Rain is sweeping back over the Bay Area today. It started yesterday, and I've been enjoying listening to it spatter against the roof.

Despite the energizing weather, I've been spending an aimless weekend, listening to music and reading and feeling like I should be doing something more. I'm not sure why I sometimes feel this way - that relaxing isn't enough. I start to feel guilty when I spend too much time inside. I am, after all, an outdoor educator who spends much of his time trying to get kids outside. I guess I could read outside today, but my book would probably get wet.

Then again, this might just be an ebb in my energy cycle. I'm not manic depressive or anything like that, but I notice that my energy and inspiration levels seem to fluctuate. It is often tied in with the weather, with energetic weather seeming to generate similar energy within me. Maybe the ebb can be explained by the Springlike weather of the last week or two.

Currently listening to: Yob "The Great Cessation"

Spring seems to have found a new home in January. The days and nights have been surprisingly mild for the last couple of weeks, although I notice that there is finally a bit of rain creeping into the forecast. Given the nature of meteorology though, it might never actually materialize. Strange weather always seems to start a war of words between the people who dismiss the whole concept of global warming and the more logical section of the population. The global warming naysayers always point their sharp little fingers at every cooler than usual day and exclaim, "See! The climate is getting cooler!" Of course, the whole concept of geological time is probably completely lost on the majority of them. You don't see a bunch of people hopping up and using this mild California January to argue the other side.

I think, generally speaking, that a lot of religious people only think of things in human terms and human time. Gradual trends in one direction or another, which take place on a whole different time scale, are beneath their radar. Maybe they just need to have faith in something they can't see. Wait...

Speaking of time, it has now been a few days more than a year since my mom died. Wednesday marked the anniversary of that date, and Jeanine and I went and hid a letterbox in her honor, near the library where she spent much of her time and energy sorting books for library sales. As of this writing, it has been found four times. I think my mom would have appreciated the tribute, and probably would have liked getting involved in the hobby of letterboxing too. Check out this page for clues on how to find her letterbox.

After hiding the letterbox, we took a walk around the block near her house, a place where I had spent some very bad moments exactly a year earlier. It has been transformed by the new owners. Landscaping has been cleared (there used to be a monstrous, ivy-choked, rat infested tree off to the left), the garage door and some windows have been replaced, and new outside lights have appeared. It's beginning to look like somebody else's house. For some reason, blogger won't let me insert photos in the middle of the post. They always float to the top, so if you were confused as to why there is a picture of a house up at the top, now you know the story behind it.

Currently listening to: Bear McCreary "Battlestar Galactica: The Plan and Razor" soundtrack. I don't watch TV, but occasionally somebody will lend me DVDs of TV shows. I watched the original Battlestar Galactica as a kid, either at friends' houses or on the little black and white TV at my dad's work (if I remember correctly). That entertained me as a kid. The new version of the series entertains me as an adult, it being much more thought-provoking than the original. Don't let the fact that it is a TV show keep you away from checking it out. The music is excellent as well, with it's mournful middle-eastern tinged orchestral sounds and occasional heavy metal guitars. I love McCreary's version of All Along the Watchtower too.

Today was blue and warm, with birds in the trees and people in the parks. I took the girls to the park and sat with my back against a Redwood, reading a book while they played. It even smelled like Spring.

My dad, who couldn't make it down for the holidays, finally made it down this weekend for a belated visit and gift exchange. Now, there are more books to read and more chocolate to eat. It was a nice visit. Before he got here, Willow was worried that he wasn't going to come, but he made it here, along with my brother. After they left, Willow and I went to a convention with Jeanine and her daughter,Eva, where we caught a magic show and a bit of belly dancing before playing with balloons. The girls got their faces painted, with willow looking like she had a large ladybug smack in the middle of her face, and Eva looking like a rotting corpse. Willow got to stay up until almost midnight too, although she'll be going to bed much earlier tonight. She still has remnants of the face paint around her eyes, making it look like she's either very tired or has started wearing make-up.

Now, we're going to eat creme brulee.

The sky is blue and calm, and has been for several days. It feels good to go outside without a jacket, but the mild weather lacks spark and intensity, leaving me feeling that I need an injection of energy of some sort. The moonrise yesterday evening was beautiful though, with the white bright moon rising beyond some wispy orange clouds and shining through them with such intensity that it was almost as if they weren't there at all. For some reason, the moon looked too bright for the sky, lending an air of unreality to the scene.

When I'm not out gazing at the moon, I've been spending too much time reading lately. Jeanine loaned me a book, by Walter J. Williams, called The Rift, about an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.9 occurring on the New Madrid Fault along the Mississippi River. I wasn't previously aware that there was a fault there. It seems strange that there would be one in the middle of a continental plate. Who said that you can't learn new things from fiction? It's a long book too, with more than 900 pages, lots of characters, and quite a bit of serious damage. I'm nearly 300 pages into it now.

All of this fictional disaster has me thinking about the problem of peak oil, which is something more people should be thinking about. An oil-based economy will one day prove to have been a mere blip on the timeline of civilization. There is no way that it won't.

Currently listening to: Bohren & der Club of Gore "Geisterfaust"

The raccoons have been keeping a low profile around camp this season, although I'm finally starting to see them now and then. Last night, one was temporarily obsessed with climbing onto one of the ping pong tables, and then jumping off so he could climb back up again. He looked quite deranged, doing something that seemed to serve no purpose, something not immediately linked to finding food. Whether he was playing, or had been driven insane by ingesting too much human garbage, I'll never know. I kind of like the idea of animals playing for no discernible purpose, which reminds me of Jeanine's cat Dexter, who has so much fun playing with the laser pointer (chasing the little dot of light) that he will attempt to take it out himself, often at strange hours of the night. Of course, that has a purpose - it's training to become an efficient hunter. I'm currently watching Willow playing with her Playmobil toys, She has made a little corral for her deer family. Regardless of whether we're feline or human, or otherwise, play shapes our minds, so I'm glad that she can lose herself in a world of imagination for hours. Playing isn't just a pastime, it's one of the skills one needs to be truly happy. We're never too old to play, and apparently at least one raccoon knows that too (if my garbage eating hypothesis is incorrect, that is...).

A couple of nights ago it was cold enough to leave morning frost on car windows. Today, it was warm enough to go out without a jacket. Welcome to January in California.

Currently listening to: Umbra Nihil "The Borderland Rituals"

Today was spent inside. Willow lost herself in a Playmobil world of her own creation, with time set aside for reading. I lost myself in a novel called Lucifer's Hammer, written by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle and first published when I was 10. It's interesting reading about major disaster striking the planet (in this case, quite literally, in the form of a comet)during the seventies. What was true of survivors then would be doubly true now - the realization that nearly all of the things we take for granted are suddenly in very short supply. The point is brought up several times (by the same character) that we couldn't fix, let alone make, most of the things we use in our everyday lives if they were to break down or vanish. This is something that I often muse about. What always interests me most about stories like this is how the characters react to overwhelming disaster. How does a technological society start anew, or does it? Then again, I have always been interested in sociology, enough so that I majored in it (along with Environmental Studies) in college. In the case of this book, unlike, say, George Stewart's Earth Abides, the survivors are focused on regaining their technology. I could go on about how technology is a mixed blessing, but being surrounded by complicated electricity-sucking devices, it might come across as a bit hypocritical. I'm the first to admit that I often take too much for granted, and this book has me probing that particular back alley in my subconsciousness. Fiction is useful in that way, especially speculative fiction.

Yesterday was different. We actually went out and spent some time in the bone freezing cold (by California standards) at Happy Hollow in San Jose, watching the sleepy Jaguar, restless Fossa, and a trio of uncooperative Capybaras, among others, and chasing after the girls as they excitedly ran here and there. After leaving the park, we walked along the derelict park train tracks under ominous skies. The weather seemed apocalyptic, with a whitish sky that turned slightly orange towards the west. This impression was no doubt bolstered by the fact that many of the redwoods in the park are dead or dying, with removal notices tacked to them.

Currently listening to: Elm "live at WFMU'

The cold fog erased the distance this morning, and a hazy whiteness hung around for most of the day, lending a certain, undefinable strangeness to the air. This is possibility weather. Anything can happen. The less we see, the more options we have waiting out there beyond the limits of our vision.

Now, darkness has joined the cold, erasing more than even the fog can, and I'm warm inside, reading a novel about the end of the world, which continues to be either an unintentional or a subconscious literary theme of late, since I just now caught the thematic connection to the two books I wrote about a couple of posts back. Either way, it's a subject which has always fascinated me, not because I even remotely want it to happen, but from a sociological interest in the human factor involved in such a shattering event.

Now, back to reading.

Currently listening to: Thomas Bel "The Birds are still the Monarchs"

My first short week of work this year is almost over. The first three camp weeks of this month are 4-day programs, which means I only work three night shifts per week. So far this week, each night there has been a pee incident, which means that each night a pair of lonely pants has tumbled through the washer and dryer. It makes me wish all of the incontinent kids would get it over with at once, so I'd have a full load of laundry. The timing of these accidents is beyond my control though, so I can only sigh and accept the soggy clothing as it is handed to me.

Other than that, it has been a nice week, with a good group of kids. The stars have that cold, Winter clarity, and the mornings are painted with frost.

Currently listening to: Ruby Howl "The Wind and the Tree"

Here's a link to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT, pronounced "vehement")website. It's actually very reasonable and interesting. I don't think there is currently much of a chance that the majority, let alone all, of the people on our planet will ever get behind this, but if our environmental problems continue to spiral out of control, it may someday become a popular movement.

The last two nonfiction books I've read go strangely hand in hand. The first one, Thomas Ligotti's "The Conspiracy Against The Human Race" has as its main premise the idea that consciousness is a curse, and something not to be desired. Ligotti feels that humanity should voluntarily end its existence by no longer breeding. It's a fascinating book, and reads very much like one of his works of supernatural fiction. This was my introduction to pessimist philosophy, and while, for the most part, I don't agree with it, I found the book interesting and very well written (like everything else he has done). For instance, I had no idea there was a pessimist philosophy movement, no doubt, as Ligotti points out, because the pessimists don't get as much press as the optimists.

Strangely enough, the next book I read, Alan Weisman's "The World Without Us" tackles the question of what will happen to the mess we leave behind after we go. Within its pages, there is even brief mention of a group called the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, whose members advocate the same thing Ligotti does, if for slightly different reasons. It makes me wonder if Ligotti is a member of the movement, or if the horror writer in him would be more at home with the Church of Euthanasia, whose members advocate, among other things, cannibalism (I haven't checked, but Weisman mentions that their website has a guide for butchering human carcasses, plus a recipe for barbeque sauce). If we did indeed stop breeding, or at least slowed it down, life would definitely be better for those among the decreased future population. If we keep breeding with carelessness, eventually our population will be so out of balance with the natural order of things that nature will balance it for us, which as any biologist will you, means disease and famine. Not to mention increased warfare over progressively dwindling resources.

Both books are fascinating, and well worth the time and effort taken to read them.

Currently listening to: Tor Lundvall "Under the Shadows of Trees"

One more day of vacation remains after today, and then I go back to work. I'm hoping that my recent energy doesn't get sucked away again by the necessity of splitting my sleep schedule.

I spent my first money of the year today, ironically enough on a free photo book, which came with my annual renewal of my Flickr account. I picked my favorite photos of last year from my Flickr stream, and there were enough of them to make my book a few pages too long for the "free" offer, so I paid the few extra dollars, plus some money for shipping. I mention this because after nearly a year of not watching my budget, I'm going to be paying more attention to where my money goes.

Speaking of buying things, I've been reading more about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and have been reawakened to the evils of plastic, especially plastic of the throw-away variety. I also recently saw a great short film by Ramin Bahrani called "Plastic Bag", brilliantly narrated by Werner Herzog. You can watch it, and other films in the Futurestates series here. I haven't watched the other films yet, but it's on my list of things to do. I've long been converted to the cause of cutting down on excess plastic (and other materials) by consuming less of them, but it's always good to keep learning more about the continued dangers of careless living.

Currently listening to: Bohren & der Club of Gore "Sunset Mission"

Welcome 2011. The holiday residue is partially cleared away, and the sky remains steadfastly gray.

Despite realizing that numbers on a calendar are arbitrary, I find myself enjoying the chance to reflect on a numerically delineated chunk of time while looking forward to the next chunk. It seems to be human nature to compartmentalize things in some fashion or other. Sometimes we use words, and sometimes we use walls. I'm a bigger fan of the former, unless the wall in question is covered in moss and lichen, and beautifully crumbling, or the words in question advocate greed, hate, or any of humanity's other less desirable traits. If this is the case, I'd have to reverse my stance.

May you all have a beautiful new year. May old walls crumble and may your words build connections.

Speaking of words, here's a link to a cool site on word origins. Jeanine and I discovered it last night when we all of a sudden had to know the origin of the word "cobweb". "Cob" was originally "coppe", which was derived from the old English "Attercop", meaning "spider". This was derived from "atter" (poison) and "coppe" (head), Poison-head!

Currently listening to: Rasputina "daytrotter session" This was the last new music to enter my home in 2010, in the form of a free download from Daytrotter.com

Next year should prove eventful.

As for 2010, I find that it's hard to characterize a whole year based on a handful of events that just happened to occur during that time span. It might be better to reflect on the recent past in terms of personal growth or artistic accomplishments, although I think in some ways I'd consider this year a failure on that account.

I'm glad that Jeanine was a part of my year. She helps me reconnect with my playful, spontaneous side. Maybe I do the same for her. Either way you look at it, we have fun playing together.

I can't reflect on this year without mentioning my mom. It has been nearly a year now since she died. Her house has been sold, and her belongings are either with the survivors or in unknown homes. It's still strange and sad that she is gone. It was perhaps a blessing for her that she went quickly. I have at least one small additional tribute planned for her early in the upcoming year.

For now though, December is waning, and it is dark and heavily raining.

Currently listening to: Twinsistermoon "Then Fell the Ashes..."

Right now, I'm in the middle of the eye of the Christmas storm. All of the preparations are done, but the gifts are as yet undistributed. The weather is likewise in the middle of a lull, with an air of anticipation hanging over the valley. Much rain has happened, but more rain is coming.

I was raised with a secular version of Christmas. Personally, I've always been drawn more towards paganism, with the Winter Solstice having more intrinsic meaning than the christian holiday that has supplanted it. The Earth sustains us, but I guess if some people need a complex mythology to help sustain them, then that's okay too. After all, we are all made of stories. Each day adds a new page, or if you live an interesting life, a new chapter. I remember being a child and living through Decembers that seemed to last for the duration of a trilogy. Now it seems December is over and done with in a sentence or two. In the future, the month will no doubt flash by in mere words.

May you all have a wonderful holiday season, regardless of which traditions you follow, and if you must consume, do it with care.

Currently listening to: Thomas Bel "For Lorn"

After having to contend with a bit of cloud cover during the first few minutes of the lunar eclipse, we changed locations and got treated to an unobstructed view of the moon getting eaten by reddish shadow. We watched as the bright disc shrunk to a fingernail crescent and then to nothing, leaving behind a coppery shadow moon. The last time a total lunar eclipse occurred on the Winter Solstice, the year was 1554, a year when a great many more people no doubt viewed the gradual erasure of the moon with alarm. Come to think of it, I'm sure there are plenty of people who still get all bent out of shape about it. I base this supposition about a story I once read about how some people reacted during the 1994 earthquake in L.A. Apparently, at least some people who were awakened in the wee hours of the morning by that particular earthquake got rather scared upon exiting their homes and discovering a bunch of "new" stars in the sky. Of course, most people knew that the power outage caused by the quake made it easier to see the night sky, but a few called 911, asking the no doubt amused operators on the other end of the line if the earthquake had somehow caused the extra stars to suddenly appear. I wonder what these same people must have thought when the moon gradually turned to blood last night? We'll probably never know.

This morning, Jeanine and I got up before daybreak to watch the Solstice sunrise, but didn't hike up to our usual hilltop. We figured that, since it had been steadily raining for the last few days, the hike might leave us look like we'd been wallowing in mud. Instead, we walked out over that weird new suspension footbridge that appeared over Highway 280 sometime over the last year or two. The pigeons were still asleep on their wires, and the clouds cooperated by opening up to the east. There were just enough of them to make the sky interesting, and we stayed there together as the light washed over us, bathing us in an orange glow and finally waking up some of the nearby pigeons.

Then we had doughnuts. Welcome to Winter.

Currently listening to: B'ee "Songs to the Sun"

Outside, the rain is pounding down so hard that earlier it sounded like there was a helicopter hovering over my home. The apartment is bathed in the glow of Christmas tree lights. For the last couple of holiday seasons, due to the fact that there isn't much space where I live, we've gotten a tiny little tree. This year, Willow and I just said to heck with it, and got a 7 foot tree. It touches the ceiling and makes it hard to get through the front door, not to mention making the patio nearly inaccessible.

It was this very inaccessibility that prevented me from going on onto the patio earlier, when I noticed a small, moist bunny squished up against the glass of the sliding door, perched on a pile of wet cardboard. The poor thing looked miserable, and to make matters worse, I didn't have anything on hand that a rabbit might eat. I decided to go grocery shopping, making sure to buy some rabbit munchies while doing so. Of course, when I got home, the rabbit was gone. Later, I told the property manager about it (actually, this isn't the first time I've seen this rabbit, and there is another one about somewhere too) and she had the idea to call another tenant, one who works at a veterinarian's office. The tenant, in due course, showed up at my door with a small pet carrier and a blanket. With a little effort, I managed to squeeze past my tree and out onto the patio, but the rabbit wasn't hiding there anywhere. Fortunately, where he was hiding was out front, over by a neighbor's walkway. We came at the little critter from both sides, and soon I was holding a very fluffy, but very wet, little bunny in my hands. An Angora rabbit, I think. The woman gently put it in the carrier and went home with it, saying that it would be easy to adopt it out. It's a good thing she has connections with the rabbit rescue people.

That's at least one rabbit who won't be dying of exposure this holiday season. I'm not sure if it's an escapee or if it was abandoned by its owners, but either way, there was a lack of responsibility involved. Domestic pets often either die in the wild or cause other animals to do so.

My first day of vacation coincided with the onset of a cold. My throat was sore this morning, but that has now morphed into a runny nose and general malaise. Because of this, I've spent the afternoon drinking tea and reading, which is something I often do anyway. I just do it less guiltily when I'm sick. Illness: the new cure for guilt.

Last night, I felt fine. Jeanine and I went and saw Om in San Francisco. On the way there, I discovered that the miles of brake lights winding through the hills of highway 280 look like a lava flow if you squint your eyes just right. It pays to be easily amused.

Our new tradition of being on top of a certain nearby hill on Solstice morning might be thwarted by rain next week. Perhaps we'll still do the doughnut shop part of the ritual though.

I was shuffling through multicolored drifts of moist Autumn leaves and thinking about dog crap when all of a sudden a large, gray rabbit popped up in front of me. It hurriedly hopped away and attempted to hide under a dumpster. I didn't even try to catch it. I'd tried that yesterday when there were two of them, and they laughed little rabbity laughs at my attempts. Somebody nearby should have done a better job of securing their hutch.

As for my thoughts of dog crap, I often ponder it when I'm walking near my place, mostly because the parking strip is mined with little brown gobs of it, nicely hidden by the aforementioned Autumn leaves. The parking strip is the last pit stop before their owners drag them over to the nearby dog park. I just know that any dog crap in the park itself is quickly scooped up, mostly because other people are watching. People like to appear to be responsible citizens when fellow citizens are nearby. This reminds me of a woman we saw inside Color Me Mine (a paint-it-yourself ceramics place) yesterday. One of her small children dropped an unpainted ornament, breaking it. She mildly scolded them and was heard shushing them when they talked about it later. I gave her the benefit of the doubt, but was almost certain she was going to sneak out without saying anything. Sure enough, she did. It gave me great pleasure to tattle on her. After all, she'll have to come back to get her ceramic pieces after they've been glazed. I'm not sure if the employees will confront her with the broken merchandise, but I fantasize that they will.

Why do I care? I don't want dog crap on my shoes, and as for the woman, I really hate it when parents do this kind of thing in front of their children. Her kids are well on their way towards learning that personal responsibility is for suckers, and that things only matter if other people see you doing them. I don't want to live in a world populated with people like that. If I had been absolutely certain she hadn't said something about the incident before leaving, I would have confronted her on it then and there. Now I'm wishing I had.

Behind most messed up children are equally messed up parents. It's another one of those self perpetuating cycles.

I'm sitting in my office chair at camp, with the heater vent rattling away on the ceiling above me. For some reason, I've been feeling the need to go back and read earlier blog entries, and have even gone so far as to pull out my old paper journal (you know, the stuff people used to write on before we all started being born with laptops grafted to our fingers). The paper journal contains a lot of relatively bad writing - I always figured that since I was the only one who would ever read it, I could be lazy and cut corners where style was concerned. It's also much more private and personal than anything I've written here. As for the early blog posts, I find that I like them more than the recent ones. Maybe rereading them will re-inspire me. I sure hope so, because I've felt quite uninspired lately, perhaps because I feel like I've written it all before, or perhaps because I've become dangerously used to spending too much time consuming what others have created rather than creating on my own.

As for now, I'm sitting in the middle of a camp of sleeping children. As usual, a lot of them arrived at camp on Monday with inadequate supplies. A case in point would be the girls with blankets that one of my coworkers described as "thin as towels". Uh, it's COLD at night here. You'd think that parents would send their kids to camp with what they need. I know that some families can't afford a lot, but I find it hard to believe that a home could be without at least one serviceable blanket. Good thing we have extra supplies, mostly things left behind by other kids and washed by me in the middle of the night. Right now, the dryer is spinning around with some newly washed poo clothes (that would be clothes which recently contained poo) plus a sleeping bag and pillow case which were discovered to be slathered with shampoo (again - what the heck??).

Time to do some reading now (uh, I mean consuming what others have created...), or maybe time to raid the giant box of candy that appeared on the table in the staff room. So many options.

Currently listening to: Current 93 "Faust" (remix by the wily Andrew Liles)

Today is the day after my 43rd birthday, and I'm spending it inside with music and books. The rain promised in the forecast is finally sweeping the region, and I can see tossing trees under gray skies out the window, a sight that fills me with gladness - a kind of aesthetic joy that I've yet to successfully put into words.

Yesterday, I spent the day with Jeanine. We ended up at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, where we spent a number of hours peering in at toads and snakes, as well as taking in a planetarium show and wandering the other exhibits. I always come away for the Academy inspired in some way, usually in ways relating to my continued fascination with the diversity and beauty of life on this planet (although my idea of beauty tends towards creatures like snakes and toads).

The end of the year approaches, and I find myself reflecting on changes I want to make. I hesitate to call them "resolutions", but that's more or less what I mean. I almost feel like I've slid into a second childhood this year, at least as far as my increased concentration on entertaining myself is concerned. At least I haven't run out and purchased a Porsche. My idea of entertainment still revolves around my music obsession.

Currently listening to Chu Ishikawa "Tetsuo" soundtrack.