This will be a hastily composed and loosely tied string of brainsplats--I'm waiting for Roo to come back so we can drive up to the sauna, and will end my post abruptly at that point. That said, here goes.

I'm frustrated by the fact that I haven't spend more the 4 consecutive days in any one place other than Deep Springs over the past 6 months. Hmpf. Every acquaintance I've ressurected has been shortlived as I jump around between NJ, VT, MA, NY, CT, CA, NV, woop-dee.

It's frustrating. I go places, meet (or as is often the case, return to) a person, but don't have any time to spend with them. It's been rather messy, and if there's anything I've learned from my stay-in-touch efforts, it's to spend a week with a person or two, and not try and meet 96 people in so many hours.

So I returned to DS without a sense of break. I guess this week coming up over New Years will be my first 'break' in six months, and I'm looking forward to it (family is currently at DS).

Well, there's a whole bunch to note about skiing Okemo and Mammouth, but the sauna is ready. Half pipes and Cornice drops and cliff jumps oh my!

until next time.

I was standing around in the kitchen, and read Max Gasners application essay to U. Chicago, the one that got published in the NY Times Magazine (or was it New Yorker? No matter). Apparently the head of admissions wrote a note on his admissions letter that his essay was the only one he had read that did justice to the world trade center. right. so. I heard the oven times go off and my mind was motivated to compose some poetic prose, at 2am, with a photography presentation yet to participate from this uninspired air. Perhaps this exercise will awaken my art spirit.

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When you live in a house for 17 years, your whole life up to a point, you don't miss it. You don't miss it because it is present as little more than a set. Your nostalgia is for the parties and the playdates--the carpet was just sort of there. Kind of like a toothbrush or a pair of gym socks, your home escapes aesthetics and emotion; it just sort of is. Sort of.

But what came to me today was one of the arhythmic occurances of life in that house, the cameo that gave episodes new life.

It was something that would only happen when I was home sick, and it only happened when I was home sick on Tuesdays, or whatever day of the week our Portuguese cleaning ladies would come. And to complicate the setup even more, it only happened when both of my parents weren't home.

I would be lying in bed, newly awaken, having slept in due to my illness. The sun would be shining in under my blinds that didn't quite close all the way down. The room would be stale, I would be stale. If it weren't for the General Electric clock-radio that sat across the room, I wouldn't know it was 10 or 11 or 2, because from my perspective, light was constant and time was unchanging.

And I would hear a pling. Ever, ever so softly, I would hear a pling. From downstairs, a pling and a one second pause and another pling. And another one. Pling....Pling....Pling. I could have let it drive me insane--with it's unfaltering rhythm, it's penetrating tone--but I didn't. I liked it.

The cleaning ladies had cleaned the stove and jostled the dial that controled the automatic timer, and they had left, and anywhere from 59 to 1 minutes later, the pling started. They never noticed the pling, because they always left before it went off. That's why they never learned. It was really very innocent.

I would lie in bed and appreciate this pling for as much as an hour, completely sane. Then I would fall back asleep or my mother would come home or it would be summer and the air-conditioning would come on to momentarily drown out the pling.

It's quite remarkable that I should remember this so fondly, this scenario that couldn't have happened more than 3 or 4 times, but I do. Maybe it was because of how bored being sick made me.

It was a rather quaint little thing, that kitchen timer. It sat on the old KitchenAid stove downstairs. It wasn't a KitchenAid stove, it was merely the stove, but realizing that my parents have since replaced that stove, I dug up a detail from my subconcious that was never part of the stove's identity before. I think identity is only fixed under the threat of change.

Goodbye pling.

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I'll be around 12/15-12/22