Action as the physical expression of thought. Speech is action. Thought is the eternal, the immortal; action is the mortal, the fleeting, the disappearing. Where do I go when I cannot express my thoughts through action?

Does a soul fly through the air? How does a soul get from one place to another when its body is gone? Maybe its medium is the Earth so it sinks and plinkos through the soil to some depth in the fire and emerges home in the blackness to the infinite chatter of all the souls before. Or is it the quiet of the friends and family of the soul in community with each other. What do they do there? Are they waiting? Are they unsure the same way we’re unsure here? Is there a body? Do they remember? Do they speak?

I don’t need technical details, but even a 40,000ft overview would be nice. Not that it really matters. What really matters? It would just be fun. It’d just be fun to have an inkling of an answer so when you’re laying in the dark staring at the wall wondering where you’re going there is at least a little somethin to hold onto.

Currently reading The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Murakami, and The AI Con. I think about all the energy needed to ask “AI” a question and how guilty I feel that we all think, or are being told, that there is this electronic god out there speaking to us when really it’s just math putting one letter after another. Think about that energy. Look up how much energy it takes to talk to “AI”. Do you need it? Is it worth it? What are you doing with all the time you’re saving? Are you enjoying that time or are you rushing about something else? Are you making someone else more money by creating a shittier work product more quickly? Who is at the other end of the slop you’re creating? What do they deserve? The “AI” doesn’t put its name on that product: it’s still your name. Don’t give up your humanity! The “AI” doesn’t think, it doesn’t act, it doesn’t feel, it doesn’t understand. Don’t give up our humanity!

Currently listening to a lot: the new collection of John Cougar, the new Lumineers, the new Lil Wayne is really good, dog eyes. Heather played The Postal Service album for me and we learned that I’ve never listened to it but it is literally right up my alley, so that will be next.

We’re moving to Alameda and Sawyer wants to go to the beach every day. It’s a weird feeling to be at a swimming beach with San Francisco in the distance. It feels a little too socal. It’s weird we found our place again a decade after having lived there. But it has felt like going home. Why didn’t we think of that before? What soul crashed into us, knocking us back there? We had the Thai by our apartment and it’s really good. I was really worried about that.

I can usually be somewhat celebratory on the 4th even with all the crap happening. And most of the time I like to wear an ironic shirt or something. Not sure if I can this year. They passed that bill and for all I’ve read about it, it seems like a monstrosity. It will kill the most vulnerable; it will take food away from children and families; it gives the most money back to the richest. What are we doing? It makes me want to cry thinking about people losing access to healthcare and kids going hungry. It’s disgusting. I can’t write about it anymore.

Fight against everything trying to take our humanity away, even the things that make you feel good. Express your humanity in the most fundamental way possible: caring for others as you care for yourself. That’s all there is. Find some good Thai!

I’m still on the edge most moments. Here or there I can feel my eyes go still and I sink back up into my head. Is life lived on the edge of that crying feeling? where your skin lights up like buzzing, soft electricity and your soul: your chest and belly and throat feel like they are going to try to turn you inside out. I don’t know. That’s how it feels.

Tha Carter VI is a really good album. I’ve been listening to a lot of hip-hop, funk, and motown. I kinda want to be back in Michigan. I kinda want to stay here. Most days I don’t know what I want anymore except to be happy and see Sawyer happy. Some days I want to buy things, other days I want to go to the library or fish or try to not say a word or eat no meat or not eat at all. Most days I could eat pizza.

I’ve been reading a lot. I’m reading Where The Axe Is Buried now. I’ve read Coupland’s Microserfs and JPod. I feel tired a lot. I thought it was my phone so I’ve stopped using it as much and I still feel tired. I’m thinking maybe it’s not really the phone and it’s just life and it’s being a parent to a 7-year old boy. That’s cool. What else is there to do? I try to remind myself of that. Where else is there to go? There’s no Heaven at the end of all the time we save. There’s only Heaven when our time runs out.

I feel like I’m going through a tough stretch, and I feel like I know quite a few people going through tough stretches. You never think it will happen, I guess. Maybe once you’ve been around long enough you start to be a part of those things. Maybe when you’ve been around long enough you start to feel how the Universe is deciding what to do with you. And then maybe you’re around long enough to see others going through those things and you sit back and remember going through those things and it’s easier to let the sun shine on each day. Life is tough. Is it beautiful? I don’t know. Maybe it depends on the day. And maybe that’s what life is all about. Maybe that’s the homework.

I miss football and cheap housing. I miss good Indian and Thai food. I miss really good Nepalese food. I wish Togos wasn’t so expensive. I wish it didn’t feel like Sawyer’s school performance was so important and consequential. I wish he got graded on handball and the things he enjoys. I wish we all did.

I tried to write a poem in March after getting my books from the library at Cal. I think I was crying most of the time walking through campus. It made me really tired. It made me think about how many people we pass every day might be crying like I was during that walk.

---

I want to be swallowed up by you Berkeley
and disappear so people see
tall and strong

to be a part inside growing
because my mom just died
and now I feel I am missing

so I want to be gone in the gray skies
and green trees

to only kick through the foam
for a path where she’s back
or I’m gone too.

I’ve lost my walls
my roof.

I don’t need anything now.
I’m just waiting now.

Currenly reading: What Are People For by Wendell Berry. I appreciate his steadfastness in wading into the truth with as few words as possible. I love short, strong sentences. What are we for as we inevitably find ourselves on the long path. The long path that doesn’t get shorter the faster we go. The long path that has always had the same end every single day. What are we for behind our computers and phones and cars?

I think Berry has some good answers. I also think that he has some perspectives that not very many of us can have. Not many of us can make our living as a writer, go back to our country upbringing, buy a farm to be a hobbyist farmer while magazines and journals and publishers keep giving us money for our thoughts.

Currently listening to: John Cougar. I listened to American Fool in its entirety, straight through, and man, it’s really good. Just a really good album.

Don’t have much more to write about. My mind is so preoccupied with other things. Big changes in our life. Hard to concentrate when I have time to concentrate; hard to write when I want to concentrate. Just a tough rhythm.

I buy SuperLotto every Wednesady from the 7-11 on Watt and Fruitridge in Sacramento. I buy two picks, one for me one for mom. I think she still plays in heaven. What does a jackpot look like in heaven?

I play SuperLotto because it’s better odds than PowerBall and MegaMillions. SuperLotto is made to give a pick a 1 in the-population-of-California chance of jackpot. So right now, that’s ~ 1 in 40MM shot. The jackpot starts over at $7MM after every jackpot and increases $1MM every drawing (2x a week) until the next jackpot. I’m good with a $7MM jackpot. It’s a 0.0000025% shot.

For comparison, last I looked, the odds for the big drawings were in the range of 1 in ~250MM. It’s a 0.0000004% shot.

The guy chatted me up a little bit as he handed me the ticket. He usually does if there aren’t many people waiting to pay. He says he wanted to know how some people were winning jackpots 10 times, 15 times, 19 times! He says he was really thinking about it, so he looked it up. He says there’s an app now, an AI app, that people are using to give them winning lotto numbers. He says the AI (he doesn’t remember the name, but he knows it’s green and white) is feeding people winning lotto numbers–that’s how people are winning so many times.

When he chats me up it’s usually about something he’s hearing from the other 7-11’s up here and down in LA. I imagine there’s a big email chain, or facebook groups, or maybe they actually meet up in person, or maybe that’s what some of them are always talking to when you think they might be talking to you but you realize they have earbuds in and it pushes you back into your bubble and you feel a little silly but then realize they probably feel a little silly too. They talk about what’s going on in 7-11 world. It makes me want to be a fly on the wall but that’s not really anything new.

I tell him that’s crazy. He says there’s a catch though. He looks at me serious and leans in a little. He says the catch is the app costs $190 to buy. He leans back and raises his eyebrows a little. I say man, I don’t know, that might be worth it, glancing at the ceiling as I check the math in my head.

He steps back and shrugs a little, not sure if his analysis is sealed up tight either.

Thanks man, I say, walking out. I’ll check it out.

Thanks brahtha, he says, good luck brahtha.

I walk out with no intention of looking up the app. I wonder what the statistics in an AI model have to do with picking numbers. In fact, I think to myself, that might be even further away than true randomness for lotto numbers that I am a firm believer in. I’ve been thinking about that a lot. Something that seems like it abounds in everything we do is really difficult to create. It feels like magic. I’m always chasing it.

How would you make a lotto pick “look good”. I wonder because I am looking at my quick picks and I am very unhappy. They don’t look good to me. They don’t look lucky. Lots of repeat numbers, both picks with very similar numbers and patterns. I sigh because it seems lacking in magic and I can’t chase anymore right now because I have to get to work.

But now I’m wondering what an AI scraping all of the internet might be able to find. There’s no way any of the lottos would leave their probability machines open to an internet scraper right? Can’t be. But what if it is? Nah there’d be a lot more hubub. Someone would already be saying something. But this guy is saying something. There’s no way they’d have such poor security, right? But all the robots have is time–they don’t have to sleep or make dinner or wonder what will make them happy. They don’t feel sad. They just scrape. They just do exactly what we tell them to do all day and all night. Can I tell them to give me a winning lotto?

I just asked chatgpt and it said it conceptually simulated a random number generator. It won’t give me any more specifics. It can’t think. It can’t picture lotto balls in its “head”, so what does it mean? I ask for the math it used and it said it didn’t use any math. Something that is only math just told me it didn’t use any math. This is why I don’t use AI.

Bleh. There’s never a finish line. Well, there’s only one finish line. I like thinking more about the “seeds” that are used in random number generators. That’s the true randomness; that’s the true entropy. There’s nothing before that. And everything after that is just math. I like to know about the seeds. It reminds me of the walls of the universe.

I am reading Microserfs by Douglas Coupland and rewatching Silicon Valley season 1. I’ve dropped into what will ultimately be a short-lived obsession burn with tech and silicon valley. It’s so interesting to me that I was born and grew up smack dab in the middle of this area and the timeframe when all of this started, and kinda had no idea what was happening or what it meant. It’s so weird to read the protagonist talking aboout San Carlos and in that timeframe I was in San Carlos multiple times a week. It feels jarring and fun to have been so close to something with no visibility.

Is that a similar experience to people that grew up where I did at the time I did but had no connection to what was going on? My famiy and my historical family didn’t really touch tech. I come from lines of people that came here for reasons other than technology. In a way it feels really rare but maybe it’s not. It doesn’t mean anything, just another window to look through. I look through it and it makes me crave diversity and different things and people, and I know the Bay Area doesn’t seem like that but I hope deep down it’s still the way I saw it as a kid: with all the things I touched and all the things I didn’t touch.

I think I drop into this obsession burn because I try to connect with that feeling that I think a lot of people that come here and that came here for technology feel. It’s like the gold rush. What is it about the West Coast and the gold rushes? Is it because there’s nowhere else to go except hop on a plan and be on a beach? Can’t find much on a beach. Can’t build much on a beach. And who would want to? I took a class at Berkeley on Hans Christian Andersen and even he talked about California. How can I connect with it in that way? Is it that different than the way I already connect with it?

I guess maybe it’s a failure to connect with that rush feeling. Is that a sign of getting older? Is wanting quiet about getting older or is that how I’ve always been? how does who I’ve always been keep changing as I get older? how does who I was change as I get older? How strange to think of the past as something that can change but it does so much and as time keeps going it just keeps changing and changing. It’s so freeing to think of the past more like a cloud than a brick wall.

Anyway…the rush. I like watching and reading about the rush because it’s like a spectator sport. Does any of it really mean anything? Like anything it only means what you want it to mean, or what you think other people want it to mean. I think.

It’s spring break and I wish I took the whole week off. I don’t really feel like working. More people asking for your thoughts, suggestions, ideas, and where to they go? out the window. Doesn’t matter. I can always read a book when I’m done. What else is there? That’s why I wish I took the whole week off. That’s all there is and that’s the good stuff.

In a bonsai book they talk about how giving the trees a lot of sun can act as a natural way to suppress growth, thereby resulting in miniature trees. They give the example of how alpine trees on bare mountain tops are usually smaller than counterparts. They also talk about how water abundance can work against suppressing growth, resulting in bigger (more normal) trees. How fascinating that abundance can have anthithetical effects depending on what is abundant. I need to cut back on watering my trees maybe.

Went to the library today. Picked up a DVD hold and found a book on the history of direction (EAST/WEST/NORTH/SOUTH). Looked super interesting but I didn’t pull the trigger. I’m in a little bit of regret.

Are you ever really happy one day, like for most of the day, and by the time you get home it just fizzles? And there’s really no reason; like there’s no specific reason. It just feels a little bit like a letdown because maybe it feels like because you’re so happy there should be these fireworks or some award or some other person there with you that’s happy too or that you’re making happy by being so happy and so you’re both just swimming in this happiness and this giddiness and playfulness. But it fizzles because that’s not how life is. It’s like the happiness is the coming back up for air before you go back below the surface. Maybe that’s what we live on and some days it just hits harder that we have to go back below the surface. Maybe this is one of those days.

“Not a word did he say about the sadness of his face and his life. And I did not ask why he is sad and why he is laughing all the time. We did not speak a word of it, we did not like to be foolish and ask and answer the problem of the earth, and we did not have to. Every little observation, every little banal talk or laughing matter springs from the sadness of the earth that is reality; every meeting between individuals, every meeting of a society, every meeting of a gathering, of gaiety or sorrow, springs from sadness that is the bed of earth and truth.

“And so when he said he was a laundry truck driver and had come to the park for breath of air which is no different from the wind that hits him while driving, all that matters is that he is a laundry truck driver, a man living in the city, coming to the park for a pause, not for great thoughts or to escape the living of life, but to pause and laugh, unbitterly and unsentimentally, not wishing for dreams, not expecting a miracle, not even accepting the turn of the next hour or next second.

“And this is the greatest thing happening today: that of a laundry truck driver or an equivalent to such who is living and coming in and out of parks, the homes, the alleys, the dives, the offices, the rendezvous, the vices, the churches, the operas, the movies; all seeking unconsciously, unawaredly, the hold of this sadness, the loneliness, the barrenness, which is not elusive but hovering and pervading and seeping into the flesh and vegetation alike, churning out potentially the greatness, the weakness, and the heroism, the cowardice; and therefore, leaving unfinished all the cause of sadness, unhappiness, and sorrows of the earth behind in the laughter and the mute silence of time.” — Yokohama, California Toshio Mori

Tuesdays I’ve been meeting the problem of the earth; the sadness of the earth. It doesn’t matter where or when it starts but it always comes and lays down in me and I in it.

What is the sadness, the problem. I think maybe it’s the temporariness. I think also maybe it’s that it’s never enough. That I want it all and never want to lose what I have, and what I’ve lost I want back–all of it. How normal that feels and it makes me wonder if the earth feels the same way for all it loses and wants.

And even the earth, as still and unchanging as it seems day-to-day loses what it has, what is is, and in fact one day far off in that empty silence of big time it will be gone. How strange to think of this place being gone. This place that is everything will be gone and there will be no trace. What will be here instead?

It seems maybe the best answer on days where this is laying into you is to lay down in it in a park, or on a walk at your work’s cargo bay, looking at the trees and watching them wave all on their own in the cool wind.

Do so many of us actually like being alone, or do we like being alone with our phone? I don’t know the answer. I’ve been thinking about my phone a lot recently. I mean, I think about it constantly, but I’ve been thinking about how I think about it constantly recently. Why is that? why do I think about it constantly? I think about it so constantly that I don’t even realize I’m thinking about my phone until I pause mid-reach and wonder what I’m reaching for. What is the next thing I’m going to do and why do I want to do it?

I’m going to open instagram. Why? I don’t really know. Maybe there will be something new there. I see funny videos there. Maybe somebody has shared a funny video with me. But that check turns into being on instagram for much longer than that check actually takes. And what do I do? I don’t really know. I watch videos. I look at pictures. I search profiles and look at their pictures or videos. How does it make me feel? I think it can make me feel happy in the moment. But I think it can also make me feel tired. It can make me wonder where my day went. What did I do with those 15 minutes? Why does it feel like I did a lot more than just sitting, hunched over a screen, looking at media? And what do I get for that tired feeling? I don’t really know. I think it makes me tired. It feels like all I get is a stronger desire to do it again. Maybe that will make me feel not tired.

I’m going to check my messages, my email, my whatsapp. Why? well maybe someone sent me a message. Maybe something important has come through. What could be that important that I’m checking at least once every 10mins? I don’t know. Money stuff? Kid stuff? Any kid stuff and I would be getting a phone call. My phone notifications are not silenced. When I walk out of the room where my phone is to use the bathroom or whatever, I come back to the room and have this anxiety like I might have missed something. I need to check my phone. It feels like a magnet or planet sucking me into its warped fabric.

I can’t escape but maybe I can hide. I don’t know. This is the modern world. I like practicing the stopping mid-reach even if the reach is just that signal I feel in my brain and my body to start the reach. Why? Why?

I can look out the window instead. I don’t have to share it with anyone. I can daydream and then I can let it go. I can remember memories. I can pick up a book, but I also don’t have to. I can write in my journal but I also don’t have to. I can stretch. I can put the dishes away. I can touch something. Grab it, feel its texture, notice if heat is leaving or coming into me. I can notice all of the mundane details that make up everything around me and not say or type a word. I can go slow. I can feel my brain slow down when I go slow. Sometimes the brain leads, sometimes the body leads. I can feel them become one. I can pay attention.

I can rest, alone, knowing I’m not alone. Knowing that the world can wait for me too; that even though we are the same, sometimes the ones need to step away. Sometimes I need to lead. I lead by being quiet, putting a window between me and the forest.

But it’s hard, and that’s ok. Life is long. Time is long. I can keep practicing. I’m a child yet and will be one forever. There always more to learn, more to do.

But the quiet is nice today, Cesar Chavez day 2025. I’m off. My kid is in school. Life is good. It is restful if I choose it to be.

Currently listening to: KOIT, Counting Crows, KALX, dog eyes, freestyle.

Currently reading: The American (river) by Margaret Sanborn; Yokohama, California by Toshio Mori (just really excellent); Spacetime Physics by Taylor/Wheeler.

Really being intentional about my bonsai tree. Coaching myself about being a parent beyond Sawyer getting to specific milestones, gaining specific abilities, being able to do specific, practical things. Trying to concern myself more with questions like: how will he remember this? am I taking the time to do the things that really matter? am I recognizing that Sawyer is a human and will have emotions, will go through difficult things, will be confused, will be disappointed? how do I guide him through all of those icky things? I can’t protect him from all of those things. That is really hard to remember. That is something daily I have to remember. I can get so caught up in trying to prevent those things, and many others, that I forget my real job is to be there with him through those things and to help as best I can. To only help as best I can. And to love him.

I’m happy baseball is starting back up. I wish I could go to a lot of Giants and Cal baseball games. That might be something I want to spend my time doing a lot of when I get older.

I haven’t been writing a lot since my mom died. I’m starting these posts to maybe emerge from that. The words and feelings are there but I can’t write. I don’t know. I don’t know what that’s about. It’s not that I don’t want to write it’s just that every time I start nothing comes. It’s all very matter of fact. Like I want to report on my sadness. Like I want to log my crying. Like I want to list all of the things I miss and all of the things that I will miss for the rest of my life. I just really miss my mom. Maybe all extreme loss is about relearning what life means or is meant for after that loss. Is that the hardest lesson? is it the hardest lesson that’s never learned? it feels like endless homework. I want the homework to be done so I can go to the kitchen and see my mom making dinner (probably Hamburger Helper) and feel cozy and safe and happy because I know where I’m going. Crying.

I’m almost done. My brain has just really been wandering lately around relativity and time and what else I can start to know while I’m still here. It’s really hard stuff. I have been reading the book for a couple months and I just finished the first chapter. It’s really interesting stuff. It says things like time and distance are different for observers in different reference frames. But why? it tells you why and that’s what takes a long time. It’s not because the math is hard it’s because the ideas are hard and so different from our daily experience and how we’re taught to think about the world…and how we’re taught to observe the world. It’s another great reminder that the world is so much bigger than what we make ourselves so concerned with. Like concerned to the point that it steals our joy. It’s fun to be small. It’s easier to be small. It’s easier to love and be happy when it’s small. It’s easier to love and be happy thinking about ourselves as a part, a piece.

You can find a reference frame where two events happen at the same time, or find a reference frame where they happen in the same spot. You can find a reference frame that changes the temporal order of events. How wacky is that and how beautiful. And usually “events” are sub-atomic, speed of light stuff. So far outside of our experience. But still. What are we made up of but those things? What is our brain made up of but those things? Really wacky and beautiful.

see ya later