…25 hours on a plane with a screaming child behind me was the longest flight I’ve ever been on. We showed up and our driver from the Hotel New Bengal was not there. We waited, called and waited some more. A driver from our hotel showed up but he was after another fair but when he called the hotel to find out where the other guy was they told him to bring us back with him… There is no way for me to accurately describe the 30km drive from the airport to the hotel. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it before. They have no traffic cops and their insurance establishment doesn’t run their country like in the U.S. so people just drive any-ol-way they feel like and it seems to work some how. …We slept, allot!
Read moreMonth: August 2008
Last Day in Moses Lake
So, here’s the story. When I was 19 years old, I sat in Denny’s, 100 yards off of I-5, and looked out the window at the traffic. I had failed to achieve an Associate’s degree from Big Bend Community College due to sleeping through every single phys ed class during the spring quarter. I had decent grades in solid courses otherwise and it really chapped my ass to think of going to Big Bend again just for three PE credits. There I sat, talking desultorily with my friend Megan. She and I had some things in common – mostly a willingness to be considered different, even nasty, and a serious boredom with Moses Lake. She had a shaved head and almost always wore a baggy black hoodie, often with the hood up but perched slightly back on her head, so as not to hide the bristle that she enjoyed shocking people with. When it came to friends in the Greater (tiny) Moses Lake (Moses Hole) area, Megan was the one I hung out with most comfortably. I had been friends longer with Maurya and had deeper feelings, but those feelings were a bit mixed. She wanted to do so much, but didn’t seem to be making it happen. Megan was a drifter. I had no idea what she wanted in any long-term kind of way. My memories of her smiling are sweet – sweet smile, earned not automatic. Unlike Maurya, she wasn’t driven to do anything in particular, but also unlike Maurya, she didn’t see impediments everywhere either. It was lucky for me that she and I were together that night. Watching the cars drive by, I brooded on the fact that I had lived in Moses Lake, of all places, for six years. That made it my longest dwelling[…]
Read moreCSS – Angel or Devil
And who cares? Well, I do. I have a one-eyed monkey’s grasp of HTML and now I’m doing the bash-it-and-see-if-it-works version of messing with CSS. I like wordpress, and I like themes. Editing them is a little more than I’m used to doing. And now I’m trying to learn it three days before leaving for India. And of course I want my site to be perfect. I’ve given this address to more people in the last week than I did for a year before that. I am very proud of it right now. I’ve learned a lot already and I’m making it what I want it to be. But why won’t that inline mp3 player work? And why do my body elements creep up into my header? And why am I giving myself a headache over that when I’m going halfway around the world in order to learn real lessons. Important lessons. Maybe there’s a little geek in me after all. And maybe it’s a pride thing. But maybe, just maybe, I want to live up to my own (and James’) ideal of the woman who can do anything if she puts her mind to it. I really like that image. Well, if you click on Music by Dura Mater and a lovely little inline mp3 player starts streaming our music to you…great! If not, sorry. Download it and listen the old fashioned way!
Read moreWage Slave-And the Obvious Lack of Recording Technique…
!!! “The point is flying the plane until the wheels touch the ground, then you land the plane!” I just did the last mix that I am going to do this year on the Dura Mater song, Wage Slave… …I tried to apply the above quoted bit of invaluable information to the mind-set behind the mix down of the latterly mentioned musical movement. Then I produced the song and that worked much better… MP3’s coming soon !!!
Read moreMy Life’s down to this… Again!
Contents as follows; Extreme left down et-cet… Writing material, analog. Batteries, lock. To the right of those things are two sailing knives and to the right of those is our digital sampler. Moving Up: Stomach med’s of all kinds (I shake my head when I say that, I wish I didn’t have to take that crap, but , I do). Wind direction and speed indicator, (left of that is a) GPS (and under that is a), Snake-bite kit. More batteries and some Emergency, (that’s good stuff to have anywhere I think…) Above that stuff is my grandfather Long’s utility knife with spoon and fork, (I love that old knife). To the right of that we have our Ipod and a very handy (trade able) CD player with it’s own electric cable. Ear plugs, a flashlight and my Leatherman “Wave”, of course. Not seen is a fully stocked 1st Aid kit, a good one. My shaving kit is spartan but functional, my camera. And on top of everything is my winter kit (in the green bag) that has a foul-weather coat and pants, great insulated underwear, hat, gloves et-cet and et-cet… My sandles and my Mephisto’s. Dumb western clothes that will be traded for what I can get for them… Computer. Most of the (above) little stuff will be on my body in my vest (pictured). The rest (pictured) will be in my back-pack (also pictured)… I’m sure this (above list of junk) will be cut in half by the time We’re in Chandigarh but for now I think it’s enough.
Read moreFrom Pelican place to Olympus Mons
On August the 26th 2007 I decided I was going to get out of Hawaii! It was eating me! It had eaten me… Out, And I mean anyway I could, Jil helped, it worked and then it didn’t… That happens, I hear. We drove to the Columbia river basin in the snow, we lived in the high desert in the winter and spring and the summer. I learned how to fly. We played music! Dean and Dena and I, Dura Mater (tough mother), we. I read Arundhati Roy and Kim Stanley Robinson, I read Iain M. Banks and Salmon Rushdi and plotted to go to India to finish my book and, Discover Civilization. On August the 15th, 2008 Indian Independence day! I will be in Mumbai. Wow, what a year!
Read moreBoth Trash and Treasure
In a week, I will have quit this apartment managing job. I will be in Seattle for the last time for a very long time. In two weeks, I will have experienced Independence Day in Mumbai. Hopefully, I will have a shalwar kameez! But today, I’m in a barren apartment. I am going to ship another ebay sale and the 100lb suitcase of memories – almost all belonging to James. All my life, I’ve kept my memories tidy, ready to move. If I leave them behind now, it’s more to keep them dry and safe than because they are heavy or bulky. and the world has caught up with me. Now, all my photos and all my music and all my writings mass no more than a couple of pounds, incorporeally suffused through an external hard drive and backed up on a dozen or so discs, which will be shipped with my more hard-copy memories. An 8-year-old’s autobiography, a couple of college essays, some childhood photos, and little more. Both trash and treasure.
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