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31 August 2004
TWILIGHT OF THE APPLIANCES
When I moved into this loft 22 years ago, as a renter, Cotty Chubb, then its owner, left a number of his appliances here,
including a fine old GE toaster oven. When I bought the place two years later I inherited the oven, and used it for almost
18 more years before it died one day -- shorted out and refused to function. The moment seemed significant, the end of an
era. Also when I moved in I bought a Zenith alarm clock radio -- highly rated by Consumer Reports back in the 80s. It had
a wonderful full sound and lulled me to sleep or woke me up for almost all the time I lived here. Last year it, too, died
-- it's electronic display failed, followed swiftly by the demise of the radio itself. That seemed to mark the end of something
as well.
Now as I approach a final departure from the loft, my 27-inch Sony television has gone on the blink. There's a problem
with the power supply -- the part that usually fails first on a modern TV. The apparatus begins to have trouble starting up,
then won't start up at all. I've been through two previous 27-inch Sonys in my time here -- the third one is fading fast.
When it goes I will have to rely on a little 10-inch Sony that Cotty bought in the early 70s and gave to me when he bought
a big-screen model in the late 70s. It works perfectly and always has. For all I know it always will.
The heavy duty Friedrich air conditioner that somehow manages to cool the whole loft all by itself is acting funny, too.
It will only work on the high cool setting -- which has been fine for the hot muggy weather we've been having . . . but has
to be shut off in slightly cooler weather or the air in the loft approaches Arctic conditions.
I believe that the old appliances know that changes are on the horizon. They're weary and ready to take a break. They're
showing their age but holding on just a little longer. I think they'll be relieved when their hard working lives come to an
end . . .
3:19 pm pdt
30 August 2004
The Republican National Convention gets going tonight two blocks from my home. You might think I'd be worried, living
so close to a potential terrorist target, but I'm not. The reason is simple -- New York cops. They're everywhere in the neighborhood
now, directing the increasingly congested traffic, hanging out on the sidewalks, putting in their time, bored, ready for anything.
You just look at them and you know that whatever happens, they'll be there, doing what needs to be done, without any attitude,
without complaint. They'd die for you, and shrug while they were doing it.
A couple of nights ago on my way home I stopped off in a deli at the corner of my block, a bit past 1 am. A cop, who looked
young and Irish and bored, was at the counter ahead of me, buying a soft drink and some candy from the clerk, an Arab-American.
"Will that be all?" asked the clerk. "That's all for now, brother," said the cop, with democratic cordiality,
and genuine sidewise New York warmth. A guy working a tough, tiresome night shift talking to another guy working a tough,
tiresome night shift.
I know that the culture of the NYPD, like the cultures of many other police departments, has a strain of racism which
can lead to lethal abuses of minorities in the absence of strict supervisory control, and I don't mean to minimize the seriousness
of this problem, but it shouldn't overshadow the virtues of New York cops, so evident on 9/11, when so many of them died in
an effort to rescue citizens of every race, color and creed. That's part of the culture of the NYPD, too.
L. A. cops all look buff, full of themselves, superior. New York cops look like spuds, with beer bellies and pasty faces
and dandruff. But I know which cop I'd call if Armageddon began. The one would head directly for his gated community in Simi
Valley -- as so many did when the L. A. riots began -- the other would shuffle up to the front lines and hold until relieved.
Armageddon -- the ultimate tough, tiresome night shift . . . but, after all, just part of the job.
12:11 pm pdt
14 August 2004
SOUL SURFING
I wrote a new Internet acquaintance recently:
". . . great moment when, through a couple of e-mails and a few links, you find yourself in somebody else's garden,
sort of secret and sort of public, wandering around, getting a little lost . . . in a good way.
"We don't have a common language yet for the kind of experience this is . . . "
Call it soul surfing -- describing that process wherein one goes off looking for someone's web presence in an effort to
find out who they are. Not just information about them but a key to what makes them tick, an insight into character. It can
be anyone, from the long-dead to an otherwise inaccessible public figure to somebody you met in a bar the night before.
You read a book by an author, for example, and want to know not just what other books she's written, or details of her
biography, but what kind of person she is or was . . . you want access to the precinct of her soul.
This happened to me recently with an artist named Lynn Randolph. A friend sent me an image of an extraordinary painting
of hers [posted in the Essays section, along with a few other images and some thoughts about the work.] I went immediately
to her web site, where she'd posted a gallery of her paintings. I found that there had been an exhibition catalogue of her
work published a few years ago, with an essay by an art curator I happened to know. I e-mailed her (through contact info posted
on her site) to ask if I could post images of some of her paintings on my site. She gave permission and later read what I'd
written about the paintings -- and sent me a copy of the exhibition catalogue!
More recently, I saw a talk on C-SPAN by Mary Habeck, a professor at Yale. It was a refreshingly clear outline of the
history of radical Islamic thought. A web search yielded up an e-mail address -- I wrote her and asked if she'd ever published
anything on the subject of the talk and she immediately replied with the information that she was coming out with a book about
it in a few months. The web search also revealed that she was an extremely popular lecturer at Yale in the field of military
history, had published a tasty-looking book about the theoretical development of tank warfare tactics in Russia and Germany
between the two world wars of the last century (a subject of great interest to me) and also that Yale had recently denied
her tenure, for reasons that were not too clear. (My guess is that political considerations were a factor -- her C-SPAN talk
suggested that the geopolitical thinking of Al Quaeda has its roots in ideas developed long before the United States became
a serious player in Mideast politics . . . which notion would be anathema to academic progressives who want to believe that
American arrogance and bullying essentially "created" the radicalism of guys like ben Laden, and that if America
just behaved more virtuously they would go away.)
Also recently I discovered and wrote about PhoneBin, a web site where all sorts of people post cell phone photographs,
apparently for all sorts of reasons. It gave me the idea of soliciting phone cam pictures from friends to post on my site
-- whereupon one of those friends put me in touch with a friend of his, Xeni Jardin, who had just curated a large online exhibition
of cell phone photos, including some from invited artists and many more from public submissions. Jardin and I corresponded
by e-mail, I did some soul surfing and discovered her terrific blog BoingBoing, which is quite literally what it claims to
be -- A Directory Of Wonderful Things. She was kind enough to send me a cellph portrait (taken in the bathroom of a curry
house in the Silverlake district of Los Angeles!) to post on my site.
The term soul surfing would apply most directly, perhaps, to the business of Internet dating -- to that part of the process
when one searches, by means of an e-mail exchange, for clues about another person which might encourage or discourage a face
to face meeting. It would also apply to the friendships we make, or enmities we incur, on Internet discussion groups -- where
interchanges about shared interests can evolve into personal bonds of great intimacy.
Web based soul surfing is something new under the sun -- a means of human intercourse faster and more intricate than traditional
patterns of acquaintance ever allowed . . . with new perils and possibilities that we have barely begun to comprehend but
that will change the nature of human community in radical ways . . .
5:16 pm pdt
8 August 2004
THE WEB LOG
As is fairly obvious, I guess, this site is something in the nature of an experiment, an improvisation. It's not a blog,
for example, it's a web log -- i. e. unabbreviated. I write at whatever length seems appropriate for whatever subject I'm
on about at the moment. I write the entries with care, to be read in a leisurely way. This is not usual blog procedure, since
the Internet is geared towards fast transfers of short bits of info and links to rush us onwards and elsewhere.
I realize now that this site had its roots in the "Report From the Beach", a sort of proto web log . . . irregular
e-mail messages I sent to friends about Ventura, California, where I lived between 1998 and 2003. These were mostly meditations
on place, a record of my exploration of the town and an attempt to create a myth about it for myself, as we always create
myths about the places we live. The reports were more like essays than letters -- I got to like the form and people seemed
to enjoy the e-mails. [Most of them are collected now in the Report From the Beach section on the site.]
This site is written in the same sort of personal voice I used to address a group of friends. In time the personal nature
of it will change a bit as the site morphs into a journal of the making of "Nowhere" and becomes more communal.
When a word like blog enters the communal consciousness, we think we know what it means -- it becomes a concept to be
consumed, a fashion to be followed . . . or despised. But there are now cell phone photo blogs, video blogs, blogs which are
purely personal, sexual, political, informational . . . and blogs which are combinations of all of these characteristics.
And there are web logs.
It's too soon to say how the form will evolve. If you're reading this, you're part of the process.
1:48 am pdt
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