Throwing sand in the gears

Spent a couple of hours out at the beach waiting for some space to become available. Part of helping some folks put their lives together. Have to cop to the fact that we have not been very successful. We have far from failed but we still don't have a secure space for them to be in. Life continues to flow and the courts beckon for the next few days. Things have spun off in new directions and I am fatigued. What else is new.

I Had a Point When I Started

Sitting above the waves watching the bold ply their skills and the vigorous run along the cliffs I regret my time sequestered from the world that has been this past year.



I find myself thinking dark thoughts and so I am leaving the edge and heading down to the sand and what the new tides will bring. Not cool when the ledge starts to look like a reasonable option.

I find I am unable to release my anger. Impotent rage is the most useless of emotions. "Hate him back", doesn't work for me as I don't believe in "Him", in the first place. It serves no purpose to rage at the Medical Machine. The one doctor's incompetence cost a week of delay at the surgical clinic but didn't alter the outcome in any significant way. The Hospice and their half assed work while the celebrated the birth of Jebus or the death of the year or whatever fetivus they partook of did make the events more traumatic but again altered the outcome not one wit. Family tantrums and hasty decisions take no heed of my anguish as does evolution and its' creation of the oncogenes in the first place.

This most useless of pastimes creeps into my thoughts in idle times when the wind and the the rain are stealing my sleep and the cold grinds into my joints.

Cold Water

Heading back to the beach tomorrow after one last night at the Inn. Bathroom ceiling was dripping yesterday and the came in and patched it. Spent the evening at the Mormon church for The Taylor family baptism. In the real world even when your friends do something odd it is nice to try and be supportive. It is a nice group of people and I hope it gives the kids what they are looking for but I doubt it. The water was evidently too cold for Taloura's taste and the Stepford kind of smiles on the faces of some of the folks was a little creepy. I was polite and sat quietly while they talked about the power of their magic and such. Kept thinking about the Southpark episode with the family that tries to recruit Stan and his family. If they were not such homophobic misogynists I guess it would sit better but as my life is not exactly firing on all cylinders at the moment it seemed a bad time to give advice.

Beach Eye Opener

The week at the beach was an eye opener. My joints are not up to winter camping. That was just the beginning of some things I had to face. The car runs up the cost of sites dramatically. $35 a night for tent space works out to $1000 a month. That is more than I was paying for a two-bedroom apartment and beyond the budget for the start up. The state has raised the fees, to help with the budget shortfall I guess. I liked the distraction free environment that camping provided even under the harsh weather conditions but I slept poorly. When the wind is bending the tent pole down and bouncing it off your head it tends to keep you awake.

In addition to the higher fees the services have gone to the dogs. The showers were only working one day out of seven and every morning the toilet was backed up. I have been pretty bummed and starting each day that way was disheartening in the extreme. As a result I am looking for a place to rent. Looked at the outside of a few places and then had to turn in an application to get in to look at the inside of one of them. I went dyslexic on the new phone number so I may have wasted 2 days on that one. It is a unique looking space from the pictures but I want to see the loft before I decide. The places I looked at in old town, 1 rented and the other is not yet vacant. The one was above a restaurant and that would have been cool but it was already gone.

My skills have eroded more with the years and it seems harder and harder to conform to the rules. Have been unable to complete the car paperwork and hence needed to stay in Eureka for a bit longer. Rented a weekly room to try and recover a bit physically at the Royal Inn. Will try to recover over the weekend and go at it again Monday.

The plan will now have to be modified depending on what type of place I end up getting but will be traveling and camping with the bike only and when the weather improves.

A photo interlude

Not much to say today so here are some pictures.

Still in recovery mode from the weekend. I need to get back to into the fitness regime that I was on but I just don’t seem to be able to get motivated. Went out to the woods to think and got some writing done. I am just in a funk that has no seeable end. I am reluctant to make any decisions at this time of year but I am also reluctant to continue to drift in the sludge of my own thoughts. I have started remembering my dreams again. For long periods of time I sleep and wake remembering nothing of the minds battles in the night. Now when the morning comes I am aware of what I have been sorting through and it has been unpleasant. The feeling of oppression, the claustrophobic dreams of being buried or drowned haunt my mornings now as well as my nights. This combined with the ache in my legs each morning now makes it tough just to get my sorry butt out from under the covers each day. It is two separate things that I must deal with. Why am I now remembering the dreams what significant thing has changed. and why are the dreams so negative. Why are dreams of Cary so vivid. I know perhaps why they are here now, a matter of timing.
The chemistry of the mind and whether or not to mess with it, that becomes the larger question of the moment. For now I need to keep riding daily ,plan another trip to the woods and take things in small chunks. Work each day on the writing as well. Even if it is not particularly productive I need to get into better habits. Working will beget better work of that I am confident.

Foggy beaches and divided brains.

Spent the last few days shivering in the woods as my planning was undermined by bad intelligence. The weather dudes had predicted dry sunny and mid 60‘s, what I got was wet, foggy, overnight rain and mid to low 50’s. Still had a pretty nice time at Patrick’s Point State Park. I had stayed there in their Hiker Biker camp ground but always on my way to or from someplace else. This time I thought I would spend a day exploring the park.
My fitness level has deteriorated after the lung frying of the fires so when I finally made it to the top of the hill I was wiped. The sun would make its only appearance around that time so I made camp and collapsed. After a nap I got up and wrote for a while. Another installment of a new obsession will be up later in the week on the rude blog. Today I am really feeling it as my legs are aching and my joints are swollen. But the Raider’s are winning and the codeine has kicked in so things could be worse.
The harsh weather limited the filming out at the ocean. I climbed down the trail at Wedding Rock and got some good footage of the shore break but most of the out to sea stuff was pretty washed out. The vids will be up on the Radmul channel on youtube. Earlier in the day I rode over to the Sumseng village. A preserved Yurok village with some dugouts and plank style houses. The amount of labor involved in making those planks with an ancient adz must have been enormous. They are kind of dark dwellings without windows and kind of hobbit hole doorways.
Out at wedding rock a few months ago I spent a little time up top doing some whale watching. Wasn’t able to get any photos but did see a few of the leviathans. Thinking about consciousness and having some odd dreams out on the point put me in mind of the brains of whales. Whales never sleep, they have to come up for air 24/7 so if they were to nod off they die. They do dream, or put half of their brain into a REM state. Our brains are divided into hemispheres as our a whales but while ours are constantly interactive through the corpus callosum the whale brain can operate as separate halves one side dreaming while the other stays alert and remembers to surface. That duality would be a very alien intelligence. To have one foot in the world of dreams and one in the realm of reality would be very cool.

A Teusday blurb

Took a great ride today in the sunshine. Planning a trip south for later in the week maybe out hwy 36. Haven’t been out that way in about 5 years that would be fun.
I have once again wasted some time arguing against superstition in the bloggophere. I will continue to do so even though I know it is pointless. Just as I am arguing for Senator Obama to adopt the right position on every issue. Currently it is on the issue of FISA and warrantless wiretaps and gathering of emails for data mining. Once he promised to fight it he should keep his word. The thing that has kept Democrats from winning with many of what the media calls low information voters is the unwillingness to stand on principle. Not what the issue is, if they knew about issues they wouldn’t be in that group but once the meme that you are untrustworthy is out it is tough to put back in the bottle. The switch from advocating public financing to opting out has already damaged him so now playing politics with the 4th amendment makes him look like a liar, pragmatist means nothing to the undecided. They don’t know what it means and they do not believe in it.

Wave whining Radmul

The first day of summer found me in a foul mood with the Congress voting away our right not to be spied upon by our government and funding the war without withdrawing the troops. The Congress is holding hearings on torture that the president seems to have authorized. I was reading the news and the blogs and listened to this speech by Martin King and decided that I needed to run for the border or at least the beach. The ride was nice, no wind for a change and nature provided a spectacular light show and thunder storm at night. Thought that I would share a few pictures and some video, sorry but the actual lightning shots didn't turn out but the cloud video is on youTube at the radmul page.