Sunn O)))

JWise Photo of the Day

Sunn O))) live in Mesa, Arizona

Sunn O))) is a kind of Druid aural embodiment of alchemy set before the temple channeling earth’s power to allow the laity to intuitively understand the work of bacteria on a global scale. You tremble before their sonic storm of vibrational lucidity as you are brought to the precipice of being reduced from human to simple organic matter. We are rendered as constituent elements of the primordial earth, while before us is the sun that energizes life. With the help of our star, wakefulness rises and the opportunity to explore is gifted to the various species of earth. Cosmic illumination from the galactic center explodes into our senses. For fleeting moments as measured in the infinity of time we attempt to discover some sense of meaning, but the intensity arising out of the totality of reality is too expansive for minds that only relatively recently left the cave. So we continue to explore the boundaries on our search for what any of this means.

Translation: we went to a concert in Mesa last night featuring the Seattle, Washington, band known as Sunn O))).

Final San Diego Impressions

JWise Photo of the Day, Thoughts

Menya Ultra Ramen in San Diego, California

San Diego ended up being largely boring. There were a few high points, such as this Tonkotsu Chashu Ramen from Menya Ultra. There are two locations in the San Diego area, but expect both to have lines out the door, and these are the only two locations in North America. My 20-minute wait was absolutely worthwhile. So, there may be some interesting dining options here along the coast, but you must be prepared to drive. Should you want great Mexican food, you might need to visit Chula Vista down south, so at the best of times, if you are up north, it’ll take you 45 minutes to drive the 23 miles or more than 75 minutes if you are attempting this when the freeways are slammed.

There’s a coastal train line operated by Amtrak that travels between San Luis Obispo and San Diego. The pricing is okay, but I’m putting this here because the track it runs on is close to some cliff sides that are disappearing. The Pacific Surfliner takes about 8.5 hours to make the trek that would take 5 hours by car, and there’s free wifi onboard, so while I’m fairly bored here, I could easily see Caroline and I making the trip out this way on a weekend during the late fall for the trip north and back south. Strangely, we’ve never traveled with Amtrak anywhere in America though we have taken subways in New York, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles, steam trains in New Mexico and Colorado, and a couple of old lines in Arizona, one that took us through Verde Canyon and the other from Williams to Grand Canyon National Park.

Drake the Dog

My routine of walking Drake saw him leading most of the time. This vet’s office saw us at least once a day, sometimes twice. I never learned what it was that drew him here, but this dog loved sniffing their door. He seems to have grown used to me after about ten days of Dion and Ylva’s absence, but still, he’s a cantankerous dog who knows where he wants to go and got quite aggressive, pulling in the direction he wanted to go.

I never grew to appreciate that dogs are a full-time job where their needs must be met every day without a break. How people grow accustomed to the dog’s needs and the inflexibility the relationship offers is far beyond my ability to understand.

Writing

More than the beaches and restaurants, this was the most common view I had while here in Southern California. Never did I truly feel inspired to liberate my spleen and find a thread to flow within. Maybe adequate cloud cover or the potential for it is required for my writing? Not a chance, as I live in Arizona and find myself writing quite often. So, what’s the writer’s block that was affecting me here?

Bathroom

Another common view of mine. This one is from a sitting position and is typically only had once a day.

Eating at Red Tracton's in Del Mar, California

I’m at Red Tracton’s Steakhouse in Del Mar, and the only people under 50 here are the staff. Matter of fact, the majority of diners are well into their retirement years. Every table I see has some stiff drinks on it; a couple has wine, and only one has a beer.

At about $100 a person, the casual conversation is largely about money. One nearby table is discussing their racehorses which makes sense as the Del Mar racetrack is nearby.

Maybe there are some individual diners in the bar area, but I’m the only solo guy in the main dining room. Dinner was okay, but it wasn’t worth what was paid. This joint and my meal were kind of boring just like the city all of this in. As the baby boomers continue to die out, so will this type of restaurant.

Sunset at Solana Beach in California

There are probably many things to like about this area along the coast, besides the coast and sunsets, I found things difficult to enjoy. If we were to live here, I’m afraid we’d be like most San Diegans who don’t want to deal with parking near the ocean and the perception that the beaches are crowded, so we’d take for granted that we could go at any time and then put it off for years while claiming the ocean is part of the allure. Traffic and cost of living are the chief complaints about life here, which is the same I’ve heard from San Francisco down to Los Angeles, but the jobs that pay high wages are spread throughout the Sunshine State, so people stay. As for me, I’m looking forward to getting home to the dry 110-degree desert where we don’t need to pretend that we reside in some cool, hip place unless we live in Scottsdale.

The Shape of Caroline

JWise Photo of the Day, Thoughts

The shape of Caroline Wise

This is the shape of Caroline in outline form. The person is not present, but I know what belongs between the lines. She’s made up of yarn, music, seashells, crashing waves, tears, smiles, uncertainty, love, curiosity, words from a dozen languages, characters from books, movies, cartoons, German bread and pickles, and people she’s met. Caroline is larger than her physical being as her eyes have consumed the stars, the ocean, the mountains, and the trees. The desert knows her, and she knows it, but neither is bored of the other as there is so much to try to know. This woman is resilient and fragile, expansive and tiny, sometimes difficult and sometimes so very simple.

From her outline, you cannot see her eyes, but I can. You will never know her scent as I do, nor the softness found along the contours of her skin. A pencil drawing doesn’t explain her exacting need for certain things to be in order while other things are allowed to fall into disarray. Why does an outline of her even exist? Because she has dreams that extend beyond her sleeping hours for things, she can adorn herself if only she can examine herself in real size.

If this outline were filled with the words “I love you” from all the times she’s heard that from me, there would need to be hundreds of these stacked one upon the other. The only thing missing in the drawing above is one of me next to her, holding her hand, because that is the eternal image of who we are.

Avarice

JWise Thoughts

dollar

For the past 50 years, we’ve been at battle with ourselves. Following the post-World War II boom leading into the 1960s, America was experiencing its first enlightenment before it put on the brakes to examine what had happened. Out of the civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, environmental, and hippy movements, there came a trigger that apparently alienated those who were riding the wealth catapult and had the ruling class recoil at the social changes that came with these structural changes to society. So, a type of war was silently declared against the rising intellect of the masses.

A large part of society would start being nudged toward mediocrity starting in the early 1970s, and there was little clue as to just how many were on their way to being on the losing end of financial advancement. At the same time, those who were benefiting from the emergent global economy continued to benefit right up through today. With the upper class and their wealth came creeping avarice and maybe fear that the populace would learn of the imbalance. Promoting fear among the masses instead of spreading a vision of the future worked: people cowered, afraid they might lose the little they had. Sadly, the growing majority is now nearly powerless to change this equation as they cannot fathom the complexity of tools that have been used against them.  All that’s left for the powerful is to lift these masses onto the shoulders of nationalism, rewarding them through patriotism for their loyalty to jargon and jingoism, and finally pushing the lemmings off the cliff of civil war.

Let’s rewind the clock about 700 years to the 14th century when a class of royalty relied on and exploited the uneducated masses in Europe while fighting endless wars at the expense of the survivors of endless plagues. Then, in the early 15th century, the Renaissance kicked into high gear, and then moveable type and the printing press forever changed the distribution of knowledge. Those advancements would need to simmer for another 300 years before the Enlightenment would take hold. Now, after 250 years of progress, we find ourselves replete with all of the tools, capital, and ability to take a quantum leap forward in intellectual and planetary stewardship, but we are flailing about like infants.

Leadership is not fulfilling its role, as greed and fear are rife throughout society. On one hand, you have those afraid of losing their privilege and having to face change, while on the other side, a vast majority do not know how to deal with change either, so we are doing nothing. I suppose this requires me to point out that America hasn’t failed to introduce great change upon the entirety of humanity, but a lot of what has been introduced has been delivered by a relatively small percentage of our population and, in many ways, has bypassed the majority of our population who should be reaping the rewards of progress.

Afternoon Visit

JWise Photo of the Day

Brinn Aaron at Solana Beach, California

Spontaneity is often a rare thing and with the idea that Brinn would visit me while in San Diego, I didn’t think he’d really show up. We “joked” about him driving out the day before but he said it would be better to leave in the morning. Sure enough, he wrote to me earlier today that he’d be in around 12:30 and it was only shortly after that when he walked into Starbucks here next to the freeway in Solana Beach.

We took off for lunch down to Gen Korean BBQ and got stuffed on $25 a person all-you-can-eat cook-at-your-own table Korean food. We leaned heavily on the pork side of the menu before agreeing on a nice long walk to help settle the stuffing. So back up the coast to Solana Beach, we drove to walk the dog before walking ourselves. After a mile-long walk with Drake, we headed over to the beach down the road from where I’m staying and walked another three miles.

You might guess that after this we made our way back over to the coffee shop to continue the conversation. Stoicism has been on Brinn’s mind lately as he brought up Marcus Aurelius at our last meeting in Phoenix and again today the subject comes up. For those of you who don’t know, stoicism is the endurance of pain or hardship without the display of feelings and without complaint. At only 32 years of age Brinn has known his share of hardship, pain, and suffering, often with some of it being self-inflicted, after being brought up to endure it. In this sense, we might be considered opposites as I have worked towards stopping the internal self-immolation as I’ve tried to find a balance of enduring the pain shared by a society bent on exploring their greatest stupidities and my need to exit life as gracefully and happy as possible.

While sitting in the shade a security guard making his rounds came by and we said hello. Turns out he’s a former Marine and at that moment it was strange to think that the three of us are all veterans of the American Military. While Brinn is nearly constantly aware of his status in part because he works for the Veterans Administration in Phoenix, I mostly have forgotten that part of my life as I wanted to actively distance myself from the radical conditioning that is undergone when one becomes a soldier. Jonathan the security guard was an affable guy who spent about 45 minutes chatting with us. He only left active duty about 2 years ago after 11 years of service and it is still obvious what his background was.

Korean Ice Cream from Somi Somi in San Diego

Wow, is it dinner time already? No, we did not start with dessert, we dropped in on some random Chinese noodle shop and split a few dishes. Around the corner, we visited Somi Somi where a few days before I made my first visit, but opted for the relatively boring vanilla flavor with custard. Tonight I went with the Ube and Taro with Fruity Pebbles and didn’t regret it. Yes I did regret it, I have diabetes and this was kind of stupid but I did walk nearly 17,000 steps today so hopefully, I counteracted the ugly effect of sugar on my body chemistry.

By 10:00 p.m. I brought Brinn back to his car and his short adventure to San Diego came to an end as he pointed the car eastward and off he drove into the night. Later I learned he got home safely at 3:30 in the morning but I guess even if it had been a slog and he was tired along the way, his stoicism wouldn’t have allowed him to lament the struggle to stay awake under the starry sky out in the middle of nowhere.

More San Diego Impressions

JWise Thoughts

Heron at Sunset on the Ocean in Solana Beach, California

More random thoughts collected over the course of my stay in the San Diego area.

Trying to make the most of my time here I took an early morning drive down the coast from Solana Beach through Del Mar, Torrey Pines, into La Jolla, and I’m thoroughly unimpressed. Sure there’s the ocean, but not many places to park and get to the water. La Jolla is incredibly depressing unless you are white and wealthy and enjoy your time on the coast playing golf, shopping in expensive boutiques, needing a spa treatment, and really enjoying your whiteness where you can spend your time undisturbed having to see or listen to minorities.

Do you like your women talking in sing-song, high-pitched, infantile voices so the women they are talking with are fully aware of their mutual enthusiasm? Then La Jolla, like Santa Monica, Irvine, Santa Barbara, and Scottsdale, Arizona, which is now mostly a suburb of Southern California, are places for you. I think this is the voice of, “OH my fucking god, we are so white, rich, and privileged; can you even like believe this?”

It took an interaction between a girl of about 12 years old and a woman nearing her 50s to understand the dynamic: it’s vanity. As these women are aging, they are hyper-self-aware, and by bringing these voices out, they actually sound younger than a prepubescent girl. When you listen to an exchange between a 7th grader and someone who is a little more than a decade away from retirement, and the child sounds more mature, there is a problem.

Since when did the baseball cap go from hiding male baldness to being a coverup for women who didn’t feel like washing their hair? Why do I even care? I suppose I have no good answer other than it’s one of my observations of how we humans change behaviors over time and how they are in contrast between races, economic groups, and countries. Am I biased in my views? Yes, I am, as I see many of these traits arising in us Americans out of our idiocy to be seen as more childlike. Why so hostile, John? If I’m surrounded by banality, at some point, it will rub off on me; hell, it probably already has, and I’m blind to just how stupid immersion in American culture has made me.

Pride on the verge of fanaticism for the city you live in is like cancer, where the mutating cells threaten to take over the body. We see the same attitude for the home sports teams, where disagreement about who is best can result in a violent exchange. Why should anyone need to defend a city or region, their favorite TV show, or the local baseball team? What is it that carries over from childhood into adulthood that breeds this kind of loyalty? I don’t begrudge people for being respectful of these things and finding what’s to be appreciated, but the anger they display when someone points out elements they find unpleasant can propel the person to start listing the multitude of reasons why where they are is perfect. The same goes for their television show or sports team should you utter that you don’t like either. The need to be rabid in the defense of anything beyond love and education is the domain of the child’s mind, where enthusiasm is a developing immature passion.

Yesterday while checking on the readability of something I drafted a couple of weeks ago, I came upon some advertising copy that pissed me off. This all started when I couldn’t quite follow what my original intent was in my own writing as I was a bit obtuse. After running the text through a readability computer, one of the indexes said my writing was at a 9th-grade level while another index on the same page said it required 15 years of education or a junior in university. Why the disparity? So, I looked up the differences between the Gunning Fox and Coleman Liau indexes, which led me to Readable.

I’m already using Grammarly for real-time feedback on where I flub commas, hyphens, and such, but every so often, I like checking the readability of something I wrote. I mostly do this because there are times I’m astonished that my vocabulary and curiosity allow me to write what I’m reading. Well, today, I was slapped in the face with a thought that hurt me. I’ve known for a long time that much of what is on television and in books is presented at a 5th-grade comprehension level. What I wasn’t ready for was the following advertising copy:

85% – The increase in the number of people who will finish reading your content if its readability is improved from grade 12 to grade 5.

Did I read that right? My writing will be “improved” if I dumb it down? My first thought was already dumbed down enough as in my head, I blurted out, “What the fuck?”

There’s a recurring theme here on JohnWise.com about mediocrity where I’m far too often venting my spleen about things I’m hostile towards, but this idea that the average person is no more literate than a 10-year-old galls me. Add to this my two examples above about women speaking like children and people, in general, having this hubristic pride where both emanate out of our immaturity, and I’m left a bit distraught.

San Diego is Arizona without the morning sun. Everyone seems to sing the same chorus, extolling how great it is to live in San Diego while commiserating with Phoenicians about how it’s too hot over in the desert. Well, I’m not seeing anyone on the streets of San Diego after about 10:00 or again before about 6:00. Everywhere I go is air-conditioned, and everywhere everyone else is traveling, they are doing so by car with their windows up.

For a week now, I’ve listened to people complain that it’s too cold out at 66 degrees or 19 Celsius at 8:00. When the mercury hits 68 (20c), things are perfect. During this time, the humidity is changing too, going from about 90% at 7:00 to 60% at noon while the temperature climbs up to 72 degrees or 22 Celsius. After this, as the heat of the day bears down on San Diegans and the temps climb to 80, it appears that everyone is hiding in something air-conditioned – just like people from Phoenix. There’s one big difference here, though: the humidity hovers between 40 and 60% and makes you sweat all the time.

So by historical averages, San Diego is too cold for the people that live here from November through May, but for the perfect month of July when they get nearly 7 hours of sunlight a day compared to Phoenix with 13 hours of blue skies, they bask in the joy after dealing with a 12 lane wide freeway that becomes a parking lot for a good part of the day.

Simple math tells you that most of the people living here are not on the beaches either. San Diego County has a full-time population of 3.3 million and annual tourism that draws in another 36 million. I’ve now walked some miles along the area’s beaches, and I can assure you that the density of visitors on the seashore is not overwhelming or indicative of locals utilizing their primary tourist attraction. For example, Memorial Day is the busiest day for the 70 miles of San Diego beaches, and back in 2016, 91,300 people spent Monday next to the ocean. So if we only count permanent residents and exclude tourists, just under 3% of the population that lives in San Diego visited the beach that day.

Well then, what is the main attraction? The potential to enjoy a lifestyle here when not at work, on a freeway, or competing for a parking spot near the beach when tourism is overwhelming the few spots allocated for cars? Are the palm trees waving in the ocean breeze seen through windows deluding residents into believing they are experiencing life outside of a car and their home? I guess being here to take advantage of someday is good enough.

The best BBQ in San Diego belongs to Phil’s BBQ; that’s a chain similar to Famous Dave’s and so after driving 30 minutes inland, I ended up walking right back out after learning everything is drenched in sweet barbecue sauce. How about a search for the best restaurants near me? When In-N-Out is in the top five, you know there’s nothing here for me. I’m near Mexico, so there must be some great Mexican joints out here, right? Not within five miles. So, fifteen minutes up the 15 freeway, I’m in old town Escondido, and the Guadalajaran place is reminiscent of Garduno’s in Scottsdale (Mexican food for old white people from the Midwest). Now I’m at La Tapatia, which I passed along the way, and I’m hoping that since it’s been here since 1937, it has earned its longevity. My fingers were crossed. Alas, mediocrity squashed my culinary dreams.

Thursday was a blur. Walk the dog. Make breakfast. Go for coffee. Write. Go for lunch. Walk the dog. Play with the synth. Go for coffee. Write. Eat. Walk the dog. Play with the synth. Watch a tutorial about the Blender addon Tissue and using Vertex Groups together with Shape Keys to morph a component along a surface. While I didn’t hit the beach today or achieve a serious amount of walking, I was successful in clearing a couple more blog drafts that were lingering longer than they should have been.

How short-sighted I feel sitting here in San Diego in a coffee shop instead of outside in the cool breeze of the offshore wind, making this place a mecca for visitors. The sun, though, does not care for my comfort as it tries to burn me and usually wins. I look out the window and know that I’m missing a relatively cool day where I could be next to the ocean, but my skin reminds me of how much I dislike the pain of being taken to a crispy state.

I could just as easily sit indoors in Phoenix, where at 110 degrees out there, I have good reason to escape the blistering temperature. So I feel guilty here that I’m giving away this opportunity to do all things outdoorsy. I try to justify part of this lethargy by running around under the sun with the fact that Caroline is not here with me right now, but that feels weak. I work at writing, so it might convince me that what I was able to capture of my thoughts will have had value in making up for anything that was lost.