Her marriage wasn’t a terrible marriage in the way that those sorts of things go but it was fundamentally flawed. Ten years later and she’s single again.

And in one of our far too infrequent conversations, she made an interesting comment- one of the things she’s been pondering is what commonality, what common thread have the men in her life had?

Her question began the same question within me. But whereas her direction was probably more towards finding a common fatal flaw that she was initially either attracted to or overlooked, i took it a different direction. I started to wonder what the common thread was in the women i’ve loved; many of which i love to this day to one degree or another.

I’ve had more failed relations than successful ones. I’ve had some lovers that i should have devoted more emotion in, i’ve had a few where we probably shouldn’t even have been friends. Thankfully they’re the vast minority. But i’ve had stellar partners that have ended up being friends. I’ve had one that i thought was the brightest and most beautiful star in the universe only to find out that she was a nailbomb of anger and to her, i was only a repetition of a series of guys that she lived with for a while, then found another to move onto. But even she had this common thread.

It’s taken me a while to find the words for this and i’ll probably still fall short. The women i’ve known, the ones i’ve loved and the few that have loved me in return tend to be very intelligent, very sexually confident and outspoken but not brash. None of them [that i can remember] wore make up. That speaks to a sense of confidence right there. I’d never date a woman that wore makeup on a daily basis. Anyone unable to leave the house without drowning their face with makeup is too insecure for me. Sometimes they wore lipstick for special occasions but that was it. Categorically every woman i’ve taken seriously has rejected the bullshit, hype and factory processed insecurities that magazines like Cosmopolitan and Vogue perpetuate. A few were the kind of women who would read Bitch or Bust.

Some were culturally literate and all gave without condition. Well, almost all.

There are probably other traits but those are the most obvious ones that i can remember right now.

The process of going through my memories, as fractured as they might be at times, has yielded some very unexpected yet rather pleasant realizations. For my part, i’d like to think that i’ve been equally as unconditional in my giving, that i made each of them laugh at times, that i could make them feel safe and happy [or at least happy for that moment] when i held them and that each of them always felt that even without me exactly being the most exciting guy in the world, they could at least call on me if need be. And i hope they found that i  held some degree of honesty that wasn’t as common as their other experiences might have led them to believe.

Unfortunately i know it’s an impossibility. People are people. Differences in communication, expectations and the paths of life that each of us are set on [or have avoided] by the time our worlds mingle mean that some go away never to look back.  But for those that i’ll never hear from again, i’d like to think some kindness and decency flowed both ways.

On a related note, Facebook has been an odd blessing. Several women i’ve known over the years to varying degrees have found me if only to say hello. I owe two of them letters, another one still owes me an explanation and some accountability (she’ll never deliver either) but the fact that these women have found me give me a reason to feel justifiably optimistic that i’ve endured a bit longer and faired a bit better than they might have once thought.

I’m grateful to have Adelle in my life. In so many ways she’s the culmination of a lot of karma, patience and exemplifies why timing is so important. Unconditionally kind, never jealous, always understanding and always willing to talk instead of argue are just a few of the things that make me realize how insanely lucky i’ve been. I’m not sure six years of brutal solitude was worth enduring but i am sure that if she can endure me for six years then it’ll be a good beginning. =)

I’m writing this for both people that went to my high school and those that did not. There may be excessive explanations at times.

In 11th grade, i was signed up for chemistry. My teacher was a generally mild mannered man that we called Dr. Don. I think his last name was Williams or Walters. He was geek chic more than a decade before anyone acknowledged geeks in any fashion other than to taunt, torment, vex, harass and make their lives a living hell. I can’t say i was a good chemistry student. In fact, it’s probably safe to say i was a bad chemistry student. Come to think of it, i was pretty bad at everything school related or otherwise. The only thing worse than my academics at the time was my love life. But hey, i could cultivate a nice crop of acne that was the envy of OPEC. I lost count of the number of times i woke up to disturb the petroleum engineers that were prospecting my face.

There were a series of films that Dr. Don would show to us now and then. I think they each had to do with the process of discovery and invention but it was the credit roll that caught my attention. The accompanying music was unlike anything i’d heard before. Lyrical, slightly melancholy while being uplifting. It used minor keys (hence the melancholy) and transitions that i’d never heard before. These were the days of reel to reel. There was no pause. Any attempt to stop the film would result in the bulb immediately burning the film in two- a visual delight for teenagers but not terribly effective.

The funny thing was, everyone else in the room hated… no, they HATED this piece. I distinctly remember more than one of my classmates grousing about “the stupid music” and on more than one occasion. And if i were going to find out who this piece was by, it was going to have to be by myself. See, i was already a pariah. I had no clique, few friends and all the awkwardness of a spastic goose… with acne. I was already derided and taunted for not obeying the musical flavors of the day (the new wave of the early/ mid eighties). Much worse was that i eschewed them for the sake of listening to Genesis and Peter Gabriel (esp. Security). A pariah among what another classmate of mine would call “disposable children” (her words, not mine).

I was slightly obsessed. I was itching to be exposed to music that was unfamiliar to me but those credits… they rolled by too fast. But i caught a word here, a word there. “Metheny”, “… Search”, “Garage”. I remember quietly cracking my chemistry notebook and scribbling what i’d found, deeply afraid someone was going to figure out what i was writing and, of course, wasting no time in humiliating me for it.

That weekend i made my pilgrimage to the record store in Battlefield Mall. It was the sort of thing you could have set your watch to. I looked, looked and finally found the name. Pat Metheny. I shelled out my weeks allowance and bought one of his albums. Pat Metheny Group (the core members being Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays). It was from the ECM label. In the world of vinyl, ECM was legendary for their pressings. No one pressed vinyl as thick as ECM did. You could have killed a harp seal at 20 paces with one. Leave it to the Germans to over-engineer a record. I took it back to my dorm room and played it. There wasn’t any way to understand the implications at the time; that would happen in college. But looking back, it wasn’t a simple revolution of vinyl on my turntable; it was a nudge into a direction that would eventually find me swimming and immersed in jazz.

Listening to this album (generally referred to as Pat Metheny Group or the PMG White Album because of its design) now, it would be easy to say it was ephemeral, that it was trendy, happy sounding fusion jazz. And yes, for the most part, this album evokes memories of cool air, bright sunshine, endless horizons and the sensation of cool grass under my feet and between my toes. But it was made in the 70′s, years before a myriad of half remembered and entirely forgotten bands would try to capitalize on the same sound. Oh, as an aside, the song that was played on Dr. Don’s films was called The Search. It was the 3rd track on an earlier Pat Metheny Band album called American Garage. This album also evokes memories of better days, cool air, soft grass and endless horizons. I believe it was made a few years before the PMG White Album.

And a few years later, i’m attending my university- Southwest Texas State University. One of the guys down the hall from me is a brutally intense young man named Dean. Dean plays tenor saxophone and exudes confidence in the way i exuded awkwardness (aka:pariah-juice). Dean turns me onto Spyro Gyra, Phil Woods, Kirk Whalum and others. And while there was still a few years to go while i sampled different musics, my eternal love of jazz had begun. The local vinyl store, Sundance Records, had a steady supply of Original Jazz Classic reprints for $5.99; a pretty sweet price for music when you’re a college student.

The vinyl is gone now of course but the names have flourished. Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane, Billie Holliday, Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderly, Hank Mobley, Freddie Hubbard, Stanley Turrentine, Paul Desmond, Zoot Sims, Art Pepper, Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis and of course, Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays.

I found in jazz what i couldn’t find anywhere else- freedom. No longer limited by words with specific meanings derived by someone else’s experiences and left to my interpretations of those words, jazz was the pure expression of that which i sought. It was painful at times, it was sometimes challenging when i didn’t want it to be but jazz lifted me above the clouds of my life. And when challenged to understand something like Coltrane’s My Favorite Things, or the tension and release of Wayne Shorter’s Juju or just appreciating the brutal, confrontational first few minutes of Wynton Marsalis’ Black Codes (From the Underground), jazz i emerged a better person.

By age 24, with my childhood behind me, i’d outgrown rock and roll. Since then, i’ve listened to many, many things. Almost none of which you’ll hear on the radio. Some fall under the moniker of electronica or IDM, a label i don’t care for but is useful to distinguish the candy ass shit of trance from house/techno/jungle/goa/downtempo/dnb, etc… Some nights it’s ambient (somafm : Drone Zone), sometimes quirky and eccentric (somafm : Secret Agent), sometime it’s just interesting (somafm : Mission Control) sometimes dark, sensuous and reeking of a science fiction soundtrack (Jungle, Drum and Bass), sometime it’s noise (such as Seattle’s Dragon’s Eye Recordings) and sometimes just a pure 4×4 beat that compels me to dance (House). And almost always void of lyrics.

And at 43 music is the one of the threads that simultaneously holds me together, sets me free and tethers me to the ground. Jazz is still a huge part of that.

I’ll write about my experiences with electronica another time. Like my exposure and eventual immersion into jazz, it has a story as well. It didn’t take place in Dr. Don’s room. In fact, it took place very, very far away from Mississippi. It would be San Francisco and while i knew of ambient at the time, it would be my ex-wife/girlfriend/whatevershewas abandoning me before i would finally listen to house music and not be afraid to dance anymore.

But it all began in 1982 in Dr. Don’s class.

But i do love gaming. The Team Fortress 2 server i’ve spent hours upon hours on is a blast. Adelle and me spent hours on WoW last autumn and i love it when Shelly and me can play Battlefield 2, 2142 or more recently, Bad Company 2. And to that end, i can take some consolation in that the best gaming i’ve done has been because i was having fun socializing at the same time.

It’s been a year since i updated the front page. It’s time to start taking care of synaesthetic again. My coding skills are rusty and i’m constantly having to relearn most of my CSS, but like the unfolding spring outside, i’m determined to make synaesthetic flourish again. A little here, a little there… and maybe, if i’m lucky, synaesthetic.com will be the unwieldy, inconsistent and unmanageable turd it was before i wiped it all out and started over. Sigh…

My friends Carolyn and Daniel visited me in October of last year. We were about 2 weeks from the peak of autumn and color changes were happening so fast that you could see the difference from day to day. We were able to see the Columbia Gorge as well as Silver Falls. At some point i turned to Carolyn and said, “Believe it or not, it’s even greener in Olympia.” She looked at me like i was having a tin foil hat moment and that my noodle was all full of crazy sauce. Possibly trying to placate me or simply unable to conceive that it could possibly get ANY greener than it was in Oregon, she just very nicely said, “Ooookaaaay.”

Well, here’s the proof. This is the backyard of where my girlfriend lives. It’s the Olympia area and gets more rain than most of the area by virtue of the Olympic mountains.

Sorry about having my ugly mug in the middle of such pristine beauty. I SWORE i had some pix w/o me in em, but they were all focused on mushrooms and not on the trees.

And this life i have. I work but seldom get to be outside for anything other than traveling from one problem to the next. I drive from one point to the next, always to take care of business of one sort or the other. When i drive to Olympia to see Adelle, i’m always focused on the road or it’s too dark/rainy to enjoy the scenery. But the strangest irony is that when i come home from work, i stare at this field of hundreds of thousands of microscopic lights and i play games that simulate these vast distances on a flat surface. Dozens of frames per second, objects zooming, disappearing and perfect skies rendered by pixels. Distance becomes an illusion.

But yesterday, it just felt good to stand there for a bit- to take in the sheltering sky and to listen to the crows.

These are just a few things i heard that day and since then i’ve heard far more and far worse.

Not trying to be crass here but to all you self appointed moralists, go help yourself to a large cup of Shut the Fuck Up.

But let’s be clear about this- Tiger Woods is not a role model. He’s not a priest, doling out morality on life, love, marriage (one does not preclude nor exclude the other) and family then going and screwing as many boys or girls as he can. He’s not like Mark Sanford (Governor, R-South Carolina) who has spent his career spewing morality as a politician then was forced to reveal that not only had he had an affair, but that he spent taxpayers money to fly to another continent so he could get laid without telling anyone that he was leaving. Eventually i’ll get around to discussing the hypocrisy of Sanford, Ted Haggard and other white wing moralists, but not today.

Let’s be serious- if you think that politicians are role models, if you think that athletes or golfers or car drivers are role models, that’s YOUR moral failing. Read that again, “That’s YOUR moral failing.” Asking a politician for moral guidance, expecting the lives of celebrities and artists to be beacons of morality upon which to guide your life is the same as asking a whore for sincerity. In fact, asking a whore for sincerity is more honest. I expect people to be ethical no matter what they do- priest, politician or whore. But when it comes to their private lives, well, it’s called “private” for a reason. If Tiger went and fucked a thousand women, what business is it of mine? What business is it of yours? Hint: none.

If you decided that athletes, golfers, car drivers or even musicians are worth looking up to, it’s probably okay to do so as long as you’re looking to them for the qualities that make them good at their craft. It can be the tenacity and persistence of Serena Williams, the puck handling of Sergei Zubov, the innovations of Thelonious Monk or hell, if you want to lower your standards to the level of some Cheetos eating, Mountain Dew swilling, Diet Coors drinking asshole, you can admire how well some goddamned NASCAR driver can take left turns all afternoon long.

But at no point does it make any sense to look at these people and in the example of American football, say, “Wow. He wears those tight pants really well and jumps and piles on all those men every Sunday afternoon. I’d like my son to look up to him as a beacon of masculinity and morality.”

And by the same token Tiger Woods is not here for you to look up to nor are any of us worthy or have any right to expect any soft of an apology from him. But this overall bizarre belief that people have, that just because we see someone on the television, they owe us a debt that allows us to intrude into, observe and judge their private lives. I’ll go so far to say that anyone that indulges that whim is not only vapid, but has no content to their character. The only exception is when people pass themselves off as moralists, such as Ted Haggard. If you don’t know who that is, Ted sold himself as an upright family guy who bellowed “family values” and had a particular fervor for denouncing homosexuality. What Ted neglected to tell us is that he is gay and that he was a prolific meth user.

But if you can’t see the difference between a moralist like Ted Haggard and the private affairs of Tiger Woods, then there’s nothing i can say here that would make any sense to you.

It saddens and sickens me to see the continuing decline in entertainment. Yes, tabloid rags have always been around and gossip will always be a component of the weak minded and profoundly incurious. That’s just the way it is. The problem i have, and hopefully that you have, is seeing people scream from their sanctimonious ivory tower that Tiger Woods owes any of us an apology for what he’s done in his private life.

It was a bit different a couple of days ago. This time the autumn sun was lethargic and low in the sky. Shadows from the nearby hills blanketed the water and the thick inch layer of ice never thawed even though it might have been above freezing at some point. There were no birds this time.

We walked to the trails end to see the salmon run. Coho, i think. Unfortunately what we were met with instead was that unmistakable smell of proteins rotting. Yes, there was a salmon run but we were there a day or two late. All we were met with was dozens of huge dead salmon stuck in whorls, branches and resting against the shores. Each pale and slightly bloated. The irony is that invisible to us, thousands upon thousands of eggs rest under the rocks, waiting for their time to make the journey that’s been going on for tens of thousands of years if not longer.

And by now the cold is starting to get to us. We head back to the car. At a certain point, we’re standing on the walkway overseeing the lake. This time the wind is upon us, stealing whatever warmth we’ve managed to keep to ourselves. But i had to stop. This pristine, perfect body of water and the sounds of the wind slicing and weaving through thousands of trees, their branches responding with a chorus of clatters and a whisper that filled the sky; unknowable in its meaning, unmistakable in its beauty. And it was all set against an unmoving sapphire sky.

I wanted to stay… just for a while longer.

There probably isn’t any other phrase in my educational experience that describes me. Wait, there is one more: “He becomes bored easily and daydreams often.” But i digress.

I wasn’t a good student. Part of that’s because i’m not smart. The other part is that i could be too smart. My mom recalls that at 4 years old, i had begun to teach myself how to read. On the other hand, i remember struggling with the ability to say words with the “fr” pairing. “Free” was “Three” and there was always something “three” in the box of cereal. Conventional teaching didn’t work for me. Brute memorization and regurgitation were my antithesis, yet this was what was expected of all of us. To a large degree, you have to have memorization and regurgitation to progress, but where i shone was critical thinking and analysis. When i was faced with a challenge i couldn’t get my conceptual fingers around, i slammed into that wall of rage and once there, did nothing but want the world around me to feel the same angst that i did. I wasn’t an angry kid- i just knew how to rage. There is a difference.

The result is that administrators, teachers and my parents decided on remedial classes in some subjects for me. Math in particular. For a while, i was dosed with Retalin and while i remember my grades improving, my parents didn’t push the drug on me for long. Knowing what we know about Retalin these days, i am grateful. To contrast, i was in AP English during my senior year. Lord, i must have made my teachers bicker in the staff room as to whether i was a derilect or spooky intelligent. In truth, i’m more one than the other. Which one i lean towards is dependent on what kind of day i’m having.

I do not blame anyone for those remedial or “fundamentals of… (insert subject here)” classes. Part of that’s because i’m well past the age where i get to blame people in my past for my present or my future. The other part is that as i’ve worked around educators for the last few years, i’ve learned something about their training. Teachers don’t become teachers because they can simply teach a subject. They’re councilors, they’re strategists and they’re capable of recognizing abuse: emotional, physical and substance. They don’t adopt a “one size fits all” curriculum and resources exist to accommodate the realities that a diverse student body lives with. And each and every one of the teachers that i’ve spoken with are always looking for the ones that drop off and think of ways to bring them back on board. In my school, there’s even a sub school that specializes in those interested in pursuing the arts. Their scores are high and the classes are brutal. My head hurts every time i have to sit in the science teachers room because i start having flashbacks of struggling with my college science classes. As an aside, i’ve never seen a group of students that are more comfortable in who they are and what they are not.

And while i may be wrong, i don’t believe i am. The science of education has progressed so far in the lasat two or three decades that what i grew up with in the 70′s and 80′s seems medieval at times. Again, this isn’t to cast blame anywhere but to say that with the progress of statistical analysis and a better understanding of how multiple approaches to a single topic can yield better results than a “one size fits all” approach has given educators of today a better set of tools to draw from.

As for myself, i can’t help but to wonder what would have happened to me in an environment such as our arts academy has. Instead of being ostracized and a pariah that was socially retarded and all angsty, i might have actually grown up with a little bit of confidence. For the record, i did eventually get that confidence. The price tag was brutal and i had to destroy a friendship in the process but that’s a story for some other time.

Well, when i nuked the site a few months ago, i decided that i wasn’t going to repost my pages devoted to the epic known as the Jarheadian Escapades. Yeah, it was the most popular part of my site but that was kind of the problem- discussing Jarhead Jones in any way, shape or form is acknowledging him and acknowledging him is a drain on all that’s good and decent in the universe. Besides, i thought he had moved on.

But he hasn’t. Being the sociopathic tumor of the snake handling, gun/death worshiping, Tim McVeigh white nationalists that he preys on has apparently made him relatively wealthy.

I was asked to repost the information i had posted on synaesthetic.com for many years. After deliberating the pro’s and con’s, i’ve decided i will. It won’t be tonight, it might not be next week, but it will be reposted in relatively short order.

*in fact, i do not know if Alex Jones is fueled by cocaine. His behavior may, in fact, be natural for him. The former would explain a lot. The latter would justify my pity.

I'm a mavrik ! How about you?

A few days ago i posted this image of a group of white people at a house, showing off their Confederate flag (what i’ve heard some call The Traitor’s Flag) with signs in their yard that read [sic], “I’m a mavrik” and [sic] “socialest”. The former, presumably being a reference to the bold souls that wrote this sign and the latter being a reference to President Obama. And while it’s possible they’re maverick’s in illiteracy, chances are these are just a group of ignorant, angry and possibly inbred twats.

So there was a comment that i tried responding to, a comment that made observations about the Black Panthers and la Raza. Unfortunately, FB limits responses to just a few lines. My comments, below, were originally designed to be a response to one person, hence the use of the 2nd person.

It would be erroneous to think that the Black Panthers were created in a vacuum. Think of the history of the time- from the Dred Scott decision to slavery to the brutal repression by white cops and politicians in the south, economic disenfranchisement (i.e.: the WATTS riots), a lack of education opportunities and to top it off and a disproportionate number of black men in jails. As for la Raza, it’s a general term that means “the race”. If you’re referring to the National Council of La Raza, this is a civil rights group whose focus is on poverty and social issues.

It’s important to note that the Black Panthers has not been in existence for about… oh, 33 to 35 years.

But let me think of some other groups of “color” whose affiliation is white. The Ku Klux Klan, The Aryian Nation, Westboro Baptist Church (admittedly, not a white church, per se, but bent on white nationalist values) and oh… 926 known hate groups in the United States (http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp). I wonder what the ethnic breakdown is for these groups? Hmmm… Well, looking at the Texas groups alone, i’m pretty sure the Confederate flag is held in high esteem.

And just to be clear, my comments weren’t to ridicule any one ethnic group. However, ridiculing virulent, ignorant and potentially violent assholes is always good, always fair and decency demands no less. Being stupid, deliberately ignorant and sporting a flag of a country that betrayed the United States is fertile ground for mockery. The illiteracy of these inbred, anti-intellectual idiots is something that needs to be shown to the world and if they happen to scurry back into the darkness of ignorance, sanctimonious, yet false rage based on the comfort that their stupidity brings, then let them suffer derision or let them consider the reasons that they’re laughing stock and perhaps try to grow a little bit.