The Corps of Discovery

"This day I have completed my 31st year, and in all probability now existed about half the period which I am to remain in this world. I reflected that I had, as yet, done but little - very little indeed - to further the happiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation.

"I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now sorely feel the want of the information which those hours would have given me, had they been judiciously expended. But since they are past and cannot be recalled, I dash from me the gloomy thought, and resolve to redouble my exertions, or in future to live for mankind as I have heretofore lived for myself."

- Meriwether Lewis, born 8/18/1774,
shortly after being the first American to stride the North American continental divide
and he was born 200 years to the day before me.
Serendipity seems to have some strident notions of its own irony.

Curious, George.

I know I'm not the only one who felt like my intelligence had been spanked during and after watching the movie Syriana. I was walking down the wet street after the movie and I felt vacant, like I had just been slapped and had $11 stolen from me. Because it all began at a point early in the film, when I saw the first scene with Christopher Plummer and my inquiring mind simply wandered back to his days as Dr. Doolitle and his great performances in the Music Man and My Fair Lady and good lord I really hope he really WAS in those last two musicals but I'm pretty sure he was, and I had just finished this meandering with the idea, "Yeah, and look at you now you old Dr. Doolittle" when I realized I had just missed some serious information about his character in the movie, and I immediately was forced to play catch-up for a good hour! Add to that the 400 different geographic locations everyone goes to, and you see that Syriana commands all of your brain all of the time to piece all of everything together, and gives you the sense that if you weren't paying attention 100% of the time, if you had stopped to pluck popcorn off your lap or think about just how they got that shot or ask "Where have I seen that guy before... Ah! That's Basquiat!" then you obviously checked out and have been lost to the whole point of the movie and, man you just didn't get it, did you?! Give me a break George Clooney and stop yelling at me with your skillzz! You forgot that people like me enjoy a mental meander in a movie theater, to listen to the moron behind me who was too stoned to hear the 'no cell phone' announcement, or to just think a little about 76 Trombones or aging actors, or whatever pops up.

Yeesss I did like seeing several mini movies all at once and perhaps it's not important to link everything together into a Eureka!-moment package, so I'll consider the silence of the people leaving the theater more a sign of shellshock than a lack of smarts. But still, George, take your damn Golden Globe back to your Lago d' Como villa and hump it dry, Morbid Batman!



And if you bring your crap into the treehouse we have a hoop below to slam infidel suckahs like this poor trash!

In reality, I am just a passive perimeter shooter who sometimes is forced into post-play because someone's just phoned-in the defense without actually manning up; you know, sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes, well, the bear...he eats you.

Tradition!

A fiddler on the roof, a most unlikely sight! It might not be a thing...but then again, it might.
There isn't much going on in the treehouse today, but the views are beautiful. In a city of hills, there is always something unexpected around the next corner, whether it's bathed in a different light than before or the backdrop of sky alters what is seen. The clouds are buttermilk these days, gathering only at the end of a long day of clear and cold blue sky. And as the sun drops, the buttermilk forms in streams of hot pink and lavender, pulled cotton brushed only over a small patch of sky where the sun fell. They are there to catch the colors you can't see otherwise. The lower the sun gets, the more empty sky the buttermilk and pulled cotton stretch across, so that sunset looks as if the buttermilk and cotton families called all their friends in to watch, and nearly half the sky turns deep rich clear colors, more gathering all the time and nearing the darkest of the spectrum. There's a stillness as you watch all the color rung out of the cotton and buttermilk, and you turn around to see that every piece of sky is now been pulled over with the buttermilk and pulled cotton, and all has turned bleached white and absent of all color like ghosts in the presence of a new full moon, the eye of the night show. And this is the light that reflects all night over the lit cathedral and behind the sturdy bare oak trees, the quiet light that pushes down onto the unlit moss and clover which push up to meet it through the gaps between cold wet stones.

And on the third day, there were...

WORDS! Let there be words. And there were. Juuuuust look at 'em. I've mastered the help menu and we are now on our way, but only after another photo taken today.

I can't help but think how music and landscape are essentially linked, at least for me. To have one and not the other for too long is akin to enjoying only the outside of roasted marshmallows or never having lime juice for your gin n'tonic. Today, seeing the ocean roll endlessly into cove after gorgeous coastal cove, and then this evening hearing anything by C.V. Stanford or John Sheppard and JS Bach or WA Mozart, or Bruckner or Gounoud along with that memory brings a rightness, when you light a righteous bonfire on the beach, the unexpected perfect compliment is this pastoral choral music. Some polyphonic vocals give a nice balance of harmony to chaos that everyone really can enjoy, whether you agree with me now or not, you can only try to remember or, having tried say, yeah... you liked it didn't you? And if you, upon such a moment at a warm fire on the water's edge, happened to instead decide to bring in the noise and/or bring in the funk, you knew it would be OK, and it was, wasn't it?... This is music. It provides for all more than we all can control... we relent, for music truly is nature embodied. I don't know anyone who would rather sing in an incensed-cathedral than in a spacious starlit/moonlit clearing among evergreens in the middle of somewhere. Would we have that all the time...

Happy third day of the year - I stop counting on the 10th.

This is just the beginning...