Ostracising on occular complexes
Perhaps is one of the few activities
That I think we fail to realize
The full mundanity of
... which
... it ... is?

Preparedly and prepositionally
I've lain in wait
Accepting planning and fortitudes
Of anticipation as my mechanism
And merit.

These fall short when faced
With the faces of those
That I thought one day
Would never look
The way they do today.

Not horrible, terrible,
Terrifying, strange
Or fearsome,
But different, disparate
Better and worse.

The changes of process
I see day to day
Account none for the
Total sum of the way
That I see now these faces
Facing me now
In their state of being
And being somehow
Something more, and more
Still something less
And less beyond all
We have see them before.
I have seen them all.

But never like this.
Never to date
Has my imagination
Begun to contemplate
The scale of change
The dynamic of shift.
These things I thought
I knew
I knew not
And am now set adrift.
Afloat, affluent, afforded
Affectioned.

Loved, loving, reconciled
Reputation.

So how to reconcile
The face of my own.

I see a man in the mirror
Whose name is gone.

We all have some idea of our past.
Some idea of the present,
How long it will last.

We are but our own
best and proudest muse.

Withering details will flutter aside
As new blossoms form.

Yet so slow.
So gradual.
The art of patience,
Immaculate and strategic.

I have been so oblivious to it.

And now I witness, with the strongest sensation
That I must be patient and impatient
With myself the most, in every way.

Face forward for the face you face
Is your own.
Look backward to know
The face you have known.

To the side you will see
Your own enemy.
To the other you find
Your strongest aligned.

The now is a mirror,
A reflection of things past
But newly made images
That will not last.

We wish for these frail
And hollow ideas
To remain eternal
When none of it is.

To last forever it would seem
Would be the best.
To fall back and follow
The path of rest
Is seen as weak and
Immaterial.

However, to an end, it is the way we all will be.

The Grip got it first

('cause, you know, Steve has ABSOLULTELY NOTHING ELSE TO DO, congrats, again man on getting married and the honeymoon!)

But yeah, so here it is

I'll get the track listing together yet, but the mix is 2hr 45min (you have been warned.)

Cori and I have settled in nicely in our beautiful apartment that the school set up for us. Its a two bedroom, and its neat, with lots of good omens and feng shui.

Much bicycle riding, much walking, and time on mountains and beaches. I'm working from the elementary school during the day so Cori and I can be close (the school actually arranged it without us asking)

So far I've learned how to awkwardly say "My wife is an english teacher at Toujia" (wo de tai tai shr toujia de yingwin laoshih) but you have to be precise about the r's or else you say "mouse" or "rat" instead.

Just a note.

So there's been some things that have happened, such as me being in asia, Taiwan specifically.

Here's what's happened so far:

http://picasaweb.google.com/daveespionage/TaiwanTaipei?feat=directlink
http://picasaweb.google.com/daveespionage/TaiwanTaichung?feat=directlink
http://picasaweb.google.com/daveespionage/TaiwanTaichungWeek2?feat=directlink

Taiwan (Taipei)

Taiwan (Taichung)

Taiwan (Taichung Week 2)

Yes yes yes.

I just helped Cori do an introduction for a video that will be a tour of the entire school. We hopped up with our hand in the air like we were going to take off.

It's been amazing.

I am not.
I speak a language
Fraught with inconsistencies
Much like
Most of the species.

But does that make anyone expert?
For truly, the exact method of
Implementation
Varies wildly from
Station to station.

So within these walls
Of celebrated language
We can see clearly
That the windows are foggy
And we've wrecked into a dangling preposition that extended our sentence around.

What?
Around what did it extend? 
Was that just an avoidance
Or was the exception meant to
Annotate the interest of dissonance?

There was once a page
Detailing the decades of musical
Composition and their variances
From dissonant to harmonious
And cited specific instances.

And then in explaining
The lyrics of YMCA
I realized our trending
Of slang flows similar
And flies past mind-bending

As adjectives not only
Change meaning often
But their meaning in context
Is quite often forgotten.

So to explain
A verse of a verse
We say that its bad
But its far from that
Yet its worse.

"So then bad is good"
I hear a literalist
In my emotive imagination
Substantiate exploration
While internalizing explanation.

"But no, its bad as well"
Comes a reply
But the coy literalist
Knows both are lies.

So where is our truth
In our statements of presence?
In fact no one knows
For many languages its
Irrelevant.

So how to be an expert
A model
A mentor
When all of your words mean
Not what they were meant for?

I suppose we'll teach
Everyone latin
That will give all explanation
For how deep the river is
That we stand in. 

Oh wait, tried it.
Still need a new dictionary
Every five minutes
And even then culture defies
Definition on paper,
And likes it.

So there we have it.
Phrases on t-shirts, posters
In books
Affecting the way everyone
Looks.

Nonsense abounds
And is embraced willingly
For its the stuff our very
Very absurdist selves
Demand, loudly.

The best laid plans
Of mice and men
The best laid men
Of price and lent.

The best laid plans
Come in threes
Like the deaths
Of celebrities. 

Auto fait,
Auto faire
We automate and
Author less than
Stellar works
Of patriarchal
Fiction.

So watch the crowd sway
Or abstractly wiggle
Such as cellular automata
Is prone to do.

Our placebos are expired
And our watches don't run.
We wait for our hour
In our only living sun.

Then in striking irony
We're shot down cold
Too tan, too bold.
Calm yourself, regain your palor.

So then and there
Begin again
We start all over
With the best laid plans.

We'll fail and falter
Until we fall over
But the falling is
Far more amusing.

So are we destined
To fall forever
Humpty, and such
Bathrooms and such.

We'll tumble, torch
Touch and taste
Ourselves and others
Nothing to waste.

Feel that vibrance
That only moment
That so many moments
Are made of.

Hours spent waiting
Watching, listening
and talking
Of how great its going to be.

Then.

As though the heavens
Erupted with pure
Molten adversarial
Being and such.

The end is nigh
The plan wrought
Useless and limp,
Cold to the touch.

And in the end
In the beginning,
And to the left
You'll see.

We start all over again
With the best laid plans
And break them apart
In doing. 

(originally via yaybikes)

I found myself reading this:

"Have you had problems with speeding bikers coming too close to pedestrians or children on the local bike trails? Contact reporter Bill Bush at bbush@dispatch.com"

Here's the response I posted:

Perhaps instead of looking to target cyclists, you might want to do an article on how slow the city is to add bike lanes on roads, how poorly managed the bike trails are, and what can be done to improve those situations.

Right now for high-speed cyclists who are heading to work and wish to do so in a timely manner only have a limited set of options: bike trails (only north and south except for the 670 path,) extended side-road rides where you have pedestrians who don't even care if you're in the road riding,) and riding in dangerous high speed major roads.

It would be more valuable in the long run to help the city help themselves, part of that being a positive attitude towards improving, rather than focusing on "speeding bikers coming too close" when the bike paths themselves aren't made typically to accommodate more than one person per side, with or without a bicycle.

While there are occasionally clearly marked signs explaining ways of signaling to people walking on the wrong side, saying "on your left" or "coming past you" has no effect on some pedestrians, who simply stare at you or act shocked, even if you come to a complete stop 2 to 10 feet away from them. Even then, everyone involved is apologetic for the misunderstanding in my experience.

The most hazardous bike riding I've seen recently on the trails have been children riding their bikes in the way that children do, experimenting with riding with no hands on the handlebars and refusing to listen to their parents when they are told to ride in the same lane.

The frequency that I see police officers on the trails is also a little alarming, in that it is rare. Especially now that we have many cycling police, it shouldn't be that difficult to have regular patrols on the trails, which would be a great way to help tame anyone who really is acting out on the trails in an inappropriate way.

Perhaps we should be policing how people are raised and trained to ride their bikes, how helpful the signs are on the trails for both pedestrians and cyclists, and ultimately what the real purposes are for the trails; are a mode of getting from one place to another, simply for leisure, or both?

If the trails are for both transport and leisure, then I say handle it like Central Park in NYC and Chicago by the beach. In those places you have clearly marked "fast" and "slow" lanes. Other helpful things would be to put clear signs up that document speed limits and the proper ways of signaling pedestrians about passing. Widen the trails to accommodate pedestrians, bikes, strollers, bikes with stroller trailers, tricycles, push scooters, skateboards and segways.

These are actions that if researched and brought to the attention of the public and the city would help alleviate the issue to which you are inquiring, or at least get the conversation headed in the right direction.

I djed at Skully's on Wednesday last week and Moxy really dug the stuff I dropped, so I re-recorded the mixes I did that night. 

http://www.daveespionage.com/music/zas_part_1.mp3
http://www.daveespionage.com/music/zas_part_2.mp3

and here's the mix cd I made the day cori and I got married, its, well, cheesy, but its basically us in musical form.

http://www.daveespionage.com/music/married.mp3

When I get tired of chasing ghosts
I'll feel much better.
No longer looking the past square in the eye
And trying to ask it questions.

Interviewing a dead man is awesome
Because you can edit the tape to say
"I have no head"
Over and over in response to everything.

So when I get tired of chasing ghosts
I'll find myself with a different landscape
Something with more topiary trees
And less haunted hollow stoops.

We'll have tea parties in the present
Rather than pity parties about the past.
And the soul of man will relax and cry
With joy for at once the past is dead

And still alive.

So when I get tired of chasing ghosts
I'll see the specters for what they are:
My imagination of the people that once were
And are no more.

The dead don't have time to hunt you down
And neither do the living that you don't talk to
Anymore. 

We're all too busy trying to outrun herds of
Buffalo traipsing across the plain
While we spin around with pointy sticks
Crying "hairy bastards quit your ploying."

So when I get tired of chasing ghosts
I'll see one. 
Punch it in the face.
And have a bruise on my own to match.

So when I get tired of chasing ghosts
I'll nap in the future and laugh at the present.

So when I get tired of chasing gh...
Ah, its time for bed. 
Time has come.
And gone. 

I say "Yeah I'm down,"
Even though I know I won't be there.

It comes out of my mouth so quickly
My heart speaks before my brain
Can process the fact
That its not really a good idea.

I look like someone else now
A cartoon of every grown man
Who is just a kid wearing
Shorts that happen to fit.

I say "that'll be awesome"
Like I'm really going to see it.

And my heart sinks
When it gets the memo
From my gut
Explaining that it just couldn't make it.

That sort of internal dialogue
Is best not communicated
Just tell the other side
What's the real deal:

"I have no idea.
My head fell off years ago
And I've been replacing it with
Balloons ever since."

Intrinsic nature gives way to obsessive compulsive
Pleaser of people
Fearing for his soul
And certain that he'll let everyone down.

Its a classified ad for some sort of
Soothing cream that will
Not actually heal the wound
But distract you by making everything slippery. 

But why do I care?
Its not my life.

I'm not the party. 
I never was. 

I was just riding some casual wave
That hit me on the back of the head
And knocked me silly for two years.
Now its back to the real heart.

The real sound.
My core.  My soul.

Blips and beeps across
Interstellar reverbs
Extracted noises from
Exhales of EmCees.

Wrap myself up
in it all
Like the blanket I need
But am too hungry to seek.

I'll say "not this time, let me know next time."
And I'll wink.  I'll explain
"Its your thing.  You live it. 
I got mine."

Distance from source is
Approximately yours.

Everything is three degrees off
The world feels colder.

Not for lack of trying
But for lack of emphasis.

When its a solid, sober state
Everything's a lot more boring

Until you make it more interesting.

Meta-level phrasing
To avoid saying
"Man, that conversation was awkward."

Whip whap and we're back
Looking at the death throes
Of someone else's science.

Can't let it die
Won't let it die.

Maybe you should let it die.
Maybe its been dead for longer
Than you can imagine.

Do you really,
Really,
Want to bring back baroque?

Because that's what it would
Be like.
It would be
Asking everyone to dress
In period garb
And pretend they are
Speaking a language they've
Never known.

(Which already happens regularly elsewhere.)

Baroque is a term
Substituted here
To protect the innocent.

Imagine though
Instead of Baroque
Your own dead idea
Instead.

Try, try, try to see.
Then enlighten me.

For I'm sure I'm missing
Some key detail.
For I'm sure I'm missing
Some visual cue
Historic reference
Or
Blatantly obvious sign
That tells me
Where to look
And what to do.