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.