I refused to eat the night before, well, except for a last cup of hot chocolate. See, I had been trying to skip a meal all week, but starting with Sunday's spaghetti, I was going down fast. What can I say? Spicy meatballs and fine-grained parmesan dusted lightly on the rich sauce were beckoning.

I couldn't help myself.

Then there was Abbas. He invited me to the cafeteria. A curse be upon every all-you-can-eat establishment. So I got a salad. And eggs. And an english muffin topped with a scoop of galactic spawn sauce. Oh yeah, and hash browns.

After that night, I ate nothing but fruit, toast, and a few crackers....ok I admit...and that chicken parmesan at the honors dinner-- but at least I had a salad with it.

To play the trumpet well, I need to have a nearly-empty stomach. Not empty enough to make it complain, but empty enough for it to keep a low profile beneath my liver and lungs. I don't need it to puff out my chest, bragging about the attention I give it. Because I need to puff out my chest for other reasons; I need to be a windbag.

To play the trumpet well requires really good lung capacity. To play the trumpet clearly, smoothly, lucidly requires relaxation and ease. The easier (physically) it is to play, to breathe, to move, the better the music sounds. Minute strain in a finger, toe, or eyebrow will somehow filter into the airstream and devastate the sound.

I have only rarely been fully relaxed, hearing the clear sound of strain-less (not effortless, for to play well takes extreme concentration and focus) music stream out of the end of my trumpet bell.

I am naturally predisposed to indigestion. This is annoying. A full stomach is the greatest personal obstacle I know to playing well.

So every concert, I play a weighing game, not with my feet on the scale, but with my mind in my stomach, evaluating how quickly the food will digest, how its chemical makeup will affect the stomach acids, and what I should eat next. Citrus drinks, for example, are great in the days before concerts; they help break down the food. Cheese is sometimes good, when I've reached equilibrium early, and I want to shut down the digestive system so my stomach doesn't grumble while I perform.

Am I obsessed? Yes. Does it work? You betcha. This week, I timed it perfectly; although I didn't play a perfect concert (which many have been kindly overlooking), I at least played the key solos well (Notes: A. Expression: B. Tone Quality: B+).

Next time, however, I'll drop the hot chocolate.

Whoosh! The passengers emerged from the black hole; for some miraculous reason, they passed through the center of its torus shape, shooting straight through, gaining speed, gaining speed, going faster, faster fasterfasterfasterfastfastfast.....

They had swung around and the ship was slung at speeds higher than any craft before it. And there they were, passing by Alpha Centauri at a blink, past all the galaxies they had dreamt of visiting some futuristic day, miraculously missing major asteroids, planets and stars as the universe flew by like a gentle spring rain.

After years of applying the brakes, they finally arrived. To their surprise, there it was, the Terran system, their home. Had they been dreaming? Or had they actually done it, looped around the fabric of the universe, ending up where they began?

The next few posts will focus on my experiences over the most insane weekend of this semester, which felt very much like falling into a normal-flavor black hole. I'm still surprised I'm not ...splat... a mere dot on its surface still.

Near China's northern borders lived a man well versed in the practices of Taoism. His horse, for no reason at all, got into the territory of the northern tribes. Everyone commiserated with him.

"Perhaps this will soon turn out to be a blessing," said the father.

After a few months, his animal came back, leading a fine horse from the north. Everyone congratulated him.

"Perhaps this will soon turn out to be a cause of misfortune," said the father.

Since he was well-off and kept good horses his son became fond of riding and eventually broke his thigh bone falling from a horse. Everyone commiserated with him.

"Perhaps this will soon turn out to be a blessing," said the father.

One year lated, the northern tribes started a big invasion of the border regions. All able-bodied young men took up arms and fought against the invaders, and as a result, around the border nine out of ten men died. This man's son did not join the fighting because he was crippled and so both the boy and his father survived.

Huainanzi, from 100 Ancient Chinese Fables, translated by K. L. Kiu, Hong Kong, China

The eyes peer at me through the mirror, lit from below. Two eyes, an angularly-shadowed nose, and the lights from distant buildings are all I can see, the two pinpoint candles in the eyes burning, burning, burning as they sink into the darkness.

The eyes are mine, and in the hazy-red darkness, I decide to feast on unexpected dinner.

It began like this: I forgot the key to the front door.

It ended like this: "Auuuuugh!"

And in the aftermath, I sit in my tiny car (the motion detecting lights have long gone off), updating my website via the house's wireless base station, looking at my eerie visage in the rear-view mirror, lit from below by the laptop screen.

Life is weird. I was going to make a sandwich inside, but I think I'm going to eat out now.

Good thing I have money in my pocket. I'll come back after dad comes in from work.

Personally, the hardest task for me is to create language that wasn't said before to describe things in new and insightful ways. (aka, Virginia Woolf's commentary on Words)

Creating figures of speech, etc, is hard.

1. All writers are involved, in some way or another, in thinking of new (to them) figures of speech. An example, from Ciaran Carson, about music, is that lyrical music is like a celluloid ball on a jet of water.

Language is a funny thing. I haven't studied it thoroughly, but from my limited knowledge and experience, older versions of languages are very literary, full of metaphors, similes, and turns of phrases that have now been shortened and cropped into single words. While this is more useful and efficient, it makes it harder to think poetically. On the other hand, our lack of poetic language is what gives poetry value beyond everyday speech.

Perhaps then,

2. The process of language begins, organically ( like the succession of plants in an area that moves from stream or rock or dirt to flower and grass and meadow tree to forest ) with figs of speech and what we now call poetry to describe things that do not yet exist, then proceeds to the creation of efficient words.

If this is the case, then we can continue to move on in our understanding of language to make a few conclusions.

To be a writer is to engage in the creation of language. To be a creative writer is to be there at its base, at its beginning. While people who coin a word might be considered the creators of language, but the people who create the poetic descriptions, whether they stick or not, are there, at the microscopic interplay of simple beauty, flowering interactions, the bustling beginnings of the ecosystem of language.

Words are complex. They must be learned. Terms are smaller, like icebergs on the ocean. They seem small, but their base is the underwater etymology, the bacteria, the minerals, the veins and cracks, blue and green and rusty, coloring and supporting the weight of the term that seems to sit on the surface.

To be a writer is partly to strip off the layers, shave away the top, until you get to the core, and regain, unlearn the sophistication of terminology, and reach that colorful land teeming with poetry.

Or, of course,

This could just be the random musing of someone who's read too much theory

In the end, it's much more useful just to think about what works, what sounds good, what you like to read, etc. At least, if you want to actually write anything.

On Saturday, I will don my subtly pin-striped, jet black suit, my well-polished Honors Program lapel pin, and a very smart, satin bow tie. I will carefully set an orange kerchief in my left breast pocket, breath deeply, closing my eyes, and pick up my trumpet to perform a Rafael Mendez arrangement.

I will also be wearing Arwen™ ears, a green felt hat, and pointy green shoes, the bells on their tips tinkling gently.

And the children at the open door recital, including those who are still beautiful, even if they live in adult bodies, will have seen the friendly, noble characters of myth, and smile and laugh and clap. I'll smile back, maybe with an elfish grin and laugh myself.

For a few brief hours I will be an elf. There is so little joy, so little laughter in this world. Maybe I can change that, for a few brief hours.

The next afternoon, I will be sitting, in the same suit, the same bow-tie, but I will no longer be an elf. If all goes well, clear, melodic, bold, and lyrical music will spring around the audience from the band as I weave in an out, here playing a supporting role to the bass, to the clarinets, and to the tuba, then, in a sudden weave, emerging myself to play a note, a phrase, or be accompanied in a solo by the whole band.

For us all comes liquid emotion, perusal and forgotten smiles flowing back, a memory, a sorrow maybe too, but always a pleasure.

For a few brief hours, I will be a herald, a street-musician, an old man in a deafened room, and someone watched over by, watching over the beautiful voice of an amazing singer.

In the meantime, it's all work and no play. Hope to see you there!

I enjoy ephemeral art. Whiteboards, instant messages, on-the-spot verbal quips, musical improvisation, and other easily-created, easily-fading media strangely attract my effort.

In response to a whiteboard reading "UGH", I wrote the following poem:

... UGH ...

said the joyful bug
as he lilted and lifted his mug
in praise, to toast
tall days, to boast
of his beautiful, darling slug.

College is such a precarious time. Intense opportunities tantalize from all directions, causeways and eddies so hard to navigate... the currents flowing in many ways. Unexpected sandbars. Rocks. Storms and sunken treasures, sunken dreams. Quiet erosion, and the deafening revs of the ocean's engine blast our lives, and sediment, bits of life from all over the world settle, compress, and synthesize into solid stone. On reflective days, we unearth fossils, or the sand blows away to reveal shipwrecks and monuments alike.

The real trick is to become, to remain, not an honorable person, not an honored person, but a thoughtful person, a kind person, a humble person above all. Not to be humble in attaining, or in the learning and experience that should be gathered frantically, carefully stored while it is plentiful and used wisely. No. Not humble in striving, but humble in attitude, to develop a deference to others.

In the ecosystem of life, we can compete with other species, fighting over every last calorie, every shelter, every stream and spring. Or we can cooperate, sharing the resources with others, yet using our own resources to their maximum, and sometimes for others. We must keep focus, nurture drive, and yet remain aware of the needs of our fellows.

I am saying this to myself.

Is it possible to go back to the way things once were? Perhaps not entirely, but it can be done in part. Maybe this is wisdom, to choose things that do not come naturally. Lately, I have been less-than-myself outside the class yet have greedily slurped class time. A symptom of growing confidence, one that has flexed its new growth in not-entirely helpful ways.

I should not feel insecure or inferior in my abilities. But kindness does not only exist in the absence of wisdom. And wisdom never exists in the absence of kindness.

Images in the mind.

Can I have reconfigured the nature of my brain so easily? For years, my mind worked in words, in text, in semantics. In meanings, in connections, in logic and phrasings, my thoughts processed, ground, synthesized, analyzed, and compacted neatly into boxes carefully filed away. Is this why I liked computing? Why I like programming? Maybe.

When I chose to phase out of programming, did I realize it would change the very nature of my mind? I hoped so, but I didn't know what I wished for.

I have, over the last year, slowly begun to arrive at a personal epoch in my thinking. Not so much one of ideas and opinions, but one relating to the basic mental framework that I operate in. It's like opening one of the crystal canisters in Avernum; I find myself changed, but not in a particularly put-your-finger-on-it way.

But why do I mention this?

Almost instantly, one knot of the crowd unravels and this old man in a topcoat and a hat and big boots tied with yellow laces steps out. From another dark annex of the carpark, his counterpart appears. By the time we hit the last part of the first part first time round, they're poised and ready -- arms not stiff and rigid like the modern over-educated dancer, but relaxed, palms held outwards in a gesture some way between a welcome and a challenge. They face each other, one foot pointing outwards, while the crowd has shifted and coagulated round them in a focus of attention.

For some reason, after I read the first sentence in the previous quote, from Ciaran Carson's Last Night's Fun, In and out of Time with Irish Music, I had an image of an old man. He didn't appear, but rather emerged. Someone had begun to attempt to dance first, a younger one, not as deep in the lore. It was inside the pub, and voices called out for a bit of a dance in-between the cigarette smoke. He was reluctant, or seemed so, until they drew back into a circle.

When the old man came out, he was brilliant, his limber body slapping his shoes to the ground at all angles and tempos. Here, I see the aged, unstained, dry, worn floorboards and his shoes, casting a dim shadow that darts in and out like a knife, and hear the report of the leather on wood, the smart whip-slap becoming a minnow in the lucid stream of limber melody . A knot of men circles around, enjoying the scene, contentedly puffing away, or sipping at whatever happens to be in their mugs. Dim, but vivid.

Where did that come from?

There it is, in all of the cinematic wealth of experience. I first assumed the image came from a movie. They always do. Perhaps it's the programmers mind that too-neatly categorizes, that keeps ideas on paper and images on the television and in photos and in real life. Nearly all of the images I have ever seen in my head have come from sight, either from the television or from daily life. (I can think of one, of seeing a woman that could be my grandmother trundling a heavy wastebin, bending down to pick up trash in a factory whose screeches would overpower the most consciously dead metal music.)

I can't think of a movie the scene appeared in, and I must conclude that it's from a book.

This is earth-shattering. This is only the second time it has happened to me, and it's the first time I've visualized something vividly enough to describe it, knowing that it came from a text of some sort. I have forgotten the text, but the image remains.

Fascinating. This will take some looking into. I think that maybe listening to audio drama has helped (although I still can't visualize it), or that enough reading has really changed the fundamental structure and nature of my thoughts. Of course, it could be my focus on nonfiction writing.

More on this later, to be sure.

Note: As I edited this post for spelling and wording, I suddenly remembered where I got the image: Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village. Woah.

One week ago, I drive home from Hampton Roads, Virginia.

Today, I rode my bicycle to school.

What's the connection? Here goes...

I was coming into the Chesapeake tunnel. I had just passed a "Lancaster Food Supply" truck, as I zipped along the bridge in my well-laden '89 Plymouth Horizon hatchback (good gas mileage, low emissions. Good price). The Chesapeake tunnel is unlike any other tunnel I've been through. Going into New York City, the imposing facades stick out, and entering the tunnel feels very much like entering one of the tunnels on the PA Turnpike, the ones that bore through the Appalachian Mountains.

Instead of driving into the side of the tunnel, one's car descends into a hole in the ground. One moment, you can look out over the side of the bridge at the shining bay, and the next moment, the bottom falls out of your vehicle, and you find yourself on an incline.

If you're me, on Thursday, March 4, you also find that the traffic inside the tunnel has come to a stop.

I was able to stop my car in time, but the guy behind me didn't. So now my rear bumper is frowning to the right a bit. I'm not exactly smiling about it either, but at least it got me back on my bike.

November 9, 2003, a day after I bought my Airport card at the Apple Store on Chicago's Magnificent Mile, I was sitting in the hotel lobby wondering what to do. I had already packed my luggage, and my books were neatly sealed away. The others were still asleep

My laptop detected a signal, but only if I was sitting in one particular couch. I didn't want to look at my email.

A good friend's name shone green in the iChat list. This was odd, because the clocks back in Pennsylvania were reading 6:30AM. I was surprised to see her up so early on a Sunday morning.

So I started to tell her about the trip. Soon, her away message popped up, and I realized there must have been some glitch.

I didn't stop typing.... the experience was amazing. Because I was writing an Instant Message, there was an immediacy to what I was writing. I couldn't mull over things or edit them. They just went out, and I kept moving. Soon, what I was writing began to take on a rhythm. I started to realize that I had something unusual on my hands. I kept typing, and a general direction/thesis/flow for the messages began to come together.

It was an Instant Message Poem, but I didn't realize it yet.

This Spring, Patty mentioned that she kept the file, still surprised that I would write something like that into iChat. I had also kept the file, and I took a second look at my old message. Then, today, I created a series of Tinderbox macros to draw iChat-ish boxes around bits of text.

These macros came together to make "Chatting from the Palmer House" a reality.

Has anyone done this before? A precursory googling turns up plenty of poetry chat rooms, but no mention of formatting poems as chats.

Know of any examples? Have any ideas? Send me an email at jnm@rubberpaw.com.

I just spent the whole day wrestling with the site's layout. Am I being too ambitious? Everything was designed perfectly, it looked perfect in every browser I got my hands on.

And then I sat down at a Wintel machine, and Internet Explorer.

Explorer refused to render my HTML properly. I had done it perfectly, but for some reason, it likes to ignore table cell dimensions in certain cases. Instead of nicely placing the box at the top left, I was getting an extremely long,

Arghhh!

So I redesigned the layout. It worked better. But even as I pushed in one end, packing the site together carefully, something on the other end would break.

I exhausted all of my design knowledge trying to put together this look with regular HTML. And it can be done, just not in Internet Explorer.

So I caved. I'm not sure if this is even the proper way to put together a CSS site, but I've done it. I've built my layout completely in CSS. Sorry, Generation 4 Browsers. I don't have a copy, and I can't check. Sorry, Dillo users. The site looks rather silly without CSS.

Of course, I might just completely redesign it again. Argh. It looks so nice as it is, I would hate to do it.

But I don't want to have to mess with it much longer.

Update, 9:31 PM. I messed with it some more. It's now back in tables, not nearly so spectacular, but much more browser-compatible. *sigh*

Woah. If I only lived every day as if I have all the spiritual gifts, all the power I need to accomplish everything that God has for me. All the blessing, the joy, the triumph of Divine power is right there, at my fingertips. Even the endurance; God is able to keep me strong to the end. I don't have to worry about disappointing God, I don't have to stay under the overbearing weight of my weaknesses, or remain engulfed by the oppressive, suffocating failures of my life.

We can be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. No wonder Paul eagerly waited for that day.

Today, DesignHarbor.com died a sad death. Hard drive failure. Don't worry. I have already obtained backups of the database, and I have the code and datafiles backed up on CD.

But it's a sad day. Patrick Giagnocavo at ZillNet had been doing a heroic job keeping the site running, as a memory of the good times I had with Jonathan Brownell and Sarah Pride in my very first business. I still chuckle when I realize that I began the site over five years ago.

I feel old. I feel like an old friend is dead, if I can feel that way never having lost an old friend.

I have begun to post my articles on this site in the Design Harbor Area. Until this morning, I didn't realize how much writing I did for that site. Wow. I guess I was focused. Of course, the pay was really good. For a while, Sausage Software paid for targeted advertising. Those were fun times, when I could work myself to the bone and revel in the work and in the reward. Now I just work myself to the bone.

While I putter around trying to get things back into shape, feel free to peruse an earlier version of the site, Abscissa Tech.

After reading through The Story of Bread, marketing material from Sunbeam now published in James Lileks' Institute of Official Cheer, I composed the following sublime syllogism.

Note: I wrote a blog entry on The Institute a couple days ago. Note: I really must send this syllogism to Sunbeam to find out what they think about it.

1. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

2. Bread rises in the east.

3. Bread rises in the West.

4. Therefore, bread is not the sun.

5. However, Sunbeam is bread