Driving home from surfing this morning I took the long route around the Pennisula to get back home. My hair felt oddly dirty from the saltwater, not as much dirty as just not clean and light like it normally feels. Like a tooth that hurts I kept rubbing my hair as I drove. Once I was up on the hill on the coast side there were the Mc Mansions that were put in about 5 years ago. There was a really interesting story about them in the New Yorker, it spoke about how they had a hard time making them seem big enough and grand enough since they were basically building a terraced sub division right along the water, it was just that the houses were supposed to feel huge and regal. There is a sub division in Issaquah on the way up the 90 East that every time I pass I can't figure out how any ones lives there, stacked on top of each other, the mcmansions are sort of like that, but in a 6 million dollar way, and I'm sure if you walked into one they would be impressive, the photos I saw certainly were. Past that on the left side of the the road was the church I grew up going to. It's well designed and oddly comforting. Behind the church there is another sub development. It used to be a big dry filed, Kurt Strenk taught me how to catch lizards by creating a lasso type thing out of grass. We spend hours between Sunday Scool and church and after church let out and before my mom would leave back there chasing after lizards. The shopping lot a bit North of the church has also had a huge makeover. My father used to wait there when he took us to church. He would always sit and read, sometimes I would skip out early and he would get pastries for us or let us play pac man in one of the stores.
Further down the coast I passed where MarineLand used to be, it was the greatest place. Just like Sea World, but close to home. They are building something new there, more McMansions? Then there is the Wayfarers Chapel, built by Frank Lloyd Wright. I drove by it today, I've seen it enough times, but you can still catch a peak. Going in land there is a park I used to play at on the way home from church. I remember it having a huge, life size ship, it was metal and it was amazing to play on. I've see that one since and it wasn't very big, but either way it's been replaced by a small plastic ship that is really not impressive.
Further down the coast I passes along another stretch where I used to go almost nightly to watch the sunset when I lived in Torrance. I was pretty frustrated with people at that time, working at the magazine, feeling alienated from life, and so I hid out alot at home, and then would try to make myself go out, but the only place I wanted to go was the ocean. I wasn't back to surfing at that point, still too deep into skating, but I would sit and watch the water and sun, and let my mind wander. There were a ton of trails to get tot eh water and a lot of places along the way to stop and sit, or you could makke your way down to the water, it was all rocky, lots of mediocre tide pools, every now and then you would find something neat. A little but past there it turns into San Pedro, there is a beautiful Pagoda type building that houses a bell from Korea, it's a beautiful place, lots of grass and flowers and it's on a bluff overlooking the ocean. There also sits one of the best basketball courts ever. The courts are designed with these amazing cement arched basket suppoerts and the view is amazing.
Beyond that it's just coast, lots of it untouched except for houses perched high above. It's hard to not by into the dream of chasing after one of these houses, I would love to live up here, it's a beautiful mix of the country, one of my Moms neighbors has horses, there are trails at the end of her driveway, and city, with LA just 30 minutes away, and the ocean a quick, but scenic 20 minutes away. I'm sitting on the porch again, staring out at the LA basin. I can see Hollywood sign, the ocean, LAX, and on and on.
I got home about noon, mom made me sandwich and some tea. Sometimes it's good to be home. While I was out she bough tonic too for an evening Gin and Tonic.

After hours of sitting here reading and staring out at the view, I was playing with my computer and launched the little camera that lives on my Mac and turned it on the city below me. It got to 90 in the shade up here, but the breeze made it so comfortable and I think got me out doing projects with mom.
The hummingbird feeder is as busy as a freeway, my mother has to fill it twice a week. There is almost constantly a hummingbird buzzing around. There are also Orioles, morning doves, swallows, crows, tiny brown birds, hawks, it amazing. Sitting up here is so calming and pleasant. Cell phone service is horrible, which might make it all the calmer.

Please spend time thinking about sending a medium size swell to west facing beaches.

Waves -1
Surfing +5
Dolphins +4
Kittens +3
Smog -2
View from my Mom's porch +3
Wandering around Manhattan Beach +2
In and Out for Lunch +3
Hanging out with Mom +4 ( Is it going to be bad when my Mom reads this and sees that she is better than kittens, equal to dolphins, but a point less than suring?)
Confused friends -2
Travelling solo (every decision I make is right) +2
Looking forward to getting home +2
Score: 20 out a possible ??? I'll give it a rating of a great day thus far.

I was writing in bed and Bella wouldn't leave me alone so I gave in and wrestled with her, when she finaly slowed down I used the camera in my Powerbook to take the photo. Then she let me go back to working as long as I pet her every (pause to pet) so often.

This is the balance of mine that I can't figure out.