Awesome

"Nothing to tell now, let the words be yours, I am done with mine."
 Cassidy, John Perry Barlow

The Dead playing it.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH8aPu-W_ZM
Barlow on it.  http://www.litkicks.com/BarlowOnNeal

Awesome are all the people who post good covers.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdckin2EnEI; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w_Y6xgzN2E; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RycKSb1mxsw
Awesome is good writing from people who I'd otherwise have no access to.  http://authenticstrengthtrainer.blogspot.com/2010_08_04_archive.html
Awesome is all the easily accessible nostalgic shit that reminds me I grew up in a great time.  See Cassidy above.
Awesome are smart people use social media well.  http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=profile&id=100000035362998#!/OfficialElizaDushku
Awesome is being able to respond to a post, and meet world class artists as a result.  http://www.yoshis.com/sanfrancisco
Awesome is watching folks just stretch out and serve up good info, unpacking their heads in public.  http://www.begin2dig.com/ 

Awesome is the random connection.  Like AP's blog.  http://amypagnotta.blogspot.com/  I found it about eight months ago, trolling.  It was late; I was kinda drunk.  I liked her photos and layout and the way she put things.  AP seems to do many things, all of them quite well, but I think her day job is journalist/producer.  We exchange some comments back and forth and become casual virtual acquaintances.  I send her stuff like Guy Clark video and Richard Brautigan readings and she has not blocked me yet.  (And as cool as the below is, read AP's post from 11/26:  " in sickness, figure it out yourself. in health, we may chat"  gasp, hard left to the gut . . .)
Last week she throws out on her comments:  hey, I'm interviewing Salman Rushdie, what do I ask him ?  I suggest a couple of softballs to get him talking, like "what makes you optimistic ?"  So she uses it and gets a thoughtful response which resonates with moi, deeply.  To quote her post:


"i got to chat with him for 45 minutes in a closed room with just my camera guy. it was awesome. we talked about all kinds of things including my favourite subject- whether or not an objective reality actually exists... fellow lion david barry wanted to know what rushdie's optimisitc and pessimistic about and he gave the following answer:

I studied history and one of the things you learn as a historian is that the future is never what you think it's gonna be. You can be optimistic about the future and a calamity is around the corner. You can be pessimistic about the future and things turn out much better than you expect. The truth is, the only thing you don't know is what's going to happen because what really happens is always an amazement. If you think about the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, I would guarantee that twelve months before that, nobody could've forecast it would've happened. There was this thing which looked like a solid tyranny standing there with a whole apparatus of repression and gulags and the KGB and this and that, you know, and then suddenly one day poof, it blows away like wind. I mean the surprise of the collapse of the Soviet Union is sort of what I'm talking about. History surprises you. Right now I think, for instance, it's quite easy to look at the future and think that the world is a bit bleak right now, and that things are not going very well. It's a world of great conflict and disagreement and argument, dissention, it's a world of intolerance and bigotry and so on. It's easy to see all that corruption and easy therefore to think that things'll just get worse. But actually, they may get much worse than we fear [he laughs]. Or they may get much better. In a way, it's an optimistic thing: you cannot foresee the future. There's a famous old, in the days that Marxism was fashionable, there was this woderful phrase where what you were supposed to have was pessmimism of the itellect and optimism of the will. And I think that's a perfectly reasonable position. You can be gloomy about how you think things are going but you should be optimistic about your ability to affect them.

 So how fucking awesome is that ?  A bit drunk late one night I stumble on a smart person's blog and get to, as a result, in effect, ask Salman Rushdie a question ?  And his answer, including:  "The truth is, the only thing you don't know is what's going to happen because what really happens is always an amazement"  is pretty much what I live on these days; I don't walk around spinning in circles but I have been absolutely amazed at some of the events of the past few years and am completely optimistic, in the face of some damning evidence to the contrary, that I can effect positive change.  Why should it be otherwise ?  As Barlow says above:  "Some things don't change. People die. Others get born to take their place. Storms cover the land with trouble. And then, always, the sun breaks through again."
Can we "like" this any more ?  I think not.

Saturday, still at Dillon beach and its a rainy day.  Up in the sun room napping and watching Barry work on a puzzle.  It's a lazy day, but force it out to the garage in the cold dark for:
15/15 16kg seven rep pace x 50, snatches.  25 minutes of straight snatch work that goes really really well.
Sunday, two hours of clean-up out the door, Stationhouse cafe for lunch.  Hit home by 2:00, tired but need to get away from all other humans, so Rose and I go out into marsh where it is freezing cold, need socks for the vff.  Got the 300mm working again but no opportunities.
Monday, fuckin a its back to the work world.  Leave suburbs early, hit gym in am like:
Burpees to three pushups to suitcase dead with twin 24s x 5
10 24kg Goblet squats
5+3 neutral grip pull ups, 22lbs assist
30 walking lunges, bodyweight.
3x

15/15 32kg swings, ten reps x 5
5+5 20kg windmills
10+10 37.5lb woodchoppers
3x, save last set of swings were 30/30 24kg at 20 reps

PM, Pradeep sweatfest.  Tough class and about 40 minutes in he has us in Dolphin plank for ten count, up to plank for ten count, descending ladder back and forth like that down to 1.  That was close to two minutes in plank after some extended series prior and entire class was thoroughly smoked.

God I felt great this morning though.  Long work day, rough mediation and grind.

Day off, to pick up again tomorrow.