The Heat Is On

 Literally. The temperature is 16C outside, and 17C inside. That's about 60F in both cases. My fingers are feeling the chill, so the gas heater is on for the first time since... April? May?

 I wonder if anyone in Ketchikan has just turned a heater on. I'll bet they have, since the reported high was 15C. So it's warmer here than in our sister city on the eastern edge of the Pacific. Some comfort, that.

Do You Believe In Magic?

 I am supposed to be getting ready for a meeting tomorrow. Must decide what I need to take with me and prepare it, and do the relevant errands. Instead, I'm getting comfy here with the blog client, and presuming that there will be time for everything later. The question is, am I making a mistake in judgement? Can I afford to do this now, or should I be making sure all else is tended to first?

 Ever the one to 'live in the moment', 'seize the day', and 'enjoy life while I can', I am opting for indulgence before toil. Yes, that's right. Not for nothing did I establish the Verge Club, and assign the motto 'Dessert First!". After all, who is going to work for an unidentified, incomprehensible reward? I want at least a taste before I commit myself to the task. I'm willing to work for pie in the sky - but only because I know what pie can be. I wouldn't bother to work for something I'd never tried and could barely imagine

 Maybe that's why I am loathe to take up with religion, magic, mysticism and romanticism. Maybe that's the difference between a pagan mind and a civilised one: the pagans are all Missouri skeptics wanting immediate, tangible evidence, while the civils are Mississippi gamblers, willing to commit themselves to intangible abstractions on the basis of not much at all. In that case, St. Louis could be an interesting city.


 With that in mind, let's go to the confluence of the two rivers, and see what someone says about the place:

This area played a key role in the westward expansion of the United States. Soon, visitors will be able to dip one foot in the Missouri, one in the Mississippi, and look out and feel the history of America between their toes".

 Is that an interaction of the tangible and abstract? How so?

One Step Backward

When do the clocks do their forward-backward thing? Today is the 21st. Is that eight hours of daylight and eight of darkness, with eight of twilight in between? How many hours of twilight are there?

Waking & Blogging

 What am I doing today?
  Why is it that when I come out of deep sleep I can remain semi-conscious and list the things I need to tend to, prioritise them, and have a clear sense of what I've got to do during the day, but that once I get out of bed my mind reverts to an incoherent state, and I struggle to remember the decisions I made?

 Is it the cumulative effect of trivial distractions: the need to wake up properly, to wash the sleep and ache from my eyes, make coffee, stumble around with cold feet and a backache, try to read what's on the computer, or the whiteboard, or even a list on a piece of paper, make the bed in order to have a place to sort the papers from yesterday, forget the coffeepot on the flame so that the rubber ring inside melts and makes such a stink that I suddenly remember it - too late?

 Is it merely the visual assault of clutter and needing to navigate my way past a desk, stacks of clothes here and bags there, around a corner and over a threshold?

 Is it that just being in the world is too much for my mind to handle and it needs a break already? Or at least more time to adjust? Is that why waking and blogging seem to go hand in hand? Sitting in one place, focused less on the world around me and more on the transfer of what's in mind to what's on screen?



  When is someone going to invent a thing that takes my half-conscious thoughts and transfers them to my Outlook Task list (why is Outlook so bad at some things, yet noone has come up with an alternative?), complete with timed reminders, so that once I get out of bed, I don't have to do any thinking for a while, but can just go through various mechanistic tasks?

 While I'm at it, there are any number of inventions needed here, so when are the kind people over at the universal source of all inventions going to make them available? Since I'm on the topic of inventions, I need this blog to do things ... list things, organise things, animate things, sing and dance things.

One Of These Days

You know the Pink Floyd tune. This ain't it. Not a contender. But you know, I like certain things about it. It makes sense aesthetically, in parts. One of these days I will figure out how they stream these things in the background, so that as you read this, you hear. Then go here. And hear.

The road through Moseley village during a moment of sunshine.