Thursday, July 04, 2002

Lutsen June 1990 the Star Tribune ran a story about the upcoming Rainbow Gathering in the forest near Lutsen, Minnesota.  It showed a bare assed young woman running through a grove of trees and mentioned that there would be free food and drugs.  My girlfriend and I and about 10,000 other twin citians decided to go.  We hitchhiked.  A pedantic rainbow dipstick named Joby picked us up and drove us to the gathering. Upon arrival, we walked for miles with hundreds of other people towards the drumming in the distance.  The organizers of the event achieved a beautiful disorder for the whole thing.   We walked by unconscious people being licked by dogs.  There were lots of naked people.  I watched a guy drink bug repellant out of a little camoflaged plastic bottle believing it was liquid LSD.  "gahhhhh,  GAHHHHHH.", he said.   There were vagrants having fistfights. There was no clean water anywhere.  An agreed upon acre of blasted land served as an open air toilet.  Walking past people with dysentery leaning against trees, I dizzily stepped within sight of a buzzing mound of human waste when I had to relieve myself. The free food amounted to a lorry of watermelons that we carried to a central spot for the interdependence day celebration on July 4.  Picture a long line of people, many of them naked, carrying watermelons through the forest.    Interdependence involved a huge circle of people holding hands in the forest with some non-charismatic guru saying too many words.  I couldn't concentrate.  It was so hot.  I just wanted to run away with the watermelon I was entrusted with and eat it, which I eventually did.  Wendy and I failed as rainbow people.  Joby told me that he was going to "Tune my negative energy right out" at one point.   Wendy got all territorial about the little patch of ground we had claimed for our campsite.   We kept our watermelon for ourselves.  Still, it was the most memorable fourth of July I have ever had. 6:10:38 AM    comment []

I would really like to write a special interest web log, but I can't narrow the focus to a particular subject.  What I don't want to do is write about how I surf the web.  I don't want to propagate links.  Many places do this very well already.  I don't want to argue points of view.  What I really want to do is provide data that are not available anywhere else on the internet and sometimes use links as background material.  So I guess the most valuable and interesting thing to do is act as a thoughtful and dependable recorder of reality.  I will act as a sensory organ for the larger organism of the internet.  Gee, it's hot. 4:04:10 AM    comment []

Insomnia.  I used to be able to sleep.  Every day this week I popped awake at exactly 2:30 a.m. to wander around the house in my underwear.  On this early morning the house is full of flying insects, both real and unreal.  This is the weblog hour.  The beastly fat-ass cats are prowling around waiting to get at my empty cereal bowl.  I can see the blue flickering light of television in my next door neighbor's house.   Her husband ran off to become a zen buddhist.  I was never clear on why he had to leave to do this, but he is gone.  The house across the street houses an elderly woman and her mentally and physically retarded daughter.  The daughter is bedridden and the woman has Alziemer's disease.  I have introduced myself to her 4 times and she still asks me if I am visiting.  3:35:40 AM    comment []