Still more Mooi Marin

It's pretty clear there's no end to the mooi in Marin, but I'll keep blogging about it anyway.  So:  Took another hike this weekend, this time a total of about 8 miles round trip (couldn't have done it without Felix's trusty loopfiets, or Talia's trusty legs), each mile more gorgeous than the last.

Go West young man!

Wildflowers were everywhere.

 The ring on the surface of the water is what appears after a gray whale does a quick sounding.

Stopped for a quick picnic lunch.

Gorgeous land, sea, sky.

The beach in the distance is on the other side of Bodega Bay. Might be wadeable at low tide.  We'll go camping there this summer.

Elk!

At this point the sand got too soft for the bike, and soon after we decided to turn back, about a mile from the point itself.

This photo was taken about 5 hours into the hike.  The stamina of both subjects is amazing.  Felix and I had spent the last mile or so playing "run over Dada's shadow," a game that he found endlessly amusing and which gave me a blister.

 I don't know how one gets to this beach down below, but one day I will.

Finally, we arrived back at the ranch from which we'd departed. Still functional in some sense, though I think the buildings are used to tend to the elk, not cattle.

Golden Gate Bridge, part 2

Happened to have been next to and under the bridge yesterday:  beautiful from that vantage point, too, and even more interesting.  Turns out there are tons of surfers, windsurfers, kitesurfers (see the second picture, below), and the like playing in the currents underneath the bridge.  Also turns out the entire thing was built right over an old (Civil War) fort.

Never been here, probably never would have been, but was meeting a friend from out of town.  Tourists are sometimes quite worth following.

More Mooi Marin

From a recent hike in the hills beyond our house (shades of Ithaca!):

Not sure I've seen a photo in which we look so much alike.

Aren't they just the cutest?

Golden Gate Bridge

One of the very great advantages of living in Marin is that you have frequent excuse to cross that most beautiful of bridges, the Golden Gate. It never fails to thrill me (or, for that matter, Talia and, most of all, Felix). But I realized the other day that for all those crossings not a one of them has ever been by foot, or at least not by my feet. So I walked it, and here are some photos therefrom:

The tiny boat in this picture is a sea kayak.

Sutro Tower, another beautiful--to my eyes at least--SF landmark, as seen between a pair of the bridge's cables.

The view up from a cable juncture.

One of the towers, the magnificent towers.

A door into one of the towers.  Forbidding....

A popular jumping-off spot:  guaranteed to finish you and, if the tide is going in the right direction, you may be sure your body will never be found.  Wikipedia claims it's the most popular spot in the world for this particular activity.

Ouchie Plants

Woe is me:  I have poison oak.  I think I got it last week when Felix, during a hike, suddenly announced he needed to poo.  Diaperless, nowhere near a bathroom, I took him off trail to do his business.  He, apparently more wise to the local flora than myself, decided he didn't want to drop his pants and sit in those bushes, so we went back to the trail.  And now I live with the consequences.

For my European readers, likely unaware of this plant's very existence, I can only tell you it is worse, a thousand times worse, than the stinging nettle.  The nettle, as my fellow tuinierderen will attest, is a worthy adversary, a sort of loyal opposition, satisfying to pull up, a tireless campaigner, quite capable of delivering a nasty bite, but in the end you know who has won and who has lost the day's contest.  Admittedly, a serious morning's battle with the stuff will leave your fingertips tingling for quite some time, but that's the worst you can expect by way of lingering effects, a feeling of constant incipient numbness.

Not so the poison oak, oh no, not so.  This plant wars from the shadows, it seeks to break your will to fight, and to do so it will attack women and children and ankles and calves and thighs and the backs of your knees alike.  Not for it the steely, warlike darts of the nettle, no, no, it relies on chemical warfare, on poisonous, tenacious oils that continue to wreak havoc long after the defenders have given up the fight.  Do what you will, even a trip or two through the washing machine is no guarantee that you have rid yourself of its poisons.  It is, if a plant may be called so, evil, malaria in comparison to the nettle's mosquito bite.

I do not exaggerate. I detected the first spots a week ago, and every day since then I have been dismayed to discover them spreading and intensifying.  Every day I tell myself it can't get much worse, and every day it does, slowly climbing higher up my legs.  Here a photo of one of the more minor affected areas (though still not for the squeamish):

Evil, I tell you, I am being consumed by it.  Where will it end?

Washing dishes, part 2

Long months of hand washing have provided ample time to think about how to do it better.  One area in particular requires improvement:  the flatware.  Washing individual spoons, knives, and forks is for the birds.  Why not have an upright tub that stands on the counter, filled with soap and water, and with a hand crank on the top?  Let the metal soak, swish and drain, add soap, swish and drain again, add fresh water and swish and drain one last time.  I've been thinking about this, I say, for months now.  Only thought to check the internet yesterday (an understandable delay:  my sink is not network-enabled):

http://silverwarewasher.com/

So someone's been thinking the same thing.  I tried ordering one yesterday, only to be informed there is a waiting list for this item.  I am not alone in my lonely dishwashing thoughts.

Midlife Crisis

Owl looked at him, and wondered whether to push him off the tree; but feeling that he could always do it afterwards, he tried once more to find out what they were looking for.

My friends-and-relations are, politely I think, feigning surprise upon learning I am having my midlife crisis.  Feigning, I say, because they could not actually be surprised to hear of this.  No surprise:  I am in midlife and in the midst of great change.  No surprise:  many of them are too.  Still, they are polite types, mostly, these friends-and-relations of mine, a regular parliament of Owls, and so they look at me, owlishly, waiting to hear more.  So here's more:

Seek elsewhere for your Roman holiday, dear reader, this is no Hollywood-style midlife crisis, nary a sports car or teenage girl for me.  No, this is the quiet, desperate, internal crisis that, in some sense, actually defines "mid-life," because it is prompted by the realization that whatever has already been achieved is in some critical respects not enough, and that what remains to be done is, in the nature of things, the bit you haven't ever been able to do.

This sense of crisis, which is nothing more nor less than an existential crisis (see here for Wikipedia's cogent and mercifully brief definition of same, though note that Wikipedia's entry on midlife crisis does not, for the most part, describe my condition), began a few years ago.  I was working at Fortis Bank, an institution that can only be described as hapless, and it was winter in Amsterdam, so I suppose crisis of some sort was inevitable.  At any rate, it came to me that my work lacked meaning, and this, and the gray weather, set off a wider questioning of Meaning of and in my life.  This initial spark--i.e., the basic issues I had with working on systems designed to stabilize banks that even at the time appeared not to value stability (and which in retrospect quite clearly were not pursuing it)--influenced much of my subsequent thinking on this topic: as most of my readers are well aware, I was inspired by this experience not to search for a new way of living but simply to try to find a new career.

As much as I did and still do need to find a new calling, this crisis goes much deeper than that, nor, I have realized, will the discovery of "meaningful" work guarantee that these deeper matters are addressed.  And yet there are clear parallels between the process of finding meaningful work and that of establishing a foundation of meaning in my life overall.  In both cases, I feel, the precondition exists for a new approach to things.  I have a sense of having followed my own lead quite long enough.  I've steered a good course, in work as in life, and brought myself many a fine thing.  I am little acquainted with regret.  And yet, and yet, there's this sense that, the Steward of Gondor having done his best, it is time for the Coming of the King.

*****

I talk much of meaning, above, but I am inclined to think that the way out, for me at least, is not so much a matter of finding meaning, not a question of building an existential framework to Make Sense of Things, but rather of finding a better way to deal with my insistence on assigning meaning as part of my more general drive to establish control over my environment.  I live in a beneficent environment, an easy one, certainly a non-threatening one, and I always have:  control of it has not often been required.  And besides, control has its limits.

I am increasingly inclined to believe that what is required instead of, or at the very least as a complement to, control is acceptance.  Acceptance does not presuppose a search for meaning--one does not need starting principles in order to determine direction when accepting things, as one very much does if the goal is to control them.  One needs a certain commitment to passivity, a willingness to suspend judgment, the ability to coexist with uncertainty and incompleteness.  In other words, one needs exactly what I ain't got.  And so we return to "midlife," a point about which to turn oneself.

*****

Let me be clear about one thing:  however uncomfortable I may be with the challenge of midlife, I like being middle aged.  I listened to The Final Cut the other day.  I have always loved this album, but now I get it.  That alone is worth the price of admission, whatever that price will eventually turn out to be.

My wife, with whom I intend to share all of this crisis as well as all of whatever crises may follow, comments that I shouldn't be sure this is "the" midlife one.  Ever the statistician, she points out that we are living longer on average.  Not a comforting thought for either of us given the context.  Still, we face the future with optimism.

Qix

I think there is a fair case to be made that Qix is the most elegant video game ever devised.  Try it yourself and see.

I played it at most once or twice in its heyday, now I play it once or twice a day.  I am, of course, lying.  I play it a dozen times in a row, then scream and slam the virtual window shut.  I ignore it for days on end but then go back and beat my head against its four simple walls.  I am...what's the word?  What is the word for how infuriated this game makes me?  For how deeply bothered I am by the fact that I've been playing this game--no, working at it--for months now and am, if anything, worse than when I started?  What is that word?  That word is pissed.

So try it, try it I say, and you may hate it too.  And if you do, please tell me why I am so bad at it.  My suspicion is Lack of Patience.  I guess I keep playing because somewhere deep down inside I think there's a lesson in there for me.