The Urban Sherpa Annex

I, Book

I spent my night collecting a bunch of short stories into an “iBook,” using some software just released by Apple (“iBook Publisher,” described as “Garage Band for Books”).

If you’ve never made a book (and I hadn’t), then let me tell you: the process is terribly humbling.

Don’t get me wrong: the software is simple and easy to use, couldn’t be easier. No, the real problem for me was the act of collecting every single thing I’ve ever written which seemed to “bookworthy,” and discovering what a short book it makes.

Clearly, I have some more work to do.

Meanwhile, though, I’ll make this new “iBook” available to anyone who wants it. It’s full of stories you’ve had plenty of opportunity to read elsewhere, but they’re all collected in a nice, iPad-friendly format, with a new title I like:

Bedtime Stories for Restless Nights.

Self-Improvement

When I dream about the ways to improve my life, “fountain pens” usually makes the list. It’s weird because, first of all, they’re readily available, so if I genuinely think they’re going to make my life so much better, I should just get one; and second, because, in the past, I’ve done exactly that, and they’re nice — writing with a fountain pen is smooth and quick and strong and feels a little more, well, more — but it’s never changed my life.

Also always on my list: Excedrin. Unlike fountain pens, Excedrin really does improve my life. Excedrin, for those of you who aren’t familiar, is an over-the-counter painkiller made up of 1) aspirin; 2) acetaminophen; and 3) caffeine — so it’s like popping two Bufferin, two Tylenol, and two shots of espresso. How could this not improve your life?

Come to think of it, most and maybe all of my self-improvement plans involve shopping.

It’s good to be back.

So, Chris, what’s up with this blog? I mean, don’t you have another blog? (Or two?)

Yeah, yeah, I do. Thanks for asking. I’ve sort of stopped using those other blogs. So that’s what this blog is about: it’s about not blogging. It’s like when you buy a gym membership and then don’t go to the gym, so you buy an exercise bike for your home, partly so you get get in shape to go to the gym (oh, the irony), and partly just to trick yourself into exercising: if there’s that much exercise equipment around, you’re bound to exercise eventually, just by accident, tripping over the treadmill or whatever.

And so it is with blogs. Or so I’m hoping. Everywhere I go there’s a blog and if I’m not going to write in that one, then maybe I’ll write in this one instead. 

Poor you, having to sift through all that.

(Lucky for you, there is no you: so far, I don’t think anyone even knows this blog exists. In the vacuum of blogspace, no one can hear me scream.)

I have blog fatigue. I also have Facebook fatigue, Twitter fatigue, work fatigue, and even stay-at-home fatigue. I’m spending more and more of my days on long hikes (see below), cooking elaborate meals, working a garden, and, finally, recently, reading.

Again.

Finally.

(It’s a special kind of person who responds to blog fatigue by creating a new blog, and I am that type of person.)

What I’m learning from this phase of the life cycle is that I very much wanted (needed?) to slow down. The Internet is not conducive to slowing down (duh). I needed (wanted?) to re-wire my brain, to make it a little less dependent on the gratification of a new email, a new @ mention, a new “Like.” 

And what’s doing that for me, recently, is reading. 

I’d tell you what I’m reading (though there is no you), except my point here is McLuhanesque: the content of these books matters a little, but matters a lot less than the process of reading, and how this forces me to unplug, and to immerse myself in a different kind of thinking, and thereby access some neglected recesses of my hardening brain.

Where was I? Oh, that’s right: I was online, blogging. 

It’s good to be back. (Sort of.)

Ether

So something happened to lop off the second half of that last blog post. Too bad: the ending was where all the thought went.

I’m not going to try to rewrite it. That thought’s all gone into the ether. And since we all go into the ether sooner or later, I’ll meet up with it when I get there.

Invitation to a Beheading

Hiking today in Griffith Park, I ran into a woman trying to unravel her tangle of small dogs, and when she saw me, she pointed excitedly at the sky. Her English wasn’t very good (or maybe mine wasn’t…), and it took me longer than it should have to understand that she was indicating the helicopters swarming overhead. She played Charades with me valiantly till eventually we established some basic communication:

They’d found a head, in a plastic bag.

This was in the next canyon over. Some dog-walkers noticed their nine dogs (NINE!) taking a little too much interest in the trash they found in the bushes, and when they went to intervene, sure enough, plop,  a head rolled out of the bag. 

“Male, between the ages of 40 and 60.”

I hope when I die and my head gets ditched in a plastic bag, I hold together well enough that they can guess my age within +/- 10 years.

As the day has gone on, the police have gradually turned up more body parts — one hand, then another hand, then two feet. “The remains are believed to come from the same man,” the paper said. I should hope so!

Art imitates life imitates art: this story is a David Lynch movie; it’s a sequel to the Black Dahlia. Oh, the Black Dalia wasn’t a movie; it was real life. And that’s the crux of what’s unsettling about this story: it belongs on a film screen, not real life.

Friends have already asked me if I’m worried for my own safety, hiking these canyons where bodies are carved up. No, I’m not worried. Maybe I should be, but I’m not. I’m lit up with curiosity about the rest of this story — the story of someone’s very very very bad day.

Apart from the David Lynchian / Black Dahlia-ness of it; and 

Merry Christmas, from The Urban Sherpa. http://t.co/43X37cH8

How is it possible that I’m single-minded about everything?

If I had it all to do over again, I’d do the exact same thing, but with a heightened sense of deja vu.

is having a non-career retrospective.

I just learned who Pippa is.