Hiking through the upper bounds of New Jersey cum lower New York state, other wise known as the Ramapo Mountains. Wilderness of the North East.
It's nothing like hiking in Texas, the hot sweltering summer heat where the biggest threat to sanity is your skin -- burnt by an endless sun, scratched by thickets, sharp grasses and unforgiving thorns, bitten and feasted upon by hordes of insects, spiders, gnats, and mosquitoes, sweat stains on clothing that fester into chafed patches behind your knees and at your armpits or hives that come on in a reckless rage at the mere brush of a patch of hayfever grass.
It's nothing like hiking through the Amazon, with its endless vista of green, oppressive heat and thick, humid air that fills your lungs with life and loathing. Green, verdant, teeming with life that's as soon to eat you as you to eat it. The rainforest breathes with life as it exhales with death. Wild and free and dangerous as the piranhas you're fishing up for dinner and the water you're boiling within an inch of its life hoping that it's enough to kill the verdant microorganisms that teem within it. It's a hazmat territory, with boots and long pants and loose, flowing long sleeves that cover every last inch of self.
No, the Ramapo forest was a dream of moss encrusted rocks, and dry crisp air and leaves falling, a halo of golden rain. The mists that cover the ground in the morning, the earthy sigh of the woods and silent crunch of leaves beneath your feet, a rusty carpet covering strewn stones and sparsely spaced trees that cover your heads in a canopy of autumnal riches -- gold, green, amber, honey. No mosquitoes, no sign of life other than a laconic, serpent lazily out for no more than an evening stroll. A lake of large mouth bass, no deeper than 12 feet at depth.
The wilderness of the Eastern shore tamed more than the the wilderness out South/West.
Oct 7, 2013
Oct 5, 2013
Sensemaking
Tired and fever brained (fever brained, brainded, brain dead, branded), starting to feel the effects of cabin fever (oh hello, Manhattan apartment at home for three days with a sick roommate). Rational state of mind is exactly the phrase one could use to describe my personhood at the moment. (Person's hood, in the hood, of the hood, a 'hoodie').
Thought: this type of writing will never earn me any money. Stop.
It's quiet in our shoebox. You can hear the neighbors opening cupboards, playing pranks on each other, or holding jam sessions. Last night at midnight there was a 'police raid' on the apartment next door, to the East. (Men's combat boots, worn out. Vintage. Laces freshly pressed.) Tonight, there's a live music jam box going on in the apartment to our north. (Pair of women's heels, platform. Black pleather. Strappy.) And suddenly it hits me that New York City is a live hopping city. This is why no one has a TV but why people write novels here and why people come here to be in bands or make music, or spend a life exploring the arts scenes or to talk or to get lost in the subways or to come down off of luck and plunder the depths of compassion on the A line from Fulton to Jay Street. Because there's a passion in the air and the opportunities are boundless and the only one singing sad songs and stories of could haves and would haves are saps and soul suckers and they don't last long here.
Where do you fit in brown pair of mary jane loafers with turqouise tassels and exquisite, hand cut pleating on the sides. All leather. Soft, but good for walking along riverbanks, alone.
------
There's a mouse in our apartment. His name is Fred Wilson, like the VC. His name was to just be Fred but my brain kept going and it just stuck. F red wils on. He's cheeky, comes out to play at strange times, no wariness in his step, but definitely a cautious creature. He has yet to broach the perimeter that seems to exist in a 10 foot radius from my personage (person of age, pears aged, an aged 'hood).
Nervous because living is performing is to be asking for judgement. Someday I may tell someone about Fred. In the meantime, we're working on our interpersonal communication skills, especially the non-verbal category. It's not what you say. It's how you say it.
Thought: this type of writing will never earn me any money. Stop.
It's quiet in our shoebox. You can hear the neighbors opening cupboards, playing pranks on each other, or holding jam sessions. Last night at midnight there was a 'police raid' on the apartment next door, to the East. (Men's combat boots, worn out. Vintage. Laces freshly pressed.) Tonight, there's a live music jam box going on in the apartment to our north. (Pair of women's heels, platform. Black pleather. Strappy.) And suddenly it hits me that New York City is a live hopping city. This is why no one has a TV but why people write novels here and why people come here to be in bands or make music, or spend a life exploring the arts scenes or to talk or to get lost in the subways or to come down off of luck and plunder the depths of compassion on the A line from Fulton to Jay Street. Because there's a passion in the air and the opportunities are boundless and the only one singing sad songs and stories of could haves and would haves are saps and soul suckers and they don't last long here.
Where do you fit in brown pair of mary jane loafers with turqouise tassels and exquisite, hand cut pleating on the sides. All leather. Soft, but good for walking along riverbanks, alone.
------
There's a mouse in our apartment. His name is Fred Wilson, like the VC. His name was to just be Fred but my brain kept going and it just stuck. F red wils on. He's cheeky, comes out to play at strange times, no wariness in his step, but definitely a cautious creature. He has yet to broach the perimeter that seems to exist in a 10 foot radius from my personage (person of age, pears aged, an aged 'hood).
Nervous because living is performing is to be asking for judgement. Someday I may tell someone about Fred. In the meantime, we're working on our interpersonal communication skills, especially the non-verbal category. It's not what you say. It's how you say it.
EEEEEEEEEEEE. MOUSE!
Oct 4, 2013
Corpus Writ.
The fall of man is felt in the heart long before the cold winds come.
How much of a man must you read before you know that he is a gifted, a talented, writer? Is it the one sentence that he speaks out of turn, or the fifty fifth chapter of his magnum opus, 3,000 pages in. It's not prolifigy, though that speaks to the heart and soul and causes you to know, deep in your soul that you stand before, in front of, behind one who knows expression.
When does talent really begin to show itself? Will you recite back to me the time when she was six and she read every street sign aloud, but to herself, a chanting of locations passing that taught her both a sense of direction and love for the written word. Or perhaps the time in fourth grade that he go caught red handed with a stack of borrowed library books on the play ground and instead of standing up for himself, he wrote the librarian a treatise on the imperative of free literature. She learned how to count at 14. He got his mother's sister's cousin's nose and died early of Parkinson's.
Words, they say, last forever.
How much of a man must you read before you know that he is a gifted, a talented, writer? Is it the one sentence that he speaks out of turn, or the fifty fifth chapter of his magnum opus, 3,000 pages in. It's not prolifigy, though that speaks to the heart and soul and causes you to know, deep in your soul that you stand before, in front of, behind one who knows expression.
When does talent really begin to show itself? Will you recite back to me the time when she was six and she read every street sign aloud, but to herself, a chanting of locations passing that taught her both a sense of direction and love for the written word. Or perhaps the time in fourth grade that he go caught red handed with a stack of borrowed library books on the play ground and instead of standing up for himself, he wrote the librarian a treatise on the imperative of free literature. She learned how to count at 14. He got his mother's sister's cousin's nose and died early of Parkinson's.
Words, they say, last forever.
Gone away to, Ohio
She awoke in a room, white and glowing walls that stretched up in all directions, as far as she could see. A brilliant dim glow of the early morning sunshine, a place no shadows could live, phantasmically aseptic. Eyes crusted over, she couldn't see much farther than the end of her nose. It was hard to tell where all the brilliant bright light was coming from. She rolled over, face planting her self into darkness once again.
Where the hell was she? The last she remembered had been at the bar with Ben and Jake and Catherine. Out for a few beers. There had been dancing and laughter and talk of taking a trip to the Hamptons next weekend. She was training for a bike ride in November. There was an awkward hesitation in the entire party when Jake realized it was the same week as his birthday, but that was cleared up when she promised to show, at least for a while.
She licked her lips. Dry, like salted caramels, it left her mouth thrusty for more. No sense of urgency, though. But where the hell was she?
You're supposed to be dead, he said. It was then that she realized that her feet were missing. As were her hands. And the sunlight that had been pouring in was really a spotlight. The ghoul reached out his hand and said "and now, you're one of us, love". She was in a water tower, the one at the top of her apartment building. There was no one there, but her. She had drank too much the night before, blacked out (as one will, when there's little to eat the day before), and made a pact with the devil. She was here, stuck in the bottom of a dry, ghoulish tank, white, curving walls of smoothed paint stretching up a sheer twenty feet. The sun turned on its axis.
I'm not a vampire, she thought, neither miserable nor elated, just hung over.
She died of thirst three hours later. Jake, although he attended the funeral, never quite forgave her for scheduling a bike ride the same day as his birthday.
Where the hell was she? The last she remembered had been at the bar with Ben and Jake and Catherine. Out for a few beers. There had been dancing and laughter and talk of taking a trip to the Hamptons next weekend. She was training for a bike ride in November. There was an awkward hesitation in the entire party when Jake realized it was the same week as his birthday, but that was cleared up when she promised to show, at least for a while.
She licked her lips. Dry, like salted caramels, it left her mouth thrusty for more. No sense of urgency, though. But where the hell was she?
You're supposed to be dead, he said. It was then that she realized that her feet were missing. As were her hands. And the sunlight that had been pouring in was really a spotlight. The ghoul reached out his hand and said "and now, you're one of us, love". She was in a water tower, the one at the top of her apartment building. There was no one there, but her. She had drank too much the night before, blacked out (as one will, when there's little to eat the day before), and made a pact with the devil. She was here, stuck in the bottom of a dry, ghoulish tank, white, curving walls of smoothed paint stretching up a sheer twenty feet. The sun turned on its axis.
I'm not a vampire, she thought, neither miserable nor elated, just hung over.
She died of thirst three hours later. Jake, although he attended the funeral, never quite forgave her for scheduling a bike ride the same day as his birthday.
Sep 18, 2013
Pensamentos
You change the future, but you cannot change the present. The trick is finding the intersection between the two.
Aug 22, 2013
SpamDats
Pip install the numpy guns, she yelled down from the barricade as yet another volley of site-o-plasma came raining over the firewall. Ducked down beside the emulator, Miles cursed at the terminal. !!.
> Permission to curse denied.
> sudo !!
> #########...................................................................................
It's nine am on a Thursday morning and all throughout the blogosphere pirate attacks are in full swing. The WorldPress team, just Miles and Jen at this point, has gotten themselves trapped up in a corner of the Chromeworld. Their assignment was to rejoin with the rest of the larger WorldPress who was waiting for them just pass the Safari compass. They had taken a detour through some Ukranian proxy and had to take an unexpected trip to the Caribbean to avoid a few channel TOR narcs, so they were running about 8 hours behind schedule. They had received no new updates from the larger site, just a few dropped ACKs in the TCP channel that Miles was a bit worried about. It didn't help that the the WorldPress team's public site had been throwing back 500's since 10pm the night before.
Miles was brew installing the root kit that he had grabbed freshly updated from the Cellar during a brief interlude the night before, when the port in the firewall nearest him started flashing a dull magenta. "Incoming", Miles yelled, abandoning the terminal screen to dive behind a stack of discarded vim buffers. The port opened with a hiss with a burst of spam data. It was a fill-out attack, meant to plaster in any holes, including the one where Miles and Jen were occupying. Rising faster than a tsunami on the Japanese coast, and as sticky as that fly-paper Miles' Southern Baptist Oklahoman grandmother had insisted on hanging from every beam in her ranch house, the spamdat quickly covered the terminal and began rising up towards the buffers where Miles had fled.
The spamdat was noxious, oily black colored. The tingle of vodka that wafted up from it hinted at a Baltic or Moscovian origin, but from the way the tide pools flowed RTL, he figured it may come from the deeper Tajikistan. Curses. This stuff had byten more dev troops in the past month than Miles had been able to keep count of. And no one was sure where it was coming from. Jen bet that the tracerts would point back to an infiltration of the CDNs, but you just didn't corrupt CDNs like that. To get root on a CDN, it'd have to be an inside job.
But who? Miles didn't really have time to contemplate at the moment. Ever since the EFF.com had gotten taken down by a rouge Anonymous cell from Somalia, proving solidly that the DNS system could be compromised (and in fact had been), the entire state of the Internet had been royally fracked. Authentication and veracity had quickly become fracked. Everyone had their own certs, but there was speculation that someone had discovered a prime-hack for those as well. It was just hard to know who to trust these days.
The spamdat was almost over the vim buffers. Miles could feel it eating away towards his kernel. This might be the end of this run. He tried hand-signalling Jen with a pm on the IRC, then a broader hail mary to anyone that may be listening in #world-press. No response. Time to pull out.
The world went dark as Miles unplugged from the simulator, lolling back into his captain's chair and silently cursing at the walls of the cardboard box where he hung out on weekends.
He was only ten, and his Mom didn't like him spending time on the nets, understandable since it was mostly to blame for the stock market crash, the housing collapse, the rise of the Nigerian prince cabal. They now made their living renting out the living room on Airbdrm, when the Paypal networks seemed to be functioning, and giving it over to a licey Couchcrashers when it wasn't. For a while, she had attempted to make a living as a SalesForce jedi, one of the legions of pseudo hacks who walked around in tight jeans, black shirts, blazers and a plethora of conference badges that hung in bunches from their necks like anti-virus talismens. If this was 17th century days they'd be crosses. The Jedi gig didn't last long -- their real immunity had been rooted in supreme inability, but they were a timebomb nonetheless. Eventually, some budding Chinese hacker had decided to cut her teeth on the Jedi-Fileshare and that was the end his mom's foray into the hackulture.
She now worked for USPS.
> Permission to curse denied.
> sudo !!
> #########...................................................................................
It's nine am on a Thursday morning and all throughout the blogosphere pirate attacks are in full swing. The WorldPress team, just Miles and Jen at this point, has gotten themselves trapped up in a corner of the Chromeworld. Their assignment was to rejoin with the rest of the larger WorldPress who was waiting for them just pass the Safari compass. They had taken a detour through some Ukranian proxy and had to take an unexpected trip to the Caribbean to avoid a few channel TOR narcs, so they were running about 8 hours behind schedule. They had received no new updates from the larger site, just a few dropped ACKs in the TCP channel that Miles was a bit worried about. It didn't help that the the WorldPress team's public site had been throwing back 500's since 10pm the night before.
Miles was brew installing the root kit that he had grabbed freshly updated from the Cellar during a brief interlude the night before, when the port in the firewall nearest him started flashing a dull magenta. "Incoming", Miles yelled, abandoning the terminal screen to dive behind a stack of discarded vim buffers. The port opened with a hiss with a burst of spam data. It was a fill-out attack, meant to plaster in any holes, including the one where Miles and Jen were occupying. Rising faster than a tsunami on the Japanese coast, and as sticky as that fly-paper Miles' Southern Baptist Oklahoman grandmother had insisted on hanging from every beam in her ranch house, the spamdat quickly covered the terminal and began rising up towards the buffers where Miles had fled.
The spamdat was noxious, oily black colored. The tingle of vodka that wafted up from it hinted at a Baltic or Moscovian origin, but from the way the tide pools flowed RTL, he figured it may come from the deeper Tajikistan. Curses. This stuff had byten more dev troops in the past month than Miles had been able to keep count of. And no one was sure where it was coming from. Jen bet that the tracerts would point back to an infiltration of the CDNs, but you just didn't corrupt CDNs like that. To get root on a CDN, it'd have to be an inside job.
But who? Miles didn't really have time to contemplate at the moment. Ever since the EFF.com had gotten taken down by a rouge Anonymous cell from Somalia, proving solidly that the DNS system could be compromised (and in fact had been), the entire state of the Internet had been royally fracked. Authentication and veracity had quickly become fracked. Everyone had their own certs, but there was speculation that someone had discovered a prime-hack for those as well. It was just hard to know who to trust these days.
The spamdat was almost over the vim buffers. Miles could feel it eating away towards his kernel. This might be the end of this run. He tried hand-signalling Jen with a pm on the IRC, then a broader hail mary to anyone that may be listening in #world-press. No response. Time to pull out.
The world went dark as Miles unplugged from the simulator, lolling back into his captain's chair and silently cursing at the walls of the cardboard box where he hung out on weekends.
He was only ten, and his Mom didn't like him spending time on the nets, understandable since it was mostly to blame for the stock market crash, the housing collapse, the rise of the Nigerian prince cabal. They now made their living renting out the living room on Airbdrm, when the Paypal networks seemed to be functioning, and giving it over to a licey Couchcrashers when it wasn't. For a while, she had attempted to make a living as a SalesForce jedi, one of the legions of pseudo hacks who walked around in tight jeans, black shirts, blazers and a plethora of conference badges that hung in bunches from their necks like anti-virus talismens. If this was 17th century days they'd be crosses. The Jedi gig didn't last long -- their real immunity had been rooted in supreme inability, but they were a timebomb nonetheless. Eventually, some budding Chinese hacker had decided to cut her teeth on the Jedi-Fileshare and that was the end his mom's foray into the hackulture.
She now worked for USPS.
Aug 15, 2013
to be continued.
We talked again last night for the first time in a while and
it felt like we had never stopped.
It wasn't even about a thing it was about
life and it felt just like breathing.
I woke up refreshed
for the first time in months.
I realized it was
just a familiar dream and that
it wasn't the first such conversation
we'd ever had.
Just the first one I remembered.
Turns out I, we didn't really stop talking.
The conversation's been there all along.
it felt like we had never stopped.
It wasn't even about a thing it was about
life and it felt just like breathing.
I woke up refreshed
for the first time in months.
I realized it was
just a familiar dream and that
it wasn't the first such conversation
we'd ever had.
Just the first one I remembered.
Turns out I, we didn't really stop talking.
The conversation's been there all along.
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