Saturday, January 25, 2003

I woke at 4:00 AM and my soul had been replaced with some chattering monkeymind feeding me a stream of anxiety about random things that happened over the past 20 years.  I went down stairs and did some stretching and had a glass of water and went back to bed.  I started thinking about how if you come to America from another country, you'd better know yourself first, cause you can get really depressed and confused here.  Then I thought, do I know myself?  I decided to do some breath exercises to get to the bottom of things so I could curl up with the solid core of what was me and fall asleep in comfort.  The breath is the sweetest fruit in the forest and the monkey always goes to the breath.  The first deep breath burned away all the free floating anxiety.  That certainly wasn't me.  lets go to the next level.  The next level was all about sex.  The next breath burned that away.  The monkey was retreating down crooked cobblestone alleys, tipping over trash cans and dropping banana peels to throw off pursuit.  I planned to throttle the little fucker.  I kept breathing.  The next level was a bunch of bullshit about my relationship with Kate.  A few deep breaths burned that away and I was left with a really vivid hallucination of Kate as a candle flame.    I started crying because I had uncovered this thing of beauty, this pure and constant flame, that I hadn't discovered before.  It was such a comforting feeling that  I fell asleep and woke up hours later feeling more refreshed than I have in years. 12:56:19 PM    comment []

The Last Day Trader A father and son come in to Dunn Bros. in Richfield.  They give my laptop a look and unload their own computer.  A brand new Toshiba.  Following his dad's lead, the son keeps looking over at me to see my reaction as their computer is unveiled.  Dad takes off his jacket to reveal an MTC bus driver's shirt.  "Are you wireless?", he asks me, "  I do my day trading in here every morning.  It is 50 times as fast as DSL"    They set up their computer while the dad informs me about how great wireless is, how great the screen on his new laptop is, and how great the sound system on his new laptop is.  "The mousing pad is really sensitive"  When I was day trading, I accidently bought a stock I didn't want when I touched the mousing pad".  "Did it go up?", I asked, drawn in against my best instincts.  "No!  Down! I lost $300  Ebay.  Now, that's a great stock."  He unwraps his new wireless card.  Junior gets online and looks over at me to see my reaction as a thrashy version of "Wild World" explodes from the speakers.  It is amazingly loud.  Dad says "Turn it down!"  "I don't know how!"  Madcap techie action as they scramble to find the volume controls.  Now both are looking at me.  "Wow.  Great sound", I say, trying to help the man be pleased with his purchase.  "Look at the picture on this monitor", he says, "I couldn't always see the numbers I needed to with the other monitors I've traded on.  That could be really bad for me when I'm day trading."  Yes, the monitors of the past 20 years have been really bad about not showing all the numbers.  I wish I could bend my conciousness to justify purchases like he can. 12:07:31 PM    comment []