This morning begins the longest day of a short life of perplexed reasoning. The sun leaks out the bathroom door into the hallway, illuminating carpet dust. “Waaaow Baby! Welcome the bla ba bla bla bla” the radio alarm-clock explodes, which wakes our life with a start. “Yes!, Yes!, the second blue one!”, they mumble before their mind returns from their inter-galactic dreamland, where the rush of asteroids fades into the rumble of commuter traffic hurtling passed the mobile home park, where the joy of molding worlds with the stardust-mogrifier (half matter, half mind) is overcome with the mandate to manufacture plastic 99 cent combination anti-bacterial automobile soda scented oder eater/ coffee holding baloney dispensing beer can peculators. Because, hey, how else can a reasoning life pay for a mobile home with a fuzzy blue carpet and a radio alarm clock, that wakes you up, from inter-galactic dreamland, for your plastic job to pay for a mobile home.
The shower is done. The brushing is done. The picking is done. The dressing is done. The eating is done. The door opens. The screen door opens. The door closes. The screen door closes and a life meanders in neon basketball shoes (though they never play basket ball) out of a black tar parking lot (never noticing the courageous stream of ants which brave cars and feet to pour daily into the dumpster), across a granite rock spread railroad track with the occasional bull thistle weed (never seeing the sparkle of the silver dolphins which curve around a diamond, on a ring, nestled in the stones, that was dropped a hundred years ago when an impassioned old man proposed to his step daughter across a rail car gangway), down through fences and gates and punch cards and worker safety signs, to the circular plastic factory, the end of all reasoning.
The lever ready sign marks the go point, pull in time with the conveyor belt, on every fifth plastic combo carapace clamp up and let go. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Whistle blown means break. Eat lunch; coffee, baloney sandwich and beer. Back to work till day is over. Go home. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

This morning begins the first day of wonder. Perhaps it was a piece of carpet dust or a symptom of disk jockey over load or even the daydream of a far away circuit board factory lever operator, but somewhere in the electric pathways of the alarm clock a connection is made which has never been made before. As the sun leaks out the bathroom door into the hallway, illuminating carpet dust, the alarm clock does not go off.
Deep in intergalactic dreamland our life in love with the joy of molding worlds, puts the finishing continents on the second blue one with the mind/matter stardust-mogrifier and relaxes to watch the asteroids hurtle by reflecting the sunlight off their chrome bumpers, representing the substance of people rushing to their morning work… The door opens. The screen door opens. A bare foot steps on the cold black parking lot. Our life asks them self, was I always in my dreamland?
The stream of ants carries grape jelly and potato chips from the dumpster. A car drives by. Some ants are squished. Our life looks on and moves their lips, thinking, “they live to die… (pause)… they live to live.” Our life looks at their hand. The pajama sleeve comes down to their wrist. Their palm is blue in the cold air. “The air has cooled my hand…my hand has warmed the air” They lift their hand to the sky and with the magical molding words “half matter - half mind” our life turns time back a hundred years.
Skipping over bull thistles, hoping hurt from sharp stones, collecting cold on their feet, our life hurries to behold the on-coming train. They fall to their knees and begin to weep as they see amongst the granite stones the ring they have passed by so many times and, in a moment, know the century of perplexity which will soon be their burden alone. For as the train approaches, with conveyor belt accuracy, our life tosses the ring onto the gangway between two rail cars and into the hand of the old man just as he dropped it.
Which made our life disappear, for though the stepdaughter refused the old man on the grounds that he was family and much too old, he insisted she keep the ring as a memento of his adoration. As through her life she watched the two dolphins spin round the diamond she spoke to her children about the pacific ocean, where her youngest daughter went to live, where her eldest grandson sat through a sun set at the age of thirteen and saw the similarities and differences of ripples, waves and tides, of time and change and the distance between substance. A ponderence which led in turn to travel through galaxies and the molding from stardust worlds of joyous design.

Mr. Old flashes back into his library of his past. For a moment he sees the shelves of books, the light buzzing over head, the scattered scattering, the heavy weight of a lifetime of authorship. The memory kicks in. He’s a Mr. little kid. The weight of an arm presses on his shoulder. A weathered skin hand grips his forearm with a mystery of emotions. “What is it to be so old?”, Mr. Little kid thinks of the old man he helps up that first big step onto the bus long ago and then leaps the same step to see how easy it is for Mr. Little Kid.
“Sometimes a Mr.’s memory is a mountain of strange mud.” Mr. Old Mumbles with his mind as the bus pulls up for him and hydraulically lowers, so there is no step for him to see life to life with that old man long ago. Mr. Old mounts his bus seat while around him whirls like water the sounds and bodies of the young, getting up, weighting, sitting down, remembering, talking, talking, talking. The bus flies less than a block, up a steep steep steeper hill, before being stopped at the stop by the little Mr. Old in his silent quiet seat, were his hand now rests in his lap from the activity of pulling the “next stop please” cord.
Mr. Old has a thought about a friend he keeps alive in his mental library, who is remembered as saying, though it may have been someone else, that a life begins with expectation and not a lot of memory and ends with memory and not a lot of expectation. The hydraulic bus lowers and Mr. Old gets back onto the sidewalk, looks back at the stop he started at, not even a block away on the steep steep steeper hill. “It’s a lifetime away”, he smiles to him self, bending over slowly… slowly… slowly, placing his skateboard before his feet. He stands with caution, his hands shaking, lifts his one foot slowly… slowly… slowly… onto the skateboard. Then carefully with the outmost care he lifts his, Wo! Slowly!, he lifts his other foot on to the skateboard. Standing on the board, though looking at the hill get even steeper, he turns the board and faces straight down. The clicking of the sidewalk grooves is like the beating of a heart and the heart of Mr. Old beats like a skateboards wheels clicking clicking clicking faster and faster on the grooves down a steep steep steeper sidewalk hill. The speed is enormous. “There is no control” Mr. Old thinks to himself as the hill slips behind him and the wheels lift of the ground having hit a small rock. Landing, not so standing, still on his feet, but leaning with the speed and leaning further and further, the flight of Mr. Old begins apart from his skateboard. “What is this life?” Mr. Old wonders, in the soft sticky juniper bush, which caught him in like breath and blew him out sweetly, warm and stinky, to the sidewalk again and then to his feet laughing… laughing… laughing like Mr. Little Kid. Mr. Old slowly walks to his skateboard, bends down slowly to pick it up and walks step by step slowly with careful steps to the bus stop were the hydraulic bus lowers to meet again the fast and slow moving feet of Mr. Old.

It seems to be fermentation season…

Ray gave me a kombucha culture about two weeks ago, which is now in its second fermentation process.

Ray also gave me a taste of some of his home made kombucha, which was really quite delicious and rather inspiring.

The standard process with kombucha is:

1. add the culture to tea with lots of sugar in a non-metallic container at room temp
2. cover with a loose lid or cheese cloth
3. leave to ferment for about a week
4. decant into secondary container with sealable lid
5. leave for about another week

Ray strongly recommended leaving the kombucha for closer to 4 weeks in the final phase. The kombucha he shared with me had been in the final phase for 4 weeks, had a slight carbonation and tasted wonderful.

I’ll let you know when my first batch is done.

It is now March 15th and the mead is still bubleing away. The fermentation has not slowed downafter five weeks, so we are just waiting.

However, about two weeks ago we did try some of our mead! There was a little bit that we could not fit in the 6 one gallon jugs, which we put into a 32oz juice container. We poured half into a 17oz corked bottle, which we gave to Ray, while the rest we took over to Matt S.’s house to drink. It was very sweet and ripe with fermentation, but quite delicious none the less. It was a little alcoholic, but not much stronger than beer. I experienced none of the infamous hang over that is supposed to go along with mead, though I did not drink very much. I think, also that the hangover would be lessened by the presence of yeast, since yeast is an excellent source of the vitamin B’s.

One evening, while living at 315 Cedar street (the infamous Area315), I met a guy while sitting on the front porch who brought with him a bottle of mead. He had only had about a third of the bottle, which he wasn’t very fond of, so he left the rest to me. I thought it was absolutely delicious and didn’t necessarily mind the bubbly feeling in my head when I stood up to go inside.

Ever since, I have talked about making my own mead. Well, two weeks ago Shelly and I began the process. We now have 6 gallons of fermenting mead in the garage, bubbling away. We hope to have aged it enough by July to take some with to the High Sierra Music Festival.

My research into the process has yielded some interesting information. Mead, unlike beer which I have brewed many times with my good friend Craig, uses a wine or champagne yeast with an alcohol tolerance of around %10-%20. Needless to say, mead turns out quite a bit stronger than beers ~%5. Mead requires about a month to stop fermenting, but usually needs 6months to a year to reach it’s optimum flavor.

Mead is cheep to make! Bottled in 1 gallon apple juice jugs, the 15 pounds of honey we used only cost us about $45. Including the yeast and yeast nutrients (from the organic brew shop), our total costs where around $55 (less than $10 a gallon). Beer, by comparison, is much more difficult to brew, requires much more equipment, a longer cooking time and costs $30 and up for 5 gallons. Even though the cost might be more per gallon, given that mead is more than twice as strong as beer and requires 1/5 the labor, I’m saying it costs about 1/4th as much.
Mead is also very welcoming to a variety of flavoring. There are hundreds of recipes for mead on the internet, featuring ingredients from oranges to nutmeg. I even saw a recipe which added an egg!

This is not so much a surprise as Craig once told me of a beer recipe which included a raw chicken.

At any rate, the mead bubbles in the garage and I have work to do. For those interested in sharing a taste, ask me about the mead in June or July. Or get yourself a ticket to the HS.

“Journey into Joy” has become the theme for my mothers service to be held November 11th, 2006.

At about 11am, my family, that is my Dad, my Brother and my girlfriend Shelly will take the podium and give a little speech.

In 1918, Germany and the Allies signed the armistice ending the 1st world war… But 11/11 has long since been a number of significance to me. In Venice, I decided to forgo the usual ride on a gondola and other tourist traps. I wanted to get lost in the back alleys. It was only after I had squeezed down a thin alleyway that I found a door to house marked “1111″. The door was closed.
I suppose the number has some how come to mean hope, possibility and even love. The doorway next to “1111″, which was “1110″ was a shop that sold masks.