The Rock 'n Roll marathon, to be exact. Right here
in Sandy Eggo, on 5 June 2005.
We
are rolling the thought around on our tongue, to see how it tastes. We are
batting it around internally, weighing the pros and cons. We are toying with it,
the way a cat would maybe toy with a mouse. We are thinking on it so hard that
we have screwed on our thinking caps ever-so-much more tightly than before,
whenever it came to thinking about running marathons. Which hasn't been all that
often.
Because, you see - we have
never run one before. And we are a little concerned about how
very
long they are, these marathons. Twenty-six
miles point two, to be precise. We are concerned about any run in which that
seemingly unnecessary and ridiculous point two forms no significant fraction of
the whole. We are deeply worried that we might not finish until sometime on the
6th of June, which we think would embarrass us mightily. We wonder to ourselves
if it is wise, at this stage in our lives, to be contemplating our first
marathon. We ask ourselves if we have lost our fool
minds...
We are thinking that perhaps
the La Jolla half-marathon may be more within our
grasp.
But, it would give us
something to train for, between now and 5 June 2005. And we are certain that it
would be something we were proud of having accomplished, once it was all
over.
Now, you maybe wondering when
it was that we started to refer to ourselves in the plural? That's because id,
ego and superego have struck a deal in order to claim that two-thirds of us have
plausible deniability if and when the 5th of June 2005 goes by, and we decided
not to run twenty-six miles point
two.
Just be grateful we haven't
adopted the third person, singular, to talk about our ambitions, our wild
flights of fancy. We think that would
really
be painful to read. We're going to try it, here and there, and see if you don't
agree...
----------------
Chardonnay,
Ravenswood, vintner's reserve. In a coffee cup. As is our
custom.
----------------
Right.
Enough of all that.
So - motorcycle
commuting the last pair of days, and happy to be back in the game again, now
that the brutal San Diego winter fades to a soul-scarring memory. Because it
rained pretty hard that one week, and then it
was
rather cold of a morning, in January, from time to time. It's still rather cold,
but in an energizing, refreshing way. You turn your head to check six for the
lane change and feel the lash of the morning breeze across the tender skin at
your throat, and know, above the burr of the Boxer engine, that you are fully
alive, fully in the moment. It is like flying down low, at high speed. Your eyes
are in a constant scan, looking for threats, calculating angles and velocities,
looking for outs, ways through, ways around. You're sampling the environment -
the cracks in the highway, and how they might affect your traction or control.
On a bike you're in the environment,
in a way that you cannot be in a car - in the car, your world is framed by the
automobile - you're nearly watching television through the windscreen. The world
is walled off, away, other. On a bike, you have that same tightly constrained
but savage joy, the union of man and machine, special skills setting to motion
the thought of an instant, almost before it is fully formed.
Lane splitting on the way home,
while all the cars are stopped in bumper-to-bumper traffic, you dial up the
intensity just that bit more. It can get... interesting. Some people only see
you coming up from behind them at the last moment, they react inappropriately,
swerving towards you as their startled eyes catch a glimpse - these folks are
mostly the elderly, and people with Howard Dean stickers on their cars. You
can't be too careful.
I got pinched
yesterday between a "tour" bus from Mexico and one of those pickup trucks with
the absurdly extended rear view mirrors, a
very
tight squeeze. I had to go through the kind of teeth-bared, clench-jawed fear
conquering exercise that was once a rather routine element of my existence, but
which now forms nearly no part, soft and pampered as I have become in my
advancing decrepitude.
But. I got
clear just fine. All's well that ends
well.
As you lane split, passing the
cars left and right, you share what seems somehow like moments of stolen,
unintentional intimacy with their occupants. In a way, again, that you would not
in a car. Windows are rolled down, and rich varieties of music spill out from
within like the light from big city storefronts, one after another. Fragments of
conversation. Cigarets are shared, cigars sometimes. A pale arm is thrown out in
front of you in frustration, and just as suddenly snatched away. But you're just
surfing the experience, each moment a different milieu, and all of this being
taken in at some pre-conscious level, since so much attention is focused on the
line, the open path, the distance in
between.
-------------------
After
the first night's sleep aboard ship last week, I awoke to my alarm going off in
my stateroom, rubbed my eyes and murmured, from out of whatever transitional
sliver of understanding links the unconscious mind to the conscious, "Erskine
Bowles."
Yeah, I know .
President Clinton's second chief of staff. A person whom I could not have named
if you had asked me the night
prior.
Where did that come
from?
-------------------
No.
No I didn't watch the SOTU address.
I figured after that Erskine Bowles
thing, I needed to walk away, for a little while. Let it go.
It just ain't woith
it.
-------------------
To
be filed under the category of: Limits
to human understanding, the following
examples are submitted:
I got turned
on to a WSJ Op-Ed by the Powerline folks (yes, that lot again), a very pleasant read thanks to one William
Voegeli, only the latest conservative commentator who is offering his
observations and advice to the Democratic party - you know, the whole "here's
why you're doing so poorly, old chap" article that folks on the left are so very
likely to appreciate, when written by solicitous folks on the
right.
Now, one suspects that some of
this is little more than gloating once removed, and I was raised to believe that
triumphalism wasn't polite, but I found myself nodding appreciatively at certain
elements:
But the complaint
that it's impossible to figure liberalism out has, until recently, typically
been voiced by exasperated conservatives. For decades they have watched liberals
rushing around with wheelbarrows and ladders, busy, busy, busy at building the
welfare state. New programs are created, old ones expanded, urgent needs
discovered and rediscovered. Conservatives marvel at this vast construction site
and ask prosaic questions: What is this thing going to look like when it's done?
How big is it going to be? How will we know when it's finished? And just in case
there's any doubt that they are conservatives, how much is all this going to
cost?
And:
...(A)fter
2004, "the bigger question is: What do the Democrats stand for?" Here's a better
and bigger question still: What do the Democrats stand against? Tell us, if
indeed it's true, that Democrats don't want to do for America what social
democrats have done for France or Sweden. Tell us that the stacking of one
government program on top of the other is going to stop, if indeed it will, well
short of a public sector that absorbs half the nation's income and extensively
regulates what we do with the other half. Explain how the spirit of
live-and-let-live applies, if indeed it does, to everyone equally--to people who
take family, piety and patriotism seriously, not merely to people whose lives
and outlooks are predicated on regarding them
ironically.
Until those
questions are answered, until Americans have confidence about the limits
liberalism will establish and observe, it's hard to see when the Democratic
narrative will again have a happy
ending.
But I read it all (and
suggest you do too) and yet felt a little unfulfilled. I felt a little... unfair
and imbalanced. So I tiptoed over to a place I will not name, but wherein I
visit every in a while, in order to see how the other 48% live, because I just
knew that there, well admixed with conspiracy
theories, ad
hominem and vitriol, I'd find a counter
argument.
I don't know that you
should bother following the link, it's rather tough slogging - 28 printed pages
from one Philip Agre, a UCLA associate professor of Information Studies (I had to look it
up, too - did you notice the link to the pdf file announcing the
information studies diversity summit? How jolly!) which I can summarize
thusly:
Conservatives are
evil.
Sigh.
Oh
well, of course there's more to it than that. Let me share with you some money
grafs:
Q: What is
conservatism? A: Conservatism
is the domination of society by an
aristocracy.
Q: What is
wrong with conservatism? A:
Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in
general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded
on deception and has no place in the modern
world. ...
Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception.
...
To impose its order on society, conservatism must destroy civilization. In
particular conservatism must destroy conscience, democracy, reason, and
language.
And so on. You get the
picture.
This from an associate
professor of information studies, which, so far as I can tell, is a graduate
school program dedicated to teaching people how to be librarians and archivists,
etc. in the information age.
Which as
a launching pad for a liberal
intifada
on conservatism seems to have as much inherent moral authority as being a naval
officer in San Diego, blogging in his woolen socks, he said without a trace of
irony.
It just goes back to my whole
premise that we're still talking past one another because deep in their hearts,
many conservatives think that liberals are well-intentioned but misguided, while
deep in their hearts, many liberals think that conservatives are actively evil.
Or stupid.
This somehow reminded me of
the kerfuffle surrounding Michael Crichton's latest novel, "State of Fear." You've probably heard something
about it: The great writer of science fiction took on the eco-alarmists and
provoked the literary equivalent of poking his finger in a wasp's nest. For some folks, disaster theory is
as much a matter of faith as the Resurrection is to others (on about as much
evidence, he says, speaking as a believer).
Now, I'm no scientist, but I am
willing to be persuaded - the problem is that no one has managed to do so for me
yet, one way or the other. Raising your voice and shouting "SHUT UP! SHUT UP!"
when someone brings forward a heterodox point of view tends to go against
motive, if not rationality. But that's been the level of the debate, for the
most part.
And I read with interest
an Op-Ed in the New York Times (which I can't find a link for, dammit) from an
academic type who told us all in stentorian tones that, in spite of the
possibility of eco-alarmist, scientific funding pandering that Mr. Crichton
alluded to in his novel, there was no serious disagreement among scientists as
to the very real and imminent danger of global
warming.
I read this thoughtfully,
and (as is his custom) scrolled down to find out who the author was, in her
professional life: Ah. An associate professor of English at
Columbia.
I
see.
------------
Hey!
Did you realize that you are now up to 3000 characters in Haloscan comments? Oh,
yeah. Forked over 12 bucks, daddy-o. No more cutting you off in
mid-rant.
Who loves
ya?
------------
File
under: Courage of his
uncertainties - Social Security. I just
don't know. Ownership society, yes, yes - wonderful idea. Still, $2 trillion
sounds like a lot of money, to me. Even for the government. I don't care how
many years you amortize it over. If I was 35 years old or younger, I'd do what
many of us in our mid-40's are doing: Pretend it's not going to be there for you
and save everything you can.
Which
unfortunately, living in San Diego, is not that damn
much.
So it
goes.
-------------
Erskine
Bowles?
-------------
Have
a great weekend!
Posted @
05:31 PM
|
Posted in
""
|
Sendit
|
Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." - John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Ceasar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friederich Nietzsche
