My current theory is that the information flowing through the tubes that make up the Internet can be boiled off into vapor, never to reach its destination, if the weather is hot enough. Because it is plenty hot in Ojai, and the DSL connection at home makes me wish for the good old days of dial-up: I was transferring data at about 1k per second before I gave up and drove down here to the McDonald’s, which turned out to be a mistake, because not only is the WiFi here not free, which I didn’t discover until after I’d paid for a McFlurry in exchange for the liberty of sitting here, but also the restaurant isn’t even air conditioned. So I’m writing this in a tiff made tiffier by the fact that I won’t even be able to publish my grievances until I get back to the data-trickle at home, where the agonizing slowness of the publishing will tiff me to the tiffiest.
I have been writing recently, I’ll have you know–just not here. Mostly I’ve been writing resumes and cover letters. A few have gone out into the world; none has yet borne fruit.
Also I’ve been working on the Midorikai book. Unlikely-sounding, I know, but true. I’ve got a whole 4200 words of first draft on paper–not much of a start, but a whole lot more than I had to show for all my good intentions two weeks ago.
Yesterday I went to tea practice in Solvang and made koicha with the kōkō-dana. That was after fueling up on donuts at Donut Time in Buellton with my parents, and before refueling on burgers at The Habit in Goleta.
Today was given to church, reunions with faces from the past–with various degrees of awkwardness and pleasantness–and this trip in the thwarted search of connectivity.
My world has gotten small and frustrating of late. Something’s got to give, friends. Soon.
(This little rant not actually posted, as it turns out, until the day after it was written, in the cool of the Ojai morning, when the data merely trickles sluggishly rather than sublimating entirely.)