The Soapbox

This page written circa 1 May, 1999.

The Summer of Love

I have said it before, and I will say it again: I am really loving life here. Work is enjoyable, and I could not imagine finer colleagues and company facilities; the shops and the whole American Way suits my philosophies; the landscape is beautiful; the Summer promises to be utterly gorgeous, with warm days, long cool evenings, trees of so many different colours; this house is lovely (if you have to live in a wooden house instead of a stone one); the garden is a joy; Meri is enchanting; I love Kay and I am enjoying living with her; we have, have had, and will likely continue to have, marvellous house guests; I am getting the chance to delve into the past and remember good times, as evident from the photo gallery on this site, and I have received encouraging feedback from you who read this page (thank you one and all). It is almost too good to be true.

I have always liked rock music, and I take particular pleasure in tracks with powerful or cryptic lyrics. I like to think that is a very Haight-Ashbury attitude. I guess I really get off to something with a dark edge. After dinner we listened to "White Rabbit". I continued with some caustic Jefferson Starship, and then some Blue Oyster Cult.

I mention this, because it left me with a desire to suddenly take off on a bike, preferably fired with a dose of some suitable upper, and cruise a lively street... as Haight might once have been, as King Street is in its own way. Sadly, lively street is not something Santa Rosa does well. Next, for all her good points, "thrill" is not a word likely to find itself used in context with "Kay". (Of course, I am always open to correction.)

So I sit here, circa midnight, at the keyboard, and I wonder to myself what all the other people of my acquaintance do to fill the thrill gap. Not that I am complaining, for my life is full... I am just greedy for it to be more full.

Thrill comes in large and small packets, of course. I would describe the trip to see BoC with Andrew in February a "thrill", though not as concentrated a hit as if we had ridden Harleys there in a speed-induced high. Band practice, which I miss increasingly, was a regular, mild "thrill"; though barely worthy of the word, it had some of the elements. I read in NS of the growing number of people building ramjets in their back gardens for no reason other than the combined thrill of constructing and running something with a strong engineering content and a distinct chance of blowing them into tiny pieces, or at least incinerating some major asset with a spectacular jet of flame. Fascinating, but without something resembling the Batmobile or Concorde, to which to connect the ramjet, that is a bit too futile to tickle my fancy. Nevertheless, the thrill gap is in evidence in the literature.

Things ain't like what they used to be, and this ain't the Summer of Love. There is a spring that is being slowly coiled.

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