Dance
Scarlet dervish in superposition of ecstatic celebration.
Arkansas in October
Need another workation just to clean up some code.
I had thought to do a little of it during my trip to Galveston, but I'd forgotten the power cable for my laptop, which made that a no go.
Honestly, I would have done it anyways on that trip, as I had more than enough brainstorming to do which was perfect for sitting on the beach with a pen and a stack of paper. Coding would've required I be back in my hotel room, which was a bit of a hovel with no view whatsoever (it was cheap).
For coding I need to go someplace with power and a view, either from the room I'm in or a lounge/coffee shop type work area. Where I can look out upon mountains or ocean or forests when I glance up from all the spaghetti code I'll be trying to untangle into a dish more organized. A lasagne, perhaps.
Meditating On My Villains
The Archons are not your friends: well dressed grifters, sleight of hand adepts, they will steal your bones if you let them near.
The Archons only stopped eating children when we let them hook our souls into their infernal machines, teaching them to see our progeny not as raw bites and nibbles, but amphorae, contents slowly fermenting in the cool climate of our terror.
The Archons, full of malignant condensate: choked back greed, lust tightly reigned, hate checked against fear; repressed seepings hungrily lapped from the cold mirror of our civilized eyes.
Bubbling from the bones, rushing with monocytes, the lies of an Archon are structural, instinctual. Deceit the face, not the mask.
Your well groomed ignorance, the plasticity of your fear, your willingness to pursue paths radically antithetical to your well being in the name of self interest. The Archons have such joyful faith in you!
Follow The Light
ALT FACT: The Roman Inquisition pursued heliocentric heretics under direction of The Society of Petals, a floral metaconsciousness who yet believes the sun is the center of everything.
Between A Rock And . . . Well . . . A Different Bit Of The Same Rock
Through all the conspiracies of circumstance: persist.
Wrapped In Joy
Part of today's work will be transcribing all the beach scribbling I did when I was in Galveston last week, which brings to mind the three things which stand out from that trip.
The first was how much I enjoyed the drive there and back due partially to the beauty of the landscape, but mostly because of a podcast I discovered and loaded up on right before I left: Philosophy For Our Times.
Made by the Institue of Art and Ideas in London, I hadn't realized how much my current work and habits had removed me from having my imagination and critical thinking challenged, and how much I missed that. I particularly enjoyed E155 - The Morality of the Left and Right for Sophie Walkers arguments about the failure of all the parties in regards to women.
The second thing was rediscovering how much I enjoy playing in the waves. The insistent pull and sudden push, the smell of hot sand and kelp, the briny taste. I spent a couple hours both days just standing chest deep in the surf, navigating the ocean's motion and warm embrace. It's been a very long time since I've let myself enjoy the beach like that.
Finally, I got stung by a jellyfish for the first time in my life. Hit my bicep like a tiny lightening strike, and burned for 10 minutes or so. It briefly left a collection of angry welts, but the pain was mostly gone a half hour later, and all signs of trauma had disappeared within another hour. It's good to have new experiences?
Madam Saigon
While Dawn and I were in Chicago last November we decided to take advantage of their theater offerings and see a show. Hamilton was sold out for the night we had available, and we didn’t know enough about The Book of Mormon to risk it, so we went with Miss Saigon. The only things we knew about the show were it's set in Vietnam during the American invasion, and at some point there would be a helicopter which would either amaze or disappoint.
My mom had seen the show on Broadway many years ago and was so astounded by the sudden appearance of a full sized military helicopter swinging down into that theater it is the only thing she still remembers about the show and her eyes will get a bit wide when she recounts the experience.
The performance was amazing, particularly the props and stage design, and while we didn’t get a full sized helicopter, we got most of one, and were certainly amazed by the effect of it.
The story itself, besides being completely tragic, was also, at least to this liberal snowflake, racist, misogynistic, and at least a bit propagandistic.
Fast forward about six months and we attended our first Italian opera at the gorgeous Strand Theater in Shreveport. I knew even less about Madame Butterfly than I did about Miss Saigon, only that it's set in Japan and would be sung in Italian.
As I read through the scene synopses, though, I was surprised to discover a familiar story, for Miss Saigon had effectively been an updated take on Madame Butterfly.
The nature of the American interloper was significantly more villainous in Butterfly, and no effort was ever made to redeem him, whereas in Saigon he was portrayed as a co-victim with the protagonist. The cultural forces working to destroy the protagonist were somewhat different, Butterfly’s being chiefly the misogyny and capricious honor systems of feudal Japan, Saigon’s combining misogyny with the horrific nature of war (I will note here that while Saigon correctly played up the despot Ho Chi Minh grew into and the atrocities he perpetrated, it almost completely downplayed the roll America had in generating and perpetuating the Vietnamese civil war).
In both the protagonist, while being battered to one degree or another (the situation in Saigon was significantly worse), broke only when discovering the man who had fathered, but never been a father to, her child had married another woman. At this point it was assumed by everyone involved, including the mother, that the father and his new wife were the best choice to raise the child.
The assumption that a mother who has suffered to provide and care for her child through incredibly difficult circumstances, who loved it more than her own life, was a lesser choice as a parent because she was a poor, single (in both cases by choice of faithfulness to the absent father), non-white woman left me with such a terrible taste in my mouth, that despite stellar performances in both shows, there will always be a shadow on my joy of those wonderful experiences.
Galveston Workation, June 2019
I was surprised by the comparative calm of the water, but I wasn't going to complain about the view.
I set up my office chair and got to work on my beach resistant laptop.
Things lit up when the sun went down.
I looked forward to getting to work early.
The company during those first hours was interesting, but mostly kept to themselves.
Plenty of rush and hubbub to be found when I wanted it, though.
The Function Of A Salty Spray
Need to plan a workation soon, ideally to the beach, either down Houston way, or, preferrably, over the LA border down around Baton Rouge.
This most recent web browser based office project has come along surprisingly well, but I've let the code get ugly in my haste to add features, and I need to go through and clean it up. I've also got at least three key projects I need to map out so concrete steps to fix the issues they relate to can be taken.
I love working out of the office, and it has noticably increased my overall productivity, but the necessary distractions of being there make it impossible to dig as deeply into things as I need to for these projects.
Plus, I could use some beach time.