Thought Terrarium

It's less than a month and a half now until I head off to Peru, and things are starting to change. At first there was no intensity of emotion about the trip itself. My heart jumped at the thought of seeing my girlfriend there (she's been there for a couple months already), but Peru itself seemed an odd choice of travel destinations. Hadn't I been contemplating a trip to Australia for much of the time that I was in Alaska? And hadn't I already been to Peru? The answer to both is of course yes, but they have proven themselves mostly irrelevant now that I have a ticket in hand so to speak. They were obvious questions in the face of my new decision, but they have faded as the new trip comes closer. And as I prepare more thoroughly than I ever have for any trip, the excitement grows enormously by the day. My excitement largely stems from what my reading has begun to show me. A power shift is under way now in South America. With Hugo Chavez leading the way, most of...

For some r eason anonymous commenters have been taking issue with my blog lately. Actually, there have only been two, but it's a little disconcerting. There was of course the absinthe issue. I to ok that up in a post a couple slots down. Now there's someone who doesn't seem to understand the humor in the phrase "floppy a." Anonymous Commenter II claims that there is n o such phrase. I beg to differ. If AC II cares to look three sentence back, I think he/she/it will find a phrase of interest, surrounded by quotatio n marks. The notorious "floppy a" in effect. I know for a fact that there are now at least three documented cases of use. Sure they're all on this blog, and all the undocumented ones are in my head, but lets not nit-pick the details here. My question in the previous post was not asserting that "floppy a" is a phrase that people actually use. It was merely associating the phrase with a floppy disk drive, commonly referr...

If you look, loyal reader, at the archives to the right, or below to the post called "Absinthe," you'll discover that I've included a descrpiption of how we consumed the drink. It had to do with flames and a big spoon and a sugar cube. There are pictures. I'd never consumed the stuff, and had little knowledge of it, but an anonymous commenter took issue with the method that we employed, apparently concerned that we were trying to get high from the hallucinogenic properties of the constituent herb, wormwood. I had indeed heard the rumor that the stuff had more than just the normal alcoholic effects, but hallucinations were not the intended result. I can't speak for the others, but I did it out of a sense of irreverance. The stuff is illegal after all, and if a trip had been what we were after, I wouldn't have been very satisfied. Our commenter says that the burning of the sugar cube is an invention of the Czechs, and that all Czech absinthe is fake a...

Who doesn't chuckle to themself at the phrase "floppy a?" Really.

Check out Moondog's pee poll post . Please read and leave comments. We're very curious. bayareablues.blogspot.com

I was barely over a wicked case of strep throat, and not as well rested as I should have been, yet nevertheless participated in a night of absinthe drinking on New Years Eve. It arrived with my friends Max and Moritz, brothers visiting from Germany and Switzerland, respectively. In the pictures below you can get a feel for the interesting method of preparation. There is a special perforated spoon with a wrinkle between handle and head that keeps it balanced on the edge of a glass. The spoon goes on top of your glass, an d a sugar cube on top of that. Absinthe is poured over the cube, and then the alcohol-so aked sugar is ignited. It's not entirely clear to me why this is necessary, but I was told it has something to do with carmelizing the sugar. The melted sugar is then dumped into the liquid in the cup and stirred in with some water. Bot toms up. Tastes like licorice.

This is the big bend in the river that I wrote about in the Artic Trek entries. I just stitched all these photos together for the first time. I think that the picture is rather huge, but I like it.

The top one is fourth grade test scores and the bottom one is free lunch in New York City.

Thinking about my middle school brought me to a website called "great schools" which will show you statistics about pretty much any public school you want. It has an option to compare schools as well. Interestingly, the only real criteria for comparison are test scores, and percentage of the student body receiving free and reduced lunch. If you look at the comparison of schools in this area, there is a loose correlation between high test scores and low free lunch numbers and vice versa. Notably, the top scoring school has by far the smallest number of poor kids eating free lunch, and down in Rochester over half the kids are eating reduced and free, and wait a minute, they've got the lowest test scores. Hmmm.

Last night I dreamt about running around in my underwear. It wasn't a self-conscious dream at all, as one might expect. In fact, my most vivid memory involves using a pocket knife to cut my boxer-briefs down to size. I guess I wanted to have that traditional brief look. So I cut the legs up high. It was a little ragged, but I'm sure it was pretty hot. Then for some reason I was at Jefferson Middle School, as a student I think, but in my current body (sans pants and boxer legs). Escape was obviously the only option, but I had to find a path away from the school where there was always something between me and the office windows to obstruct the principals view. I got away no problem, but the dream gets fuzzier from there. A swingset, a pretty girl with a wad of toilet paper stuck to her shoe walking down some stairs. I don't know.

Four years later I'm planning another trip to South America. This time I'll be heading down to meet my girlfriend Cassandra. She's there studying abroad as a grand finale to her Evergreen education. We don't have a set plan, and our travel priorities are rather different, but one crazy itinerary involves heading south into the Chilean Atacama and then East and North through the Bolivian altiplano, across lake Titicaca, up to Cuzco and the cordillera, then finally down to the coast for time on the beach. We'll see.

Don't worry. I don't fancy myself a poet. I just liked the way those words sounded when I wrote them, and I thought the rythm might be accentuated by breaking up the lines. The intended meaning is probably totally unclear. But whatever. I'm sure what I was talking about is impossibly opaque and ridiculous anyway.

In dens over moss shrouded heaps, and corners without light where smoke still wafts from unlit doors in back alleys, the voices of quiet conspiritors murmur in the night. Bare lightbulbs cracked walls, concrete floor and dinge tinted shadows and teeth, shown in sly smiles and resting, lost on the cold damp earth. And outside where whispers riffle branch tips, sending the hanging drops to forest floor, to compost, to bed-- the solid ground regenerates. Then daylight, and our stories swirl through sunbeams after the rain, and scurry into undiscovered recesses waiting to lilt through dark and damp again.

JD and I met up in Anchorage at the end of my Arctic adventure. He was just finished with a month of gill-netting in Bristol Bay. (Note his manly beard.)

Finally, that arctic story is finished. Now I can write about other things. In the meantime I'll show some pictures from Prince William Sound. That's where I was all summer on a small cruise ship called the "Spirit of Columbia."

It was another long stay in my tent after that long day of walking. It was how I'd planned it more or less, giving me plenty of time to recover, and plenty of time to think and write. If it hadn't been raining again, I'd have explored some of the surrounding mountains to get a better look at the valley, but as it was I wanted to be dry and warm. I'm not sure exactl y how long I was in the tent, but when I finally got out the sun was peeking through the clouds a little. It wasn't really any warmer, and it was clearly going to rain again, but there was eno ugh sunshine for me to lay out all of my things to dry. I dressed in my shorts for the first time (with my long underwear on, and wetted down with deet) and went about making myself a small meal. Act ually, I was too lazy to cook so I made do with the last of my dried fruits and nuts. The mosquitos buzzed in an unhappy swarm above my toxic head, and I contemplated the day to come. I wasn't sure exactly how I was...

Laying in my tent, sleeping at times, writing for hours, quietly listening to the drops, I waited for the rain to stop falling. Though it's not a bad place to hang out-- the col or of the tent filters the light into a pleasant golden glow-- after 24 hours I was ready to get out. My drinking water was gone, I was ravenously hungry, and my bladder was far, far too full. At a lull in the weather I began preparing myself for a peek out of my den. I unzip p ed the front flap and got socks and long underwear. I put on my rain pants, boo ts and g aiters, a long-sleeved shirt and my hat, even my wet wool gloves. It was time to test out my blistered feet and get a bite to eat. T hen I'd be ready to head up to the pass with a light load, or head b ack down the valley with everything. Of course it was difficult to get out of a warm, comfortable sleeping bag and into the cold wetness, but I looked forward to the continued challenge of this lonely exist ence. Ther e was much to be excite...

Journal Entry: 10 July, 2005 I've been holed up in my tent for the last 14 or 15 hours.... [W] hen I woke up today I discovered that the rain that had just started when I set up my tent had been pouring continuously all night. Little puddles are starting to form in the corners of the tent and drips becoming more common around the edges. I can only hole up for so long, but it seems senseless to go out and get soaked just so I can see a socked in pass.... I've got my barometer out beside me and I check it rather incessantly. It's hanging at a ridiculously low 990 (which must have something to do with the altitude) but I think it has to start rising soon.... Perhaps I can find an alternate route so that I don't have to go back the way I came. [Later.] After lengthy consideration of the maps I don't think that there is any way for me to go but the way I came. At least on the second time through I'll have a better idea of how to avoid the tussocks.

My third full day of hiking was a l ong one. I woke up on my gravel bar after a night of rain to find a beautiful morning. It took a long time to get out of camp. All alone, I went at a slow pace, eating and collecting my gear contemplatively. After all, the sun wasn't going to set. As I was getting ready to go, lo oking reluctantly at my big pack and getting ready to swing it up onto my back I noticed a little piece of paper sticking out of the padding. It was a note from my friend Steph. She had written it and tucked it into my pack nearly seven weeks before when we went camping in th e Olympic Mountains back home. I can't remember exactly what it said, and I've since lost it, but I know it told me to scream in a beautiful p lace. It was such an unexpected connection to my world, to home, I might have scr eamed just for the happiness of having received it, but as I looked around I saw beautiful clouds drifting over the mountain tops in the awesome blue stillness of co...