On deck: Meadow - Richard Buckner

Sitting in the Shoreline Hotwire, surrounded by books and various electronic accoutrema. I purchased my first MP3 player last week - surprisingly something like 7 years behind the market.  I kept finding the market didn't offer what I needed:

• something extremely portable,
• .wma compatible (I ripped a lot of my library in the Windows Media Player early on from a combination of naivete and attraction to some of the auto-playlist features the player included, and had no interest in starting over),
• playlist support,
• decent storage,
• microphone,
• durability and few moving parts (I tend to beat on my equipment because I use it anywhere and everywhere - 40gB of music is useless if I have to buy another player less than 2 years later.)

The latest version of the iRiver Clix finally met the bar, and our financial situation improved such that I didn't feel guilty taking the $200 plunge.  I have to say that it's transformed my way of engaging my immediate surroundings. Back in the day, I would lug around the CD walkman.  More recently it's been the laptop.  Pretty hard to feel immersed in your surroundings if your limbs aren't free to reach out and touch your surroundings.  So I've rarely been listening to music unless I'm sitting at my desk or in the car.

Our CEO sent us home early on Friday for the holiday weekend, telling everyone to log off by 3p.  The confusion around my new role and some of the processes meant I logged off sometime around 4:45.  No matter - I played the "Frogger" game that is the intersection in front of our office - 3 crosswalks later, I was literally floating up the block on the strength of my synced playlist.  Appropriately titled "Friday Afternoon, 2 Fiddy-five," singing along with Amerie and Sam Cooke - I was already a million miles away from work, a distance it would have previously taken 3-4 days to approach.

Then again, before and after our 4th Friday "sema," I wandered Ballard listening to Pinetop Burke, Jimmy Smith, Stevie Wonder, Bahamadia and Paul Rucker. Smoking cloves and scrubbing away the mildew of malaise that has surrounded me for a few months.  I've been surprised to be so unhappy given all the amazing changes that are happening around me.  It's mostly from this sense that with all of the new blessings floating down from god knows where, I must say goodbye to a few connections and gifts that need to be returned to the Source.  Can't say much yet about these, but suffice it to say it indeed feels heartbreaking. 

See Mi Yah - Rhythm & Sound

That experience of death, whether of a friend, a pet, or a moment in time feels like a reexperience of that first interaction, albeit a mirror image, a warping of the virginity into silhouette.  Even in any door closing, there's a dubby echo of that last click of the latch.  It's similar to the Koranic relationship (as I understand it) between the interlocking qualities of al-Mumit (the ender, the cutter of the chord) and al-Muhyi (the restorer). Or grounding expended energy in the Pagan tradition, so that it can be recycled into new growth.