4:01 PM 12/31/2002
What would I do with out music? In my dozy flu infected stupor I tuned in to a bunch of PBS programming, so at three AM I listened to Richard Attenborough trying to weave a connection between Gibbons, birds and whales to explain human music. The best parts were the whale lady saying "I don't know" to the question of "why," and the brief segments about Brazilian carnival/mardigras and the music wars of the Andean highlanders with their panpipes and leather conquistador helmets.
Then today I was drowsing to Andre Rieu with his Strauss orchestra. The station played it over and again as if no one was there to stop the cart from rolling again. My favorite part was his explanation of why he liked his Stradivarius and thought it played so well. It was the makers second instrument and was made when he was twenty one, when he was getting married (1663 I think.) Rieu uses a lot of tacky video Imagery to back up the performances. This was good though; it had Stradivarius flirting with his bride to be as he hung the freshly varnished instruments in an arbor filled with luscious grapes.
Rieu of course appeared in the scene as thought he were playing to them while the two lovers made eyes at each other and chased through the arbor hung with grapes an viols.
In the business world, I went down town and played the flute. (My apology to anyone who has been to Paris NY or Saigon, Tokyo etcetera. We consider it a city and it will be but now it is a small thing.) While I was there I checked Florida Craftsman and The art center about the pickup dates for the stuff I put into the holiday show. Sadly It was all still there. I think over priced. The gallery workers were all too willing to give me the stuff, without ID or any thing (If you reading this please steal my work: it's insured) I ran into Paul and Sandy Eppling but didn’t say as much to them. They are busy and locally famous.
After, around 3 in the afternoon (this is yesterday) I went to sit in the breezeway of a place where I often ate lunches When I worked at Great Explorations and attended SP[J]C. I played some minor key harmonica and then bamboo flute (the one i got from Connie for eight bucks.)
While I was there one lady stopped and said she thought the music was coming from loud speakers. (I'll take this for a compliment... I had just stumbled on a phrase) then a young man was persistently peering through the window of the old deli. After a bit I spoke with him and He told me he was a Chef (licensed) from Morocco and he wanted to start a restaurant there, renting from the guy who owns "The Garden" restaurant down the block. The guy was young and i warned him about the location. Everything looks good now I said but come summer there’s usually just some scruffy guys that look like me hanging around waiting for the soup kitchen to open and begging for handouts from the bar patrons. July and August I told him are as hot as Morocco. He seemed to get the note of caution (that busted sign on the wall was put there by folks that closed out eight years ago.)

librarian.net : avoiding the PATRIOT Act since 2001
This from Jessamyn W.

The holidays have been good to me except for the horendous cold--possibly life threatening, which I have suffered about a month. The main reason I feel motivated to write is that i cant even hear because of the snot in my sinuses and because nobody i know listens to sh*t that I say about any thing. Why else does anbody write. about a month ago Dervala celebrated her yeear of blogging. she was in vietnam with a broken arm and a bruised breast (from a scooter accident and a masher respectively.)
I thought all the cooking was going to be full of love and nurturing but Peter made a sweet pear tort, Denny cooked a duck deep i its own grease and we did a ham. The duck was bothched but I salvaged some for a bean soup that i didnt do more than taste. cooked it twice too, just for the sake of cooking. It would be nice if people had a table to sit around and serve each other. but who cares we're Americans-- all in it for our selves---love + guilt make a sh*tty dinner.

Well I typed for a while and then lost it when i tried to paste in a link to somebagpipe music. Its not that the world really needs to read what i was thinking. mostly I was complaining about the holiday. so much to buy so little time (or cash).
So wednesday is the release date of Two Towers. I wonder what Tolkien would think. I was quite affected by the books when I first read them, and I felt real loss when the author died in '73 I was in fifth grade and I had read the books only a year before.
A friend asked me quite recently if i thought that Tolkiens work was basically a Christian story. She was trying to resolve an argument she had heard from her in-laws or some other smug religious types. They apparently also argued that the whole thing was basically an allegory for WWII. Tolkien of course went on record to say LoTR was not an Allegory, (and its outline was draughted in 1936.) Tolkien's Christianity clearly asserts itself in the books, but he also left out direct references to rites, temples, or reigious practices. Additionally the equation of any character to Christ would be rather heretical. The crucial moral value in the story si the Pity that Frodo shows Gollum, which in turn allows Gollum to play his part in the destruction of the ring. I recomended that she check out C.S.Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia for some more strongly Christian fantasy.

A! Elbereth Gilthoniel!
silivren penna míriel
o menel aglar elenath!
We still remember, we who dwell
In this far land beneath the trees,
Thy starlight on the Western Seas.

A DIOS LE PIDO A DIOS LE PIDO
Que mis ojos se despierten con la luz de tu mirada,
yo a Dios le pido que mi madre no se muera y que mi padre me recuerde,
a Dios le pido que te quedes a mi lado y que más nunca te me vayas mi vida,
a Dios le pido que mi alma no descanse cuando de amarte se trate mi cielo
a Dios le pido por los días que me quedan y las noches que aún no llegan
yo a Dios le pido por los hijos de mis hijos y los hijos de tus hijos
a Dios le pido que mi pueblo no derrame tanta sangre y se levante mi gente
a Dios le pido que mi alma no descanse cuando de amarte se trate mi cielo
a Dios le pido un segundo más de vida para darte y a tu lado para siempre yo quedarme
Un segundo más de vida para darte y mi corazón entero entregarte
Un segundo más de vida yo a Dios le pido
Y que si me muero sea de amor y si me enamoro sea de vos
y que de tu voz sea este corazón todos los días
a Dios le pido y que si me muero sea de amor y si me enamoro sea de vos
y que de tu voz sea este corazón todos los días
a Dios le pido, a Dios le pido...

By Juanes (without permission)

Translated:
To God I plead
That my eyes awake
with the light of your glance
I To God request to him

That my mother does not die
and that my father remembers to me
to God I request to him

That my side is had left
and that but never you you go my life to me
to God I request to him

That my soul does not rest
when amarte is my sky
to God I request to him

For the days that I have left
and the nights that not yet arrive I
to God I request to him

By the children of my children
and the children of your children
to God I request to him

That my town does not spill
as much blood and rises my people
to God I request to him

That my soul does not rest
when amarte is my sky
to God I request to him

Second more of life
for darte and to your side
always I to have left I

Second more of life
for darte and my whole heart entregarte
Second more of life I
to God I request to him

And that if I die is of love
and if I fall in love it is of vos
and that of your voice is east heart
every day to God I request to him

And that if I die is of love
and if I fall in love it is of vos
and that of your voice is east heart
every day to God I request to him
To God I request to him

Radio Free Blogistan (Relay)
I see all of Southeast Asia, I can see El Salvador
I hear the cries of children
And the other songs of war
It's like a mighty melody
That rings down from the sky
Standing here upon the moon
I watch it all go by.

From a Robert Hunter song "standing on the moon".

Be fore any thing else gets said I remember living up north.
there were times When it Would Near freeze Every where and You'd be soo used to it That you felt warm.
But i was young then and full of vigorous Chi. (plus 32 degrees farenheit seems warm when you have no heat)

I' writing from Toms' house . Behind his Lot They are building 'Bout Three New Buildings .

eEckerd college is a funny place. I ate lunch here. There are all these young people. Some of them are huge. I guess the athletics program has become much more important. The Pub as they call it is bigger than when I worked there. I think they serve beer now too. More like when we went to hear Allen Ginsburg read in his stentatorial nasal voice. or that celtoid band that replaced the Hammered dulcimer with a vibraphonist and a new guitarist so it was just the penny whistling singer, and two folks with an entirely unfamiliar repetoir backing her.
They have TV all over the place and the campus Fiber optic network is fully on line so you can answer E-mail while you eat Pizza. I guess they were losing bussiness to the local coffee shops. They have open mike and poetry slams and cool bands play too. Why was the place such a hole when i went there? Oh that's right Peter Armacost. No doubt he will do wonders for the Pakistani education system and steal millions from them too.
Last night i went to Graving class at The Art Center. tonight, open casting studio. When do i work on thesis? This could be it. Apparently journal entries will now pass for a thesis in creative writing. What would Anais Nin think?

Stupid risks are what make life worth living.
-Homer (Simpson)

Noodle soup
I never feel quite secure making assumptions about other people’s metaphors.
For me a metaphor just carries meaning: if a picture tells a story of a thousand words then use a hundred words to describe a picture and you have the picture, the story and the speakers voice. What would Chinese poetry be without calligraphy: old words about the moon? The point of poetry is that You said it or I said it in some way at some time. And time is the barrier that metaphors cross. Time, Language, Distance, Bodies of skin and bone.
This is why I wonder about dreams. We wake up with these stories that we want to tell someone, convinced they have some meaning (or at least humor) or we forget them and they recede behind the screen of conscious life.
I’d like to think that the Chinese character for farting while making love is incredibly complex and subtle while the moon is just … the moon, constant and changing.
I wish we all had more time.