Journal : OpenRoadWorks

Another Friday arrives on the plains surrounding Lake Michigan, against the expanse of wind-blown clouds hovering over Evanston, Illinois. I am visiting Northwestern, to determine if I should study here next year. I am not quite sure what attracts me to this place. It is cold here - compared to my adopted San Francisco home. The broad, flat landscape that marks the greater midwest can be uniform and unimpressive. The gothic architecture of some buildings here appears more stern against the flatness, like rising proctors of a stretch of university buildings. And many of the administrative buildings are framer houses from the early 20th century, matronly and perching themselves to watch students from across the street. So, this is what is on my mind - standing at a computer terminal, wondering what the next two years of my life would bring hanging by this long, flat lake pushing in to the long, flat land. I think that it would be an adventure, and another life adventure.

Some days - like today - I just stare at the computer screen. It flashes in blinking applications, up and down scale the windowpanes of colored data, and the day flashes in blinking patterns that follow the flow of the whirling windowpanes. I am having problems focusing on the work that unfurls before me in reams of documents that need creation. The silly thing is that as much as I might capture better thoughts in my journal than lurk on the pages of these data sheets, these data sheets are published for abundant profits while my journal entries hover in the poverty of my diary. A pauper never begs for the rewards that the artistic mind can offer, only dreams for the dirty profits of a king's ransom of consulting fees. Such is life, I suppose, and maybe both paths converge in a happy medium of worthy thoughts and valued publication. I can wish so much, but today I can only master the idea that work drags.

I am trying to pay attention to the tasks that I need to complete for work, but I find this as difficult right now as counting all the rain drops that flicker the window in my room. This is mostly due to the tedious nature of the work that I need to complete, a series of documents that contain line-by-line items of necessity for technical people to interpret and build into software applications that pile screens of code that can be viewed in some far-away, dark, and cooled room full of white boxes of plastic and silicon chips. But I get ahead of myself - I am deconstructing the path of the line-by-line items of necessity that I need to write, from the recesses of my head to the computer screen which I see filling with its own sets of lines of characters and text. Such as this account, which piles on other lines of text that organize themselves into areas on the screen, some text in different colors and sizes, other text underlined and ready for a click and a whoosh to another page o...

I don't tend to listen to conventional music, and I hardly listen to the radio - except for years back living in LA and listening to the Santa Monica Community College radio station, which played a wide mix of independent and electronic music. Some people have commented on my eclectic taste in music, which tends to favor lyrical music without a broad following. Sometimes, the interest is prescient - case in point, my interest in Oasis and Coldplay before they "hit it big." But generally, I like to listen to music that I stumble upon in music shops, followng influences and my tastes. One discovered artist that I recommend - I hardly remember how I find certain writers and authors any more - is Rufus Wainwright. He has uniquely blended folk, pop, and orchestral touches to create a sound that is unmistakeably his own. His parents were classically trained musicians of their own repute - Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle - and he was interested in opera at a youn...

Somehow, the hours disappeared into 6:45pm, and I'm going to be late for a dinner date with a welcome friend around the bend (or three blocks over in modern parlance). I have to go for a run before I am considered done - for today, at least. Off to a run, I say, and leave the rest for another day, namely tomorrow. It will come regardless of what I tell myself or what I do in between. So off for a run, which makes more sense anyway.

On a watercolor sunshine afternoon, a wonderful friend and I walked along the bay towards Fort Mason. For those more familiar with San Francisco, the wind was only purring (sometimes it roars like a lion along the Marina Green), and the forecasted rain hung heavy in the beautiful clouds; we saw none of it, only the glorious colors of the sunset. We walked to the Annie Leibovitz exhibit in the Herbst Pavilion, "Rewarding Lives", a collection of her photography that captured famous cardmembers of American Express (the company, I might graciously add, footed the bill for the free exhibit - you can follow the link here: http://www.fortmason.org/spotlights/2003/1003/1003-spot1.html). The Moderns, a creative agency, dreamt the translucent pods that housed various collections of photos; the icons enchanted the lens: Muhammed Ali, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis, Jr., Gwynteth Paltrow and her morther Blythe Danner, I.M. Pei, Frank Gehry, Greg Louganis, Tony Hawk, and 73 other variou...

Sometimes, the days sneak away - as if I was not paying attention and they slipped past like accomplished thieves. It has already been a week since the last day that I happened upon my thoughts, so here I am again. Today, I am visiting another university campus to consider more graduate programs. There is something thrilling about walking about with students, the spirit of an American college. The mind opens to the ideas that charge the grounds. Professors and students talking, working out life's virtues and new research that dispels old assumptions. Everything is new again, and the mind is alive. I like these environments because they bring new energy to tired thoughts. There is something about the American college...