Daemon

Here's a book that, like Vinge's Rainbows End (see my review here) wraps extrapolations from present to future technologies up in a visceral, rip-roaring yarn that explores the idea of a god-like software entity capable of doing nearly anything, with nobody being able to stop it.
Daniel Suarez's Daemon had me hooked from the get-go. Like the characters immersed in the story's game, a game so immersive that it was projected into the brick-and-mortar of everyday life by its software master (the Daemon), I found myself immersed in the world of this book.
This was not an altogether pleasurable experience. With most books, even the best of tales, I can separate myself from their alternate realities when I put them down to do something involving my own "reality"; I still have bandwidth to write and to think about things other than the stories. Not so with Daemon: I "had" to finish this book. I had the feeling of being taken over, and that is what the Daemon is all about.
Daemon is hard-edged and brutal. There is no shying away from bloody death scenes, no sanitizing. There is very little for the lover of Hollywood-style endings to hang his or her hat on: you have to get used to letting the plot take you where it will, regardless of how hard it might be on the characters with whom you might have developed affinities.
You may, as you read this book, even find yourself wandering down the path of musing about what is good and evil, and, more specifically, just who in this book are the heros and who are the villians, or demons, or whatever.
In the interest of full disclosure, Daemon has a sequel. Once I knew about the sequel, even though I knew that I would buy it, I hesitated: did I really want to be immersed in this way again? Like the characters in the story, the daemon has my number: I will read the sequel whether I "want" to or not.
Were I wearing a hat as I write this, I would now be doffing it in honor of Mr. Suarez: he has put together one hell of a story.

He's Gone...

The homeless man whom I had been seeing on my bike ride to work every day has dissappeared. For the last year (or two? not sure), he had been sitting on the same patch of curb every time I rode past. Other times of the day I would walk by and he would still be there, apparently rooted in place. When the weather was wet, I sometimes noticed a moldy smell emanating from him as I walked by. I had no idea where he went at night or when it rained, and even on rainy days, I would sometimes see him sitting on his curb, holding an umbrella over his head.
Occassionally, somebody would stop their car to give him food: I suspect that he had a few people helping him. When his jacket grew so tattered that it barely stayed on him, he acquired a new one. The umbrella appeared soon after the rains set in.
This fellow always had a shopping cart parked nearby. It was filled with what appeared to be tarps and and garbage bags. Towards the end of his stay on the curb, he added a cheap folding camp chair, which made him look much more comfortable than he had during the many months when he'd just been sitting on the curb.
The few times I saw him walking, he did so with a pronounced limp. I often wondered how somebody as physically frail as he seemed to be could survive both the cold, rainy weather and the more aggressive and physically-intimidating homeless types who inhabit the nearby park.
One morning I noticed that he had acquired some scrapes on his face, as if he had tripped, fallen, and not been able to catch himself. Or maybe somebody had beat him up. I wondered. The odd thing that day was that the usual collection of homeless people was completely missing from the park, and it wasn't as if the weather had turned bad and driven them all to shelter. It was almost spooky: as little as I care for the obnoxious drunks and drug addicts who often litter our park, I have grown used to seeing them around, and it was strange to not see any of them around that day.
Many times I considered approaching him and saying more than just the usual "hello," maybe offering to get him something. Do you need any clothes? Would you like a sandwhich? But I never did. I think I was afraid of him, afraid of his needs, afraid that they would overwhelm me, that he would want to be my buddy, that I would feel responsible for him. My co-dependent boundries shook at the very thought of all of this: to have good boundries requires much energy from me, so I tend to maintain a really wide buffer zone.
He is gone, but his shopping cart still remains. It has been picked over by the park's other denizens, but very little has been taken. I'm sure anything of even the least little value had already been taken from him long ago, and that is probably how he survived--by flying (or sitting, in his case) under the radar. Until now, that is.
His folding chair stayed on the shopping cart for a while, neatly folded, down on the cart's bottom rack, where I often set (and forget) my yuppie beer at the grocery store.
Nowadays, I ride by the empty spot on the curb and the abandoned cart, and I feel like a little piece of me has gone missing. His old spot is the kind of place that you would never notice were it not for its history: it is a part of the everyday ugliness to which we are so accustomed that we no longer notice it: it is invisible to our conscious brains, but takes its toll deep down where we seldom notice what's happening. It is the only kind of place where a man like him would have been allowed to sit for more than a year.

The Inimitable Mrs. Melmac

Every once in a very long while one is priviledged to meet a person of unswerving ideals and iron-core strength, a person who lives life according to her beliefs, and makes no compromises for the sake of us lesser beings. Just such a person is Mrs. Velma Melmac, the defacto Queen and Tidiness Czar of the Yosemite Valley.
I first met Mrs. Melmac in the cartoons of Phil Frank, who was drawing Mrs. Melmac's home cartoon, Farley, exclusively for the San Francisco Chronicle until his untimely death a couple of years ago. Although I have not heard anything new about Mrs. Melmac since then, her exploits, as documented in Frank's Fur and Loafing in Yosemite, continue to inspire, entertain, and educate me every time my son requests this book for his bedtime reading (His other bedtime favorite is Jeff Smith's Bone, as long as I skip the parts with the rat creatures and Kingdok. But I digress...)
Mrs. Melmac lives in Manteca, California. Every summer, she fires up her Wapama motor home, loads up her Tojo Vac 'n' Blo, and with Max, her hairless chiuaua, as copilot, she drives to Yosemite to take up residence, where she will stay until some time in Autumn, when the first acorn lands in her vodka tonic (this last event may in fact be staged by park personnel desperate to get her to leave).
Mrs. Melmac runs a very tidy camp. Her motto--tatooed on her arm--is, "Death to Dirt," and she has often been known to utter the words, "Mother Nature is a slob." (I have to admit that she has a good point: have you ever been in a forest after a windstorm? Sheez! But I digress. Again.) Once the Astroturf and rocket-propelled canopy have been deployed, Mrs. Melmac does not just sit on her duff and pop a cold one like any other camper would do at this point. No, she does not rest until her campsite is devoid of all pine needles, dirt, and bugs, the bugs most likely having been dispatched by highly-explosive bug bombs. Indeed, one of the local bears even mentions her having deployed a neutron bug bomb some time ago.
Mrs. Melmac has a heart of gold. After the flood of January, 1997, Mrs. Melmac, knowing that she was desparately needed, made a special winter trip to Yosemite to help with the cleanup. With her Tojo Vac 'n' Blo plus 1500-foot extension cord, she was just the person for the job, although she did encounter some difficulty when her Vac 'n' Blo locked onto a boulder and held her pinned in place. Luckily, Max ran for help, and ranger Stern Grove, who had studied Barkphonics and so was able to understand Max, rescued her just before she had finished her last Pall Mall.
Mrs. Melmac is also a former champion of the State Parks Olympics (held in Asphalt State Park), often having won her competitions through sheer forfeiture-inspiring intimidation.
I am looking forward to enjoying more of Mrs. Melmac's exploits, and lucky for me, I have not yet read Eat, Drink, and be Hairy. I suppose that after reading that book, I will have to content myself with re-reading her adventures with my son, as I have been doing with Fur and Loafing.
I still miss Phil Frank's daily (except for Saturdays) cartoon in the Chronicle. While he was alive, I had his cartoon set in my web browser as my home page. Mr. Frank was a shining star, having given so many of us a daily (except for Saturdays) laugh for many years.

Mindfulness Personified

My family and I spent the holidays in Portland, Oregon, with my sister-in-law and her husband. Joining us there were the better part of my wife's family--brother, sister, mom, and assorted partners and children, all spread out across a couple of "not-so-big" (but very welcoming) houses.
I had been steeling myself for this trip, as I really prefer a more low-key approach to the holidays than this. In times gone by, I have even skipped Christmas altogether, opting to stay home and go for a long walk on the beach.
To my surprise, I realized that I was beginning to feel relaxed and refreshed a couple of days after having arrived, and this in spite of the crowded conditions and depression that I usually have around the holidays. I didn't think anymore about this until my counselor asked me about it (okay, I thought about it enough to mention it to him): what, he asked, about Brant might have contributed to my enjoyment of this visit?
My sister-in-law and her husband, Brant, run a yoga studio. In addition to teaching yoga, Brant has been leading Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction ("MBSR," in the pro lingo) seminars at the studio. Between the yoga and the MBSR, this pair packs a formidable punch for improving the lives of stressed-out Portlanders.
One of the tenants of MBSR is to be "present" in the sense that, rather than checking out or, alternatively, driving yourself crazy with negativity, you become a neutral observer of yourself and your surroundings. You can watch your breath, observe your attachments to particular outcomes, observe how you move, and, with lots of practice, begin to watch all of those thoughts and emotions cruise by without getting caught up in them. Or, at least you can increase your awareness of being caught up by your emotions, and this awareness alone can allow you to get off of the emotional roller-coaster more quickly than if you are being swept along with no real idea of what's happening.
Thinking back on how Brant comported himself during the holiday chaos, he was always with us in a way that allowed him to relax and rest when needed, but still be fun, creative, and engaging. I think that my counselor was suggesting that I was relaxed because Brant was relaxed. I like that thought, and I think that there is something to it.
It helps, too, that I enjoy the company of my wife's family. Like my wife, her siblings and other relations are a bright bunch with lots of interests. There is always interesting conversation to be had.
Although I was tired and ready to be home when it was all over, I think that this was one very successful holiday trip, and I intend to continue my education in the ways of MBSR.

Recording Goodbye

As I mentioned previously, our band has embarked once again on the process of recording our songs. A few days ago, we did some test recordings (you can listen to them here). I"m especially pleased with how the cover of Steve Earle's song, Goodbye, turned out.
Last night, after having spent a bunch of time listening back to and playing along with the latest mix of this song, I found that I couldn't get the song out of my head: It was "playing" so loudly that I couldn't get to sleep. Then I realized that I was getting that deep, achey sadness that I get when thinking about loss, and especially, when contemplating the loss of my father (see earlier posts).
It seems that even a song about a different kind of loss from my own can trigger my own feelings of loss and sadness. Loss is loss, I guess: Whether we know it or not, we all suffer from it in one way or another, and this seems obvious to me now that I think of it. It's just that it can surprise you from time-to-time. Loss waits in ambush: You never know when it'll trip you up.
With the "holidays" approaching, I'm especially vulnerable to these feelings: My father's death spun my family into a place that yielded a few not-so-fun memories around Christmas. So, I'm a bit down today. Enough for now.

The Monkey on my Back

Hal Keely,an old friend and bandmate of mine, once said that being a musician is like having a monkey on your back. Hal was the kind of guy who just oozed creativity. He was a drummer and songwriter, and he composed his songs on a dulcimer, which we would then transpose over to guitar and bass. He even had a solid-body electric dulcimer built by local rising-star builder Ralph Novak (this was in Berkeley, almost 30 years ago--yes the time, it does fly by).
Anyway, that monkey, and the idea of it, stuck with me all of these years. It's maybe a bit of a negative way to look at having the muse be part of your life's calling, but in a way it's quite accurate. There is a certain eccentricity, a certain wobbliness in the life of a musician. There is always the need to give expression to that muse, along with the drawing-down of resources that might otherwise go into doing "normal" things like washing your car on Saturday morning, or hanging out with family, doing chores, going shopping, and so on. It's as if you were a distant star being viewed by an astronomer, and the astronomer were noticing a certain shakiness, a certain tendency for that star to wander off of its predicted path through space. From that observation, the astronomer could deduce that a planet was near that star, circling around it, pulling it this way and that.
The muse orbits us musicians. Some of us just shake and wobble a little bit. Some of us stagger. Some fall down and can't get back up. Sure, it's not just the muse behind this eccentricity. Other life events (like, oh, say, the death of a parent) can produce these effects as well, and maybe even be responsible for introducing the muse into our lives in the first place. Suffering is often the source of creativity: It is what defines us best.
Last night my band played in a local concert hall for a small-but-enthusiastic crowd. The sound was great, we played really well (in spite of the fact that I was recovering from the swine flu, and our leader had a cold), and we had a really good time, followed by a great band get-together in a local bar afterwards. This is the kind of time when the eccentricity suddenly gives way to an arrow-straight path to the heart, when the monkey disappears and we stand up straight, and we know that we are doing exactly what we are supposed to be doing, and there is no doubt.

Regular Exercise Protects Mice from Flu Symptoms (but not from researchers’ scalpels…)

This just in! If you’re a mouse and you’ve been running regularly in your exercise wheel, you'll have less-severe flu symptoms after researchers have purposely infected you than will your non-exercising kin after they, too, have been infected. Also, when you are cut open and examined, your researchers will find less virus in your lungs than they'll find in your lazy friends' lungs.
So keep running, little mouse! And, if you don’t have an exercise wheel, make sure you find a way to request one from your caretaker.
And, thanks for volunteering!
This news might also be of interest to owners of pet mice.
Source: Iowa State University.

On Being Barefoot

I was stung between the toes by a bee last summer while running on some grass. The stinger was difficult to extract, and it stayed in my skin long-enough to inject a hefty dose of venom. Later, I was laid low with a fever and body aches. In my running-induced euphoria, I had forgotten the cardinal rule about going barefoot: Watch where you put your feet.
This experience reminded me that we go through life insulated from our natural world, and while this insulation is protective, it also prevents us from interacting with and enjoying our surroundings. Instead, we tend to barge around in our shoes, in our cars, in our airplanes, and we stop seeing what's out there, and we stop seeing our effects on what's out there: The connection is gone, and what's "out there," even though it sustains us and gives us our humanity, slowly degrades away.
And so we have people racing around the suburbs in gigantic, diesel-fume-belching, 4x4 trucks, parking-lot freeways (carbon-monoxide festivals), buildings scattered willy-nilly in formerly-pristine areas by developers engaged in feeding frenzies, global warming, collapsing fisheries, unecessary wars; the list, though it may seem endless, will be terminated by our demise or by our self-restraint (we get to choose).
A little mindfulness can move us towards the best choice: When's the last time you enjoyed the feeling of grass under your feet?

No Solicitors!

Our household recently suffered an infestation of vacuum-cleaner salesmen. I had been meaning to buy a screen door for our front entryway, because on those warm summer nights when mosquitos and other pests are abundant, some pests get into the house, and once in, they can be extremely difficult to expel. But I digress… To be clear, the salesmen entered with my wife’s permission, and once in, began a marathon session aimed at demonstrating why she should buy their vacuum cleaner for $2400. While they were cleaning our carpets, though, she began investigating the vacuum online. She found that the salesmen from this company are known for their high-pressure sales tactics, and that if you demand a lower price for the vacuum, you're likely to get it.
In all, this troop of sales-apes put in at least three hours of carpet-cleaning and product demonstration, and my wife, who was desparate to get something that could deal with the carpet-dirtifying consequences of having a young boy and his friends running daily throughout the house, bought the vacuum for about a third of the original asking price, plus they took our old vacuum as a trade-in.
While these guys never lied outright to to my wife, and they were quite personable, they managed nonetheless to imply things that were not true, such as that our favorite vacuum-repair shop, Mohler Vacuum, was a licensed warranty-repair facility, and that they were in the area because they had sales "appointments," and were just stopping by to see if we wanted give them a lot of money too. They were nice, but shifty, and the "ick factor" was pretty high.
It turns out that my mother-in-law also bought a vaccum from this company some 40 years ago, and she still remembers the gross feeling she had about the salesmen, but nonetheless used the vaccum, and was quite happy with it, for many years. The upshot is that this company has been making top-notch products for decades. After the fellow at Mohler told my wife that his business was not a warranty-repair facility, he went on to tell her that she had gotten a great deal, and that he himself owned one of these machines for home use.
In contrast to the quality of the product, further research on my part turned up the fact that the Better Business Bureau had revoked the accreditation of this company's local sales office, and that nationwide, there was a pattern of complaints about heavy-handed sales techniques. There was even one case of a woman being raped by a salesman from this company.
You really have to wonder why a company with such an awesome product (and yes, my wife is still thrilled with it) would allow its reputation to be so seriously damaged by the people who sell its products. What the heck is up with that?
And now, I'm finally going to put up the No Solicitors sign that I've been thinking about: The vacuum-cleaner-salesmen infestation is not the only door-to-door danger in our neighborhood. We also get shifty guys selling magazine subscriptions, some short guy with a beard trying to get money for a vague child-protection cause (he shows up once a year), carpet cleaning outfits who just "happen" to be in the neighborhood that day, just like they were last week, and other assorted annoyances, most of which turn up at our doorstep when we're sitting down for dinner at the end of a long day. Nuts to them all!

Loss of a Parent

Any of you lose a parent when you were a kid? My own father died when I was eight. I'm now in my fifties, and it was really only a few years ago that I finally began to realize just what an atom bomb it was that had exploded my life apart back then. Old-enough people often talk about what they did during the Sixties, where they were; well, that's where I was--atomized.
Rolling Stone recently ran an interview with Merle Haggard. Turns out his father died when he was nine. Mr. Haggard says he problably would not have gone to prison (he did time in San Quentin) had his dad not died. It's like that. Having a parent die while you're a kid blows your life completely part. Very few calamities can compare in their magnitude to having that happen while you're still a vulnerable and dependent young one. It's so big, so incomprehensible, that, for me at least, I had no idea for over forty years of just what had happened, how it had changed me, how it made me feel different from most other men.
Last night I started Maxine Harris' book, The Loss That Is Forever: The Lifelong Impact of the Early Death of a Mother or Father. The title is a mouthful, but pretty much says it all. I'm thankful to Ms. Harris for her elucidation of the great discontinuity that such an event causes in a child's life--a discontinuity of magnitude and awesomeness on the order of the Grand Canyon, but that, unlike the Grand Canyon, appears all at once, without warning, and is really like a massive meteor strike on the surface of your world: If you survive the initial blast, you might not survive the ensuing degradation of your ecosystem, your loss of sustenance, your loss of light. It's like that.
Ms. Harris' book triggered a night of strange dreams for me, the most vivid of which was about me digging in a large muddy hole, pulling out large slabs of sandstone, and attempting to pull a beautiful orange boulder free from the watery mud while worrying that the water must've been coming from a plumbing leak in the house next to where I was digging. As I awoke with a racing heart, I thought about how this was very like open-heart surgery.
As dreams often do, a scene from my childhood (digging in my uncle's backyard while a hose ran) combined with mundane grownup homeowner worries and then sucker-punched me with the psychic stone, a fossilized remnant, a piece of my heart that had died and turned to stone when my father died.
My mission now is to bring the power of this event into clear view and make it a conscious part of myself, who I am--to accept it and what it has made me, even though this process feels like it could kill me. Having a young son seems to be boosting me in this direction: I can see that I need to find clarity around my dad's death and integrate it for both of our sakes. Otherwise, it will be a danger to us both.
It's like that.