Rooftop Set

Dear J-

If today’s any indication, we have a fair amount of naps in our future in order to ensure continued harmony; she crashed for two hours after lunch, where not even the prospect of ice cream could keep her awake for long. But prior to that figgy was already displaying all the signs: unreasoning crabbiness, irrational thinking. At some point she inevitably comes back down to earth — between the early morninig and all day runninig around, she’s bound to run out of energy.

I still maintain that the secret to energy independence will revolve around millions of toddlers on treadmills, though. I’m always surprised by how quickly Saturday mornings can pass, though there’s tricks for that too. I’ll turn around and the room will be thrashed just like that — if the natural state tends towards increasing entropy, then children are the change agents driving that.

The truth is that you need to put in just as much energy to make it work, and I know how exhausted I am at the end of each day is testament — measure — of how I’m doing. And yet you know that there’s always more that you should have done. It’s days like these (tired, ashamed of some things, reflectively listening to her bellow for more attention) that I know there’s more in a Saturday than today, but sometimes the lessons are hard to digest.

Mike

Day 21: Fleeting Youth

Dear J-

It’s testament to how much I’ve changed from “more qualfications means more work” (in the context of the plant, the more you can do, the more you end up doing) to, after class today, asking when the next cause evaluation class is being held. I’m convinced — I think, if that’s not the most oxymoronic thing I’ve said tonight — I’m convinced that I have a part to play in the health and recovery of the plant. There’s a price to be paid for a newfound sense of responsibility, though, and I’m not sure that it’s one I want to pay.

My photographic inspiration and camera gear seem to track each other pretty well, with the cycle going something like: buy lens — take lots of photographs — start feeling stale — suspect equipment limitation — buy lens (repeat until broke). I can’t figure out if I’m so bereft of talent and drive that without a steady stream of glass and different perspectives, I can’t function. While I do have a desert-island lens, there are specific characteristics and abilities of various lenses that I say I need to explore, which is another excuse for my lack of other motivation.

So I’m not sure if it’s the thousands of tools that I’ve been given these five weeks that are making me want to do work or if it’s a genuine desire to help us out of the ditch we’re in. Is it an excuse to stretch my abilities? The better I know myself, the less mysterious my motivations. All I know for sure though is that the days of eight hours and forty-hour weeks may be part of the rearview mirror before much longer if I get serious about needing to change the world, and I’m not prepared to sacrifice family on that altar.

Mike

Water Ways

Dear J-

Through some sort of strange coincidence we found ourselves at two of the Department of Water’s stations along the I-5 corridor, the San Luis Reservoir and Pyramid Lake. The timing had something to do with the flood in figgy’s pants and something to do with her behavior, as she ran away the restlessness in the visitor’s centers. The total trip takes roughly ten hours each way with all the stops figured in (we made three each time), though we are now running low on unique places to pull over — that middle part north of Santa Clarita and south of Highway 152 is pretty desolate.

The San Luis reservoir is down in volume, as I noted before — when we pulled over the winds were amazingly fierce, in sharp contrast to the baking heat at Pyramid Lake. The Southern California site is more glitzy inside too — blinking lights and animated displays showing the tortuous path water takes from Lake Oroville to Lake Perris. The hours we spent are nothing before the mighty civil works; I grew up not far from Grand Coulee Dam and am constantly amazed at the scale of machines. Yet with all that said, why they can’t make I-5 any wider north of Fullerton to keep traffic faster than a crawl makes no sense at all. Should they eventually build the promised high-speed rail system that’s one stretch of road I won’t miss.

The one constant was figgy running laps at each stop — kid’s got energy to burn and the last thing she needs is to be strapped to a chair for ten hours and forced to sit still or sleep; we’re still trying to get her to fall asleep for the night. We’re still learning about each other, you know, and the more I understand the more we can make sense of the things we do.

Mike