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You have mighty shakra

I think John McLaughlin might be going a little loopy.

I was just listening to the podcast of the last show, which devoted half the program to an argument about how to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat. McLaughlin was hassling Tony Blankley, Editorial Page Editor of the Washington Times, telling him that if he knew so much, his paper should come up with a new nuclear policy to deter the Iranians, along the same lines as Mutual Assured Destruction.

Blankley was like, "what do you want from me, dude?"

But then after a few minutes of this, McLaughlin must have felt remorse because he told Tony gravely, "I know you have the shakra. And you have mighty shakra..."

Huh? I dig the line but it seemed a little, um, dramatic.

Question mark on a calendar

One of the downsides of working in a big multinational is you get meeting and con-call requests for all hours of the day & night. Often I don't even know where my coworkers are physically located until I get pulled into a call at some bizarre hour.

The worst part though is when you accept a meeting in Outlook without realizing that it's a "real" meeting and not just a call, and then you find out the meeting is in Burma or Yemen or wherever. (It's a bitch to find time to schedule vaccinations for Hepatitis & Dengue Fever, and the flak jacket is so heavy to cart around the airport).

I'm in North Dakota next week, at least if the plane makes it this time. Then Copenhagen for a month in late October early November. Still living out of suitcases in my apartment - I'll get it all settled eventually.

So - more coffee...

Once more into the breach dear friends, once more into the breach...

Just scratching the surface

I have a really good feeling about Seattle and it's getting better by the moment. I went on a shopping spree at IKEA today and bought a bunch of furniture and stuff we'll need at the new apartment till our shipping container arrives from Denmark. I love IKEA. Cecilie sent me a shopping list and the staff at the Renton store was able to translate that into an itemized pick list for the US equivalents.

So now I'm at the new apartment going through the assembly process, listening to some good mixes, hopped up on energy drinks. Whatever they put in that Red Bull, I like it a lot.

I'm having the greatest time! I love driving around in my new little car, and I think this apartment has a lot of promise, once I get everything put together and hooked up. There's a certain angle in the living room where you get an awesome view of the downtown skyscrapers (though not as good as the temp housing they've had me at). I'll put the sofa at that angle so we can see it while watching telly.

The moon is low and swollen over the Seattle skyline right now, buildings lit up like a distant dream. That sight puts a feeling in my chest I cannot describe in words. God it's good to live in a city again.

And I love this neighborhood - I was at IKEA all day and forgot that I hadn't eaten anything, so by the time I got back to Seattle around 6pm I was fading out with hunger. Turns out there's a burrito place downstairs, maybe a five meter walk from my front door.

Mmmmm, good blazing veggie burrito, radiating in the infrared from all the hot sauce I asked them to put in. This is a proper burrito - the thing's the size of my head, more than a brother can eat (which is as it should be). Reminds me of my local burrito joint in San Francisco. The comically mispelled menus ("Chicken Beast") and the homeless guy that always sat out front. I used to give him a buck or sometimes I'd get a nice carne asada burrito for him. I figured he needed the protein.

But a lot about this town reminds me of San Francisco, and therein lies the rub.

This is also killing me a little bit because after what happened in San Francisco, whenever I sense things starting to go really well, I get hit with this overwhelming instinct to just curl into a ball and go completely fetal, to try to protect myself from whatever as-yet-unseen horror that's waiting to blow me off the street when I least expect it. And I'm definitely feeling that now. I've found that allowing one's self to fall into complacency is usually followed fairly closely by having one's head suddenly and unexpectedly kicked in.

But so far so good. We push forward. We hope for the best.

The salt lick

Man this takes me back. I was just sitting here in my new office after hours, and I realized I was starving. I could have driven out for some takeaway Chinese to bring back to the office, but instead I prowled around the kitchen looking for a quick fix.

I found some styrofoam cups of Maruchan instant noodle, grabbed one of those, poured in hot water, and the smell instantly zapped me back to 2000, California, just before the Bubble popped.

Jeremy and I were working for EMusic in the Redwood City office, taking CalTrain down and back from San Francisco, and EMusic had a closet stuffed with tons of these Maruchan instant noodle cups. I probably ate 2 a day for almost a year. We used to call them "the salt lick."

Man, New Years Eve 2000, all the Y2K fever, drinking champagne straight from the bottle in a North Beach club, in the moment, surrounded by light and music and sensation. EMusic stock was above 40 and we all had like ten thousand options. Then NASDAQ crashed in February and the stock came flaming down like the fucking Hindenburg. We knew it was all over in March or April when management stopped stocking the Maruchan as a cost saving measure. By June most of us were looking for new jobs and by September I was in exile in Europe.

(Jeremy, you out there? This ringing any bells?)

And now... here I sit once again in an office on the West Coast... with a nice steaming Maruchan... mmmmm.... synthetic beef flavor...

Smells like the Bubble.

No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!

Sweet! Washington Post just ran this story on a decommissioned Titan ICBM base in Washington state that is on the block to the highest bidder right now on eBay.

I wish I had a couple million dollars - this would be perfect for the underground lair I've always wanted!

Now I just need to get one of those cool medium-grey collarless suits and a fluffy white cat.

Brief Update

I'm supposed to be in North Dakota right now for a conference but never even made it off the ground at Seattle. Heavy weather screwed up ATC into Minneapolis and there was no way I could make my connection. So I cancelled the whole trip, got my bag and left. Thank Fox I have tomorrow free so I can go to the office and try to catch up, but it was a real drag to have to waste most of today at the airport. I need every minute I can get these days. The past few weeks have been madness, madness I tell you!

Where do I start? Right, the Bloody Mary toast with a colleague on the A340, celebrating our exit from Danish airspace and my exile from Denmark. (My permanent residency disappeared the moment I got on the plane).

It was a sad toast really. There's a lot I'll miss about Denmark, and the residency was a real pain in the ass to secure (and will be even worse if I try to go back, thanks very much Dansk Folkeparti). But it was one of those moments that needed to be marked somehow.

Driving up from Sea-Tac on I-5, there's a moment you round a bend and the hill just slides away from the right, revealing the skyline of Seattle to you all at once, like someone has pulled a curtain aside. I've seen it before but this time it took my breath away. Gorgeous sunlight blazing off the skyscrapers like some kind of modern Avalon. I have always loved skylines.

And this time, the thought that came with it... "This is my city now."

Some early impressions - Vertiginous, steep hills like San Francisco and crazy unpredictable weather. Horrible traffic across the East Side bridges. Lots of homeless, reminding me I'm in the States again. Bike traffic. High cirrus ice clouds miles above a blue grey low scud. Coastie icebreaker powering out on Puget Sound towards the Arctic.

Joy Division and Miss Kittin playing in the Whole Foods market as I'm shopping for vegetables. The cute alterna-teen checkout girl singing to herself as she lasers each of my groceries... "beer-oh... oh-leeks-oh... bok choy-oh!" Very cool looking crowd in this city, a lot of tattoos. (Thinking it's time I get another)

I'm sending a shipping container of kudos out to Deborah in Vancouver, who invited me up to sit in on a CBC round table with William Gibson, promoting his new book. The whole thing was really great - the gorgeous drive up through the hills and forests (I haven't driven cross-country in more than ten years and it was a joy). And I've always had a lot of respect for the CBC, so it was cool just to see the inside of their studio.

Gibson was awesome. I wish he was my dad. Spook Country was so good I had chills for about 15 minutes straight when I finished the book, but his writing does that to me a lot. His stuff makes me want to drop everything and just write, full time, all the time.

He said that it's a slow and frustrating process to start a book, because all the characters, setting and action take so long to slide into place with the stylistic elements you want to settle into. But after hammering away at one plot and set of characters regularly for a few months, you get into a routine like juggling seven plates at once. When it finally starts happening the process just takes control and begins to run itself, until by the end of the book you are hardly editing anything, it's just flowing out onto the page in realtime.

Killing me because I never get more than a few hours (or when I take vacations a few days) to sit and write to the exclusion of all other responsibilities. That's why this book is taking forever and needs constant re-editing, I've never been allowed to get to flying speed.

But Vancouver turned into the most synaesthetic literary experience I've ever had - I finished the book in a coffee shop in Vancouver, waiting for Deborah to get off work. Then we went to the round table, where Gibson read a few passages from the book and did a Q&A with the audience for an hour (the show will be podcasted - I'll update it on this site as soon as I get the podcast address - you'll hear me ask the last question if you wait to the end). Then Deborah took me for a drive around the Vancouver shipyards, which is where the closing action in the book takes place. We were trying to find some of the specific buildings where certain scenes happened.

So in all it was very, very happening.

I bought a car (a heavily-used little Honda Civic, cute, silver), and then had the car overheat on me the very first day, stranding me on the side of the road for an hour and a half while I waited for it to cool down. It's back at the dealer now - they installed A/C for me and somehow an air pocket got into the cooling system which gave the engine a stroke. Not an auspicious beginning for the first car I've bought since 1993. But it will work out.

Does anyone else out there name their cars? I'm thinking of calling this one "Jenny Ondioline." It just hit me when I was stuck in traffic the other day.

For now I'm still living in company temp housing. It's a weird, very large, anonymous apartment in a new gated tower, set into a disused warehouse district of the city. It's an odd neighborhood, and completely desolate at night. After sunset it reminds me of the set of a zombie movie. At least the security's so tight here we could probably hold the zombies off for a few weeks. I gotta say though that the view is spectacular. I took the picture attached to this post from my living room window. And the company has treated me really well through this move. I'm grateful to them for that.

But I found an apartment in Capitol Hill, and barring disasters will be moving in next week. It's a very cool part of town that could have been lifted straight from San Francisco during the Bubble. I love the location - real street life, cafes, bars and little offbeat shops everywhere, a lot of people on foot. It feels like a neighborhood.

Cecilie is still in Denmark waiting on a green card, and will be for some time. That's the thing that makes this feel so disassociated. It's surreal to be in this space, working past midnight in this strange and spacious apartment, and be so far away from anyone or anything familiar.

But beyond the surrealness of it all, beyond the risks, the sleeplessness, and the insanity of how much work this is (I won't even touch on what's been cooking with my day job), I can see the potential. A well-lived life is not without risks, and right now I'm feeling extremely grateful. Namu amida butsu, butsu.

If this all holds together it could really be great. I'm sorry I haven't had time to write anyone. Would love to hear from you though. I love you all.

Seattle

I'm in Seattle and things are really cooking. So much going on lately that I haven't had time to write. It's been very interesting, but no sleep, fox knows. More soon.

Potential futures

Woke up today with the line from that Einstürzende Neubauten track going through my head - Was ist ist... Was nicht ist, ist möglich!

What is is... What is not, is possible.

Yeah, that pretty much says it. Gorgeous morning over Copenhagen. The first chill of fall is in and the early morning sun is shining through the crisp air with an unusual clarity - a radiance that reflects off everything you see and presents the world in sharp contrasts.

A good day to travel.

Moving in time, moving in space

Have been offline for the last few days, planning, packing, putting things in place. They say life turns in seven year cycles, and after seven years in Europe, I'm moving to Seattle tomorrow afternoon. Hard to believe I'm going to take a taxi to the airport like I usually do, get on an airplane like I usually do, and then not live here anymore.

I'm not complaining - it's going to be interesting, all goes well. It's just a real mindbender to think about how long I've been here, and everything that's happened in the last seven years. I don't even recognize the guy that landed at Amsterdam Schiphol in 2000 with no assets and barely any ideas. I was a flaming wreck then. Fox knows I'm a lot better off on this flight back. And it won't end here - there will be more moves in the future, I know that the way I know the sun will rise tomorrow.

My stuff is packed. I have a few paperwork and technology issues need to fix tomorrow morning but I'm basically on the launchpad, countdown running down towards the inevitable zero. I feel a strange stillness, and a clarity or lucidity that I very rarely experience. I'm grateful for that.

Change is essential to evolution.