March 2006 Archives

There we were strolling along the bay at Seal Point Park. There was a couple down by the water with their 2 black labrador retrievers. The man was throwing a big honking stick out into the bay, and one of the dogs was plunging into the water after it, swimming all the way out to it and dragging it all the way back to shore.

For those of you who don't know I have a dog, a cross between a black lab and a boxer. Chip is a beautiful mutt with a fantastic temperment. He's a mid-sized dog but he's a bit on the beefy side, weighing in at about 70 pounds. He still thinks he can fit in my lap. And he loves to chase down thrown tennis balls.

But I'm pretty sure that if I threw a tennis ball into the bay he'd look up at me with those big brown doggie eyes and say, "Now what'd you go and do that for?"

He'd try to find a way, though, because... well... he's a dog. He'd go right up to the edge of the water and look at it, maybe test it to see if it really was wet. Then he'd run over to another spot and check there. And after a few times he'd look up at me and say, "I can't get to it. It's out there in all that water."

And after a while, I think we'd go home sans one tennis ball.

We had just finished polishing off a stir-fry dish with some rice. We have rice a lot these days. I guess that happens when you live with an Asian woman.

"Is there any more rice?" I asked hopefully.

"Yes," she answered without hesitation, "One."

"One?" I echoed, not quite sure I'd heard correctly.

"One," she repeated looking intently at a single grain of rice on her plate.

I ran across this phrase in a book the other day:



I must have re-read that line 20 times. It's on of those linguistical twists which feel good to say, have an eloquent flavor and even sound like they must be profound... but just elude the grasp of the brain like a squirmy, wiggly, slimy fish flopping around trying to get back into the water.

In fact, I don't think that phrase even belongs in a brain. It's a phrase which cannot be contained. It cannot be confined to the prison cell of one's limited rationalizing ego-centric intellect. It belongs out there, in the free, in the wild, where no constraints of comprehension can bind it to reality.

Because to comprehend something is to shackle it to this world. Take a thought, formulate a phrase that describes that thought, conscribe that phrase to paper, and you have just chained that thought. Every time somebody reads those glyphs and comprehends the thought they represent, they reinforce the bonds which cleave that thought to us. They enforce the bondage of thought.

And that's my thought for the day.

. Topher

PS: The book was Yendi by Steven Brust, a fun read for those who enjoy a good sarcastic fantasy.

Oy! So much has happened! Of course, it's been so long, so I guess that's only to be expected.

Ok, so a quick synopsis:

I moved to Malaysia. (Actually, all yall should already know this since I was writing about it for a while.) I had a great time living there, and really enjoyed the local culture. I lived in Kuala Lumpur, which is a nice big city. I lived in a high-rise building, on the 20th floor. To go to work I walked through 2 malls and an underground light-rail station, then went up in another high-rise building to the 34th floor.

You remember that movie with Catherine Zeta-Jones (drool) and that guy where they jumped off the top of these two huge towers and parachutted down, as part of some grander scheme of course... That was Kuala Lumpur. Those towers are the Petronas Twin Towers. I could see those from my living room window.

Over time, my job degraded me into a puddle of drooling stress. So, about eight months later I moved back to California. It wasn't my choice, but it was by far the best possibile thing for me right then. Well, getting out of that cesspool of a job was, anyhow. I do miss Malaysia, though.

And here we are today! That wasn't so bad, huh? Yeah, ok, I glossed over all kinds of good stuff, but maybe that will just have to be fodder for a future post! Cheers.

. Topher