Oh those forgotten things.

Forgotten and remembered today.

While up at the lake for Thanksgiving I forgot the McCarthy trilogy I’d been reading in Alexandria, Minnesota with about 50 pages left.  So that’s on hold.  I also forgot my extremely warm winter vest in Cloquet, Minnesota.

In the mean time I’ve started rereading a classic rendition of Walden, illustrated with natural photos from the very area Thoreau lived in for 26 months.  I’m currently just in the thick of the first chapter on Economy (which is the slowest chapter and a hindrance for most people who would have otherwise read through the entirety of the book but give up after getting into his house building calculations.)  It’s a joy throughout.  Thoreau’s perspectives are always clear and well put.  Literally every page has thoughts worth contemplating for days.

Meanwhile, winter has set in here in Bloomington, Minnesota.  Our first real snow and shoveling duty reared yesterday, while the first real cold spell begins tonight.  Time will tell if we get a short, kind winter like two years ago, or long precipitation laden six months of three and one years past?  I wouldn’t bet on the former given my time and fortunes here.

Given the current situation, time to warm up and read.

I read a pretty good amount.  Not nearly as much as a few decades back, but enough to keep me well informed regarding news and entertained.  Have since I was a lot younger.  Used to write a lot as well, but not nearly so much presently either.

Lately it’s become apparent that I use words in ways other people wouldn’t, usually in a non classic definition that makes sense to me, but perhaps not as much to other people.
There are two reasons for this, one is an incomplete understanding of the word itself, which stems from reading it in multiple situations and applying meaning over time.  That meaning sticks with me and is flexible, it can be used in multiple scenarios that make sense to me (and that may make sense to others, but perhaps not.)

This is a common thing among most people.  You learn words by hearing them spoken and reading them.  Most people learn words by hearing them over and over, so their meanings are tied up in how they’ve heard them, often from people around them or television and radio.  A big part of my vocab comes from reading, often classical literature and non contemporary things.  Also common for many folks today.

The other reason has more to do with creativity and applying abstracts in writing.  Writing in abstract and using different meanings is memorable and enjoyable as a reader in my opinion, so writing with it is a tool of sorts.  Many of my favorite artists use words in ways that make you think differently.  Bob Dylan, Ian Bavitz, John K. Samson, and many others do this masterfully.

It’s common for me to think, write and speak this way and evidently it comes across curious to some.  Probably anachronistic to many also.  However it’s so slight in most instances that I really don’t notice it; or at least didn’t until recently as it’s been made abundantly clear.  Yet it is obvious upon further examination.  When I really sit down and look at the definition of the word in question there’s often a true disparity, more pronounced in some places and less in others, but there it is.  It’s unintentional, and sometimes it’s pretty funny.

Just woke up and it’s December.

Teresa and I have been trying to finish most of the decorating for the house now, a bit late as we closed in late April.  One thing you’ll learn if you haven’t bought a house is that getting things set up the way you want them invariably is dictated by the triumvirate of time/money/quality.

I’ve heard a joke, or truism more likely, that if you BUILD a house you are offered the choice of three variables being the speed it is built, the quality of the house, and price of the house.

The punchline is that you get to pick two.  In my last few years it seems that this idea applies to many things, not just building a house.

So decorating the interior of the house has been eating up a lot of time, after finishing the fence that I built a month ago.  All of a sudden the year is near over and I’m trying to get my thoughts in order regarding accomplishments for this year and what to focus on next.

Tis the season and with Thursday and Friday off, we made the trip up to Alexandria and then Cloquet.  Got back yesterday and are now setting up our first Xmas tree since buying a house.  It is not a real tree, though I have friends that say it’s a better tree if it’s real, we both grew up with fake trees and like them just fine.  It is a festive time right now and we are enjoying it.  :-)

About two years ago I bought a CD called, Champ by Tokyo Police Club.  I really liked it but didn’t buy any other of their music due to having lots of other options and just not getting around to it.

This year the well ran dry in terms of new music for a few months and so I finally remembered to go get their back catalog and purchased an EP and their full length debut.  I’ve been rocking out non stop to it for over two weeks.  Finally recently I’ve diverged a bit from it as some other CDs I wanted were available, but if you are looking for some good indy rock, pick it up!

Truly fantastic, energized rock.  Catchy and fun too.

Some other worthwhile artists I’ve been listening to:

-Front Bottoms
-Okkervil River
-Arcade Fire (have you heard of them?)
-Of Montreal
-Volcano Choir

Anyone engaged in social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and similar orgs already have a huge portion of their lives online.  Anyone using a phone that has a GPS can be tracked physically, probably most anywhere on the planet.  Anyone, like myself, that blogs and puts opinions on the internet can be seriously reviewed and held accountable for ideas that may have altered since the point of codification.

This is the world we live in today.

Everything you put out there or participate in can be used in some form or facet against you.  My wife is a teacher and as such she abstains from a great deal of things that her students could track her on, yet anyone with true ambition could easily follow your actions online.

It’s a bit scary, IMO.

The revelations of the NSA were only the verification of what we’d already worried about.  The fact that I wrote those three letters in the previous sentence mean this post is earmarked for potential review in the future.  Obviously I’ve done nothing wrong here, but if Google can index everything on the internet for search, I guarantee that the government has done the same.

I don’t have anything to hide, but that doesn’t mean I want all of my data archived.  Yet that’s the case here.  And there is no escaping that anymore.

The future of privacy is changing.  There is a great deal of legislating to come on it.

Sometime in the last few months, a change has happened.

I have an iMac downstairs in my house with an office chair.  In the past few years this has been the area where I went for home computing.  My needs for computing are pretty sparse, browsing the internet and using some social networking, blogging and a little bit of gaming.  Sampling and purchasing music.  Some work email for a half hour to an hour a night.  It’s limited.

The last few months, I’ve spent much less time coming downstairs and writing or going to sites.  Instead I keep up on Twitter on my phone, as well as my email.  Occasionally I’ll want to keep up on sports related things, which usually needs a web browser on a PC, but beyond that most everything is done at work or on my (dated) phone.

I really am not sure why this has happened so rapidly.  I’ve had a smartphone for a long period of time, but used it for being on the go and at home used my Mac.  It seems as though having the computer downstairs where it’s less accessible.  In my prior residence it was close to the kitchen, so making food went hand and hand with playing music and browsing the internet in the mean time.  But moving out of that area has quickly shown that it was a luxury, not necessity.

It will be interesting to see if this dissipates as the winter comes and there are fewer things to do outside, as is normal in MN.

I’ve been reading Cormack McCarthy lately, and he’s a truly impressive writer.  And he’s writing about Texas/New Mexico after the turn of the 20th century.  It’s positively engrossing.

In addition to that, I picked up a video game called Red Dead Redemption, which is centered around the old West.  So it’s wild, wild west here as of now.

My father always enjoyed watching Western movies.  Some spaghetti, others just old fashioned.  I think he also enjoyed the Lone Ranger and some other shows of that nature growing up.

For whatever reason, Westerns really appeal to me too.  I don’t know if it’s a paternal thing, but they are great movies for lazy Sundays and whenever one happens to be on I tend to stop.  Something there is about the old West, with open land and small towns, gunslingers and gambling, railroads, telegraphs and very few rules.

It’s essentially the opposite of Minnesota in the winter, but it’ll be a lot of fun.  I’ll review the McCarthy books when finished (it’s a trilogy) but I can tell you now that it will not be the last of his writing that finds a home on my shelves.  He is amazing.

I just realized why time is so crucial to writing, which is sad given how obvious this is.

When you initially write something, the writing is usually full of emotion…from something.

It may be emotion of remembrance or the elation of “discovering” an idea.  Discovering something in your own mind is after all as invigorating as anything in life.  It’s a whole new world of thought.

But when your time is limited, writing is SO hard.

The reason is simple.  Good writing, like life, needs time for perspective.  Time to marinate and consider.  It is altogether too easy to simply put something out and expect that it is of value.  Ultimately most of us write things that make sense in the moment but upon further consideration are of little merit, or likely to need refinement to present coherent thought.

Time is desperately needed to pull it together.

Not only the thoughts themselves, but placement and cadence necessary to convey purpose and need.

Great columnists have this practiced.  They already understand how they “sound” and putting it out consistently is easy.  Whereas most writers are choppy and unintelligible, must like this writing is, all things considered.

Because it was blurted, not edited.  And that is inherently interesting.

In Lake Wobegone, there is a very interesting passage from Keillor.  I’m uncertain I can find it, but here is a paraphrased remembrance:

“We knew that we had to do something as a class before we graduated.  We knew that once we were out that we would no longer be special, that we would become like everybody else.”

Despite not loving the book entirely, this has stuck with me since reading it.  Something there is that smiles on youth, fragile and unencumbered.  Although being young is not easy, it is fleeting and it is special in that you are part of a group.  Everyone not part of that group  knows what it’s like to be part, yet they can’t quite know what it’s like to be part of your particular generation.

And yes, you are special.

Of course, you are special when you are old as well.

Some things can be taught, but some things must be experienced in order to be learned.

The young people do not know this yet, but they will.  And it’s the fact that they don’t yet know it that is important.

They are free to think and dream outside of most, though not all, institutional alliances.  Those brave enough, anyhow.

I do not think most youth understand this idea of being special and unlike anyone else, though they are.  Some absolutely must, but lo and behold such an old thought in such a young head.

It took us quite a bit of time to decide, but we’ll be headed down to Belize in December for about ten days.

We had discussed at great length going to Peru, but ultimately decided against it due to prices of flights going up, the timeliness of travel (getting there in the middle of the night wasn’t appealing) and expense of inter country travel.  At some point, we will make it there to see Machu Pichu, but this simply wasn’t the year.

So the current plan is to stay inland for a few days and island hop the rest of the time.

We are behind this year, we need to make reservations right quick, but I’ve been tied up trying to finalize the fence these last few weeks.

Once we get an itinerary, maybe I’ll post that.  I do plan to blog on the vacation, though it will likely be a mass upload of posts much like New Zealand.