A year of gradual reparations.

Although I haven't posted since (!!!) February, I've continued to read y'all's posts and I continue to appreciate hearing from all of you. I've sat down to write an entry on several occasions in the past few months and found it hard to do so. This year has felt like a hard one to really reflect on; although certainly nothing terrible has happened, and indeed quite a few wonderful things have befallen me, my overall state of being is one of quiet endurance, the primary source of which is the same problem that I wrote about almost a year ago: my fucked up legs. I continue to do what I can to heal them, and I continue to find many joys throughout every day, but I find my ambition for getting myself past my current state of existence (working a low-paying job, wondering about larger life goals, attempting to find enduring sources of concentration and passion) to be lacking. If someone close to me were ask how I was doing, I would most likely shrug, and genuinely have difficulty finding a satisfying answer. I am doing what I can with what I have, but I feel in some ways that I am stagnating - that I have reached a mental obstacle that I have yet to overcome. Perhaps I am doing the right thing by focusing on the simple everyday joys, instead of worrying about the larger things. Perhaps not.

With that aside, it has been a wonderful year in many ways, if not a very inward one. I feel badly about the friends who still live close to me that I have not seen in far too long. I saw Mike Manomivibul a few weeks back, which was great, but we both laughed at how foolish it is that we live half a mile away and only just recently reconnected. But in any case, to any of you that read this blog and live in the Bay Area still, I mean no ill will by my hermitishness. I am always happy to hear from any of you.

To quickly sum up major events from the past months, which most of you already know: I quit Actual Cafe in June, cuz it sucked. I was unemployed for a little over a month, which, although financially destabilizing, was pretty refreshing. I got a job at Farley's East, immediately went to Europe (Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona) for two weeks, which rocked. I have been dating a lady named Sara since May, which has been wonderful. She's pretty awesome. You should meet her. Now I'm pretty settled into my work schedule, and I've been doing a lot of reading and a ton of music listening. I spend a lot of time at Sara's place. We've both had our share of health issues holding us back this year, so it's been nice to have someone else that really understands and empathizes. We share an insane passion for music and have seen some pretty damn good concerts lately, including Isis, Kylesa, Torche and High on Fire at the Great American Music Hall, Avishai Cohen and Ahmad Jamal at Yoshi's Oakland, and Russian Circles and Keelhaul at Bottom of the Hill.

So. As the year ends, I feel like the going is slow, but I feel like I'm at least in a more comfortable place than I was at the end of last year. It could be a hell of a lot worse, I can tell ya. I truly hope that everyone who reads this is doing well for themselves, and I hope your holidays have been good so far and will continue to be so.

Listenings:

Intronaut: Valley of Smoke, Prehistoricisms

Mouth of the Architect: Quietly, The Violence Beneath

Kylesa: Spiral Shadow

Keelhaul: Keelhaul's Triumphant Return to Obscurity, Subject to Change Without Notice

Neurosis: Enemy of the Sun, Through Silver In Blood

Converge: Axe To Fall

Del Rey: Immemorial

Russian Circles: Station

Yakuza: Of Seismic Consequence

Dethklok: The Dethalbum

Megadeth: Rust in Peace

High on Fire: Snakes for the Divine

Deathspell Omega: Paracletus

Opeth: Blackwater Park

Shellac: At Action Park, 1000 Hurts

Avishai Cohen: Continuo, Gently Disturbed

Freddie Hubbard: Red Clay

Rudresh Mahanthappa & Steve Lehman: Dual Identity

Readings:

Neal Stephenson: Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash

Kurt Vonnegut: Bluebeard

Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion

Sam Harris: The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation