dreaming of flying - as always

Somehow this is one of my favorite pictures of paragliding, or rather, parawaiting. Scott is in the middle. There is something of restless longing that all pilots feel when their feet are firmly on the ground and their dreams are firmly aloft.

Scott Jewell passing.

Scott passed away in his sleep on Monday the 24th of July. He was a great person and an amazing pilot. He will be missed.

The SIV Clinic

Well, well, well. Honestly did not realize just how little energy I would have left after getting fried in 108 degree heat, while drinking at least a gallon and a bit of water, chasing that down with with a half a gallon of gatorade all the while paying attention to my own and other people's flights as Enlau's voice would be constantly in my ear - because it is just too much trouble to get the duct tape out of my ear that is holding the headset in - whilst it detouches in a particularly spectacularly scary flight. Not much. Hence, no daily blog entries. Hope to catch up however.

After a thirteen hours of driving that netted my buddy David and resulted in exchange of the convertible - we were finally touching down at the town of Coulterville. Coulterville is some two and a half hours away from San Francisco on the way to Yosemety. Anyhow, after just four hours of sleep we were up and ready to go. We met our little crew by the famous Boat House store - Enlau, Ann, Camrine O'Connors and Anna Kay, Jurgan and Jack. Nova joined us a day later.

First day promised to be relatively uneventful, with everyone just getting into the swing of things until my big crazy flight. Let's just say the leather gloves don't stand a chance against cevlar lines... and the strange scars around my wrist will be fun to explain for a while.

Route 46 between 101 and 1.

I have travelled this cross over route some years back, that time not
alone. It is puzzling and comforting to see the same spots that
cought my eye before - and have not changed a day since. Same ground
squirrels grace the peisage as they did before. Funny, saw a
hitchhiker flagging a ride and passed him by due to a generally
scragly appearance... then felt bad and turned back only to realize
the guy has just as scragly of a dog in tow... so I decided to leave
him behing again. Is that "double jeopardy" on some existencial
plain? The turn back brought me to the same overlook as I have
visited with someone else. Twice. all those years back. I don't
know, may be my good deed for the day was helping these two guys
change a tire and I am done? Must be. Actually, kinda interracted
with a surprising many people for a lonely drive! Even raced a couple
with the jet skies in tow in a most friendly way - California is odd,
may be I should move here for a while?

California, here I come!

in my own way I am "one step closer to hitting buttom" (obviously a "Fight Club" quote) and, at least in my mind, becoming a paragliding bum. I am heading to California, straight from work. Will drive around for a day, seeing friends and family and then three days of maneuvers training with Enlau and Ann O'Connors. Will try to post daily updates of this trip.

so, I rented a kick ass, drop dead gorgeous red Sebring convertible and after also procuring a decent dashboard mounted GPS system headed down the highway to Alan's and Roya's house. I never suspected just how much fun driving a convertible could be!!! Definetly up there among the most liberating experiences... and this is coming from a guy who is in Cali to practice aerobatic maneuvers! Incredible fun. Got to spend a bit of time with Alan and Roya and planning to connect with some more folks before heading down the coast tomorrow.

Moonrise, the full moon of June.

Just witnessed the most spectacular moonrise I have ever seen. The red slither on the right of the Whitestone Bridge grew dangerously pregnant at an incredible rate until it burst into the sly smile of the red moon bearing down on the outline of the city with all it's lights, and planes and cars... It grew and grew until the precarious moment of hanging right in the middle of the span of the bridge, just long enough for the brain to register the happenstance of the moment... and unceremoniously moved on. It is traveling along the sky getting brighter and rounder with each passing moment.

...I just settled down to have a meal of stir fried string beans and chicken sausage when I stared out to see this spectacle of a gracious circle of the full moon. The whole thing took no longer than for me to woof down the plate-full of my dinner. All I had time to realize that my expensive SLR camera is happily resting in the downstairs garage and running to get it would simply deprive me of the sight and frustrate me even more. I took a picture with my camera phone instead.



...I am moving from my apartment in the Bronx. The apartment I have raved about to everyone for the incredible view of the city. The view that got me to sign the lease before being quite certain of the number of rooms or the price of the rent. The view that starts from the George Washington Bridge, skims along the entire city below and gets lost somewhere upstate. The view that I so rarely had a chance to enjoy with someone else.

I know it is time to move but I will miss this apartment, this view and these two years - two years right after residency, two years of growing up

Muddied experiences

This is an odd observation. Keeps trickling into my consciousness every now and then. It seems that the longer one lives and the richer the pallet of experience becomes - more difficult it is to get the pure, original experience. Let me explain - if I have never seen a waterfall - the first waterfall is the first "original" experience - nothing to fall back onto. The second, third, fourth - human nature is to say - aha, "this is just like..." Same goes for human experiences - the relationships, losses, arguments - one trickles into another. Yes, this is teaching us lessons, the whole "psychic determinism" concept rests on this in a bit roundabout way... but there is more to what I am trying to say. Life, inevitably becomes dull rehashing of things past. The new experience to matter needs to be so unique and powerful that chances of having the child's wonder drops off and the days get shorter... A little sad.

Fight the power of lots of cash...

"If there was ever a moment for a ruckus to be raised..."

...now is the moment.

Hmm, seems like a good time for an awareness campaign.

Nice. Just re-read the previous post...

Just re-read the previous post and amazingly enough I still stand by my statement. I think is going to be my new declaration.

Secondly, this is a great video blog - incredibly relatable stories by any immigrant, especially from the Soviet Block - http://mylifewithbadenglish.blogspot.com/ a blog by Andrei Litvinov, "My Life With Bad English".

Small comments on personal happiness...

What are we but miniscule specs in the face of even a city of millions like New York. What does our personal happiness - or dissatisfaction - matter on a grand scheme of things for all the millions of other insignificant specs? In reality - not much. So, once again, on the grand scheme of things, the only person who would even notice what you do - outside of your mother - is yourself. This is the only court you have to hope to ever satisfy. Committing acts of forged happiness will never bother any other soul - other than yourself. So, no reason not to be honestly feeling whatever you are feeling - fess up, speak up and die honest. And then, if you are lucky you might even die happy.

Couple of new finds...

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Pandora

A very interesting find www.pandora.com an extremely clever concept for the extremely lazy. Basically a genome of your favorite music - just punch in a favorite song and a radio station is created in it's image. Really cool. And it is free. Can't complain.

rhinos...

http://zululand.kzn.org.za/zululand/about/63.html

The right audience...

Strange, re-reading and re-writing the Ode I go back and forth between hating it and liking it. It so incredibly cheesy when I read it aloud to others but sounds just fine when I read it to myself quietly. May be not all writing is meant to be shared and I should simply take it off this blog... I'll wait for someone's feedback on this.

Lucky break!

Finally found a stack of my old journals. Can fully embark on my project and I think I found a diamond in the rough today - Choices, choices... could easily be my theme song! The other two added are somewhat random:

To the illusive stranger in Koln Museum
Meditation

are nice in their own right but may lack a bit in spunk.

Bidirectional blogging - Post 1.

Bidirectional blogging seems like a good workable concept to me... For someone who has written journals for the last fifteen years and has an aspiration to put it all together one day - no easier way to start. The concept is quite simple, really. Take an old journal and start flipping the pages. One is bound to come up with a story, and old poem or something of the sort - then simply blog it to the appropriate date in the past - and still take note when actual transfer into the blog takes place. This way a potential read becomes in a sequence of days or entries - a hopscotch of sorts. I know, this must have been done. But this will be my go at it! So, this becomes the official start point - from here on into the past and into the future.

Posts entered today:
Happy Day Messiness,
To My Beloved or Ode to a Thermal

New York City Transit Strike

The strike became a learning experience for the entire city... except did not effect me none as I live in the Bronx, work in Harlem and drive a car. Did get a nice picture out of it though! 

Flying over Oludeniz, Turkey

Recent trip to Turkey with the flying crew. Paragliding Club Vertigo of Macedonia - http://www.vertigo.org.mk/

Flying in Turkey

A trusted, though borrowed acro wing. Nothing beats it! 

Happy Day Messiness

Affections of a friend,
of a lover, of a stranger,
of a shy lullaby singer
of a frivolous plaything.

looser than lips,
sounder than rock solid waterfall
Crashing into crystal shapes
Suspended in disbelief.

A happy day full of things
will pass, becoming a memory
filling a story with such
unnecessary details.

(entered 12/25/2005)

To My Beloved or Ode to a Thermal

I find myself entranced by sullen nights
And waking low, step by step away
I walk toward, and see but do not dream
and cannot touch.

I wish tomorrow come, and find the way,
To wish myself away, high in the sky
and yelp and yehaa so far away
that only feathered dot pulsating by
would ever see me smile.

...and then I land and dry and yellowed grass
and ground sighs with hot and welcome breath
and birds still circle high and friendly passer-by
waves...

...and this is why... I fly.

(entered 12/25/2005)

looking at stars

Taking a leave of my senses
has the most wonderful of consequences,

Sense of Time, never a high priority,
fails first, as usual.
Thinking of the One Love is another sense
giving this reality the distinction of being mine.

What else is there?

Would I ever dare to do what my heart desires,
or simply let it slip.

I guess we'll see from letter to letter,
how the world shoves us closer together
and further apart on every revolution.

I can hardly think of anyone else
I would rather share the pinhole to watch the eclipse with.

Smallest of the opportunities, just like the smallest of the pinholes,
may be the only way to see the grandest of stars.

(entered 1/9/2006)

***

Humility of the worst sort - embracing the complete lack of understanding.

Choices, choices...

I could as easily
sit motionless and let her walk by
without ever picking me out in the crowd or...

make a fool of myself,
be noticed,
and she would still walk away.

Why, then, do I always choose to be a fool?

(entered 12/27/2005)

I do not watch TV anymore...

I do not want to watch TV anymore.
Its boring variety of thousand colors, and as many noises
Exhausted its own novelty long before the hand reached for the remote control.

I am vegetating. I say to myself strolling through the rubber buttons.
I am vegetating. I say laying on the couch
I am vegetating.

When I hear myself say that again
I lose myself on the wall
Opposite the glassy fish eye.

3/25/97 Oscars

Me (defiant!)

What others have to say
is of a strange importance.

I tend to hear
what have already seen,
ignoring what has not appeared clear
some days before...

This leaves me wonder...
What makes one listen
or ask for an advice?

Opinions of others...
Strange domain.
They matter....
not!

Yet, often sought in doubt.
Or, make one(stunned)
doubt what appeared plain!

...Hence, confusion added,
I leave myself to dwell
on words I've heard, and hope,
at the end to utter,

"What do THEY know?-- THIS is ME!"

Impatience

Impatience is ambrosia for mistakes
of personal and more generic nature.

Impatient bird ends up all dead and cold,
Impatient friend is often lonely,
Impatient lover loses sight of love,
Impatient poet seeks the inspiration.
Impatiently.

And all of them are meand are in me,
they bug me all the timeinstead of letting be,
They rob me of mistakes of being slow,
observant for a change
and laying low.

Instead of making waves
make no sound...

I wish I could... but!
Like Brooklyn bound train,
I am impatience bound.

Hey stranger...

If you want to know what I am doing -
you'll have an answer before I will.

If you want to know where I am going -
we are dreaming of the same place.

If you found the answer -
I would like to say hi.

To the illusive stranger in Koln Museum

You look at the works
that tend to be art,
twisting the lines of fragile thighs,
Happy in ignorance of bittersweet tart,
of own artsy appearance.

(entered 12/27/05)

(I recall this beautiful girl appearing and disappearing in the halls of this museum. I think she was there with someone, probably her mother, because she kept looking terribly bored and terribly beautiful at the same time.)

Meditation

It's nice to have the time
to be, oh, self-distractive
and wrestle with the brooding thought
Like puny Goliaf, resist the temptation of being active

and writing in black ink
instead of seeping broth
of dreams at night.

and on this note,
as always, loose the battle,
get up and scribble more
of ever toxic thought.

(posted 12/27/05)

Fools (or few words on explaining poetry)

What poems are but things that sound pretty?
They let in few, escaping prying eyes.

For some they are descriptions,
what a pity!
For others -- nonsense;
as for me it's dice.

A handful of the day,
with dash of midnight movie
A touch of morning brownie and spice,
I throw in the cup with blinding fury
and hope of a win or knowledge of demise.

What follows is the play of other nature,
The audience presented with this blend,
Free to decide if lines contain adventure,
Love, boredom, the irony or "trend"

Reactions, quite remote in conception,
In turn come from the reader´s own game;
A handful of the day with dash of last reception
A touch of morning brownie and fame...

And this, what fools! we call communication!

Sitting at the Barns and Nobel

I would like to have these words published
As a little satisfaction of own vanity,
as a cry of my own to many idle
as a whisper to many who still listen.

I would like to see myself open that little, thin book
with no more pages than I have thoughts
and realize that I haven't read this one yet.
I mean, I've seen it plenty of times but now, I think, I understand.

I don't blame myself for having petty desires
for, I like to read my scribbles out loud.
What sin would it be to put them all on paper
on one of the shelves of an endless bookstore,
quietly, very quietly
so my friends would finally get some peace
of not being forced to read scraps of paper
or neat print-outs
when they have other things on their mind!

For this reason alone this will never happen.

Poetry, Prose and Things Decidedly In-Between

How many times
have you invited your friends
to try the food in your favorite little place
that you tend to frequent for some senseless,
or rather sense-full reason;

because you like it?

When we happen to like a tiny Chinese restaurant
on the out-skirts of a loud city
we seem to forgive many inconsistencies
in the story of our devotion:

dirty napkins and the deadly potion (in the third jar from the left).

And suddenly, you realize
that you´ve turned into a busy-body salesperson
of your own dream to others.

And with some luck someone will stop you,
and make everyone dream out their own lives.

...

Some ideas are worth forgetting...