intuitive ink

Intuitive Ink is my newest foray into the continually-edited compilation. There have been many . . . many pages, snippets, blogs, journals, notes, posts, streams, tweets, comments and even full-fledged websites dedicated to my pursuit of this craft. Over the years I've kept pretty strict separation controls on this writing, keeping certain things here, and other things there, and some things entirely to myself, as the sheer act of writing is theraputic. And for the first time ever, as I have had some clear-headed time to reflect on the journey, it doesn't need to hide or be hidden. So it's all coming together here. Although I could definitely use one, I don't have an editor. All I have on my side it time: time to let the words rest. Time to look away and let the kinetic energy of my busy mind wear itself out on something else. Time to breathe and rest and only then to look again fresh at the words, to gently shape them into life as the incredulous stories unfold.

Still am I trying to figure out what to make of G+. Yet another white box beckoning an unassuming user "stream" something . . . anything linky, shiny, doodlebobbers. Googlebots hungry, this time for social food. Real social food, not the illusion of "social" that anonymity allows. Not the romantic notion of being, say. . . ejroundtheworld , flitting from Paris to NYC to Jamaica whilst licking her silver spoon.  And let's not forget that her silver spoon has grown a significant order of magnitude, courtesy of Airbnb's hefty investment to quell her whining. EJ's talent to create and feed manufactured drama is obviously very keen. Talent like that must be handsomely rewarded. After all, being "violated" by a barely legal 19-year old teenage girl who busted a lock, made off with her laptop, and left some dirty dishes in her loft. . . that is traumatic. Robbery is the most rare kind of crime in San Francisco, and nobody knows what that feels like ...

Recently did I have the most fascinating conversation with someone at SFO during a flight back there for the Hacker Fair 0. She had just arrived. I was leaving. Arriving about three hours before my flight was scheduled to board, I chose to linger outside the security checkpoint, at a place with edamame and a beverage to kill the time. As someone who made up her mind to study Anthropology (and inadvertently Sociology) when she was a mere Freshman in University, I truly believe it. Perspective differs radically between narrow-minded city people (who have never lived in anything but city) and rural folks (who have never lived in anything but small town). In small communities, everybody knows everybody else. The pace is slow, and people linger to make small talk; family and community are more important than personal "fame" or status. There's not any particular hurry or need to get anywhere particularly, or to gather a bunch of fans or "followers". Conversely, almost...

I will never forget the first time we stepped out of the cool, air-conditioned airport and into that heady and muggy summer noonday: Miami, Florida. It seems like a lifetime ago. Even the lens here gets a bit thick. I'd never experienced a sauna, and it was not until later in life that I was able to grasp and wrap my mind around this most perfect analogy: stepping out of the airport and into Miami for the first time was like literally walking into a sauna. Of course, at the time, my 9-year old body had never experienced such an assault. Accustomed to the dry, desiccating heat and alpine altitudes of the rockies and Northwest, it just didn't know what to make of this sudden sea-level elevation and humidity. My body did the only thing it knew how to do: attach an extremely vivid association to the moment. When first learning that we were moving to Florida, I remember thinking that I didn't know what to think. I pictured a literal jungle: a thick, dense jungle of overgrown vin...

Third grade. By this time, my family had grown; instead of two little brothers, I now had three. Benjamin was born in the same fashion as we all had been: on the floor of a house. Again had my mother given birth with no midwives and no doctors and no pain medications. I was getting older, barely beginning to comprehend the huge responsibilities of being the big sister. In late March of that year, school had just been let out for a long Easter weekend. For some reason or another, I was never one to run straight home from school. Often did I linger, staying afterward with my good friend Angela; we'd hang out with our teachers and stack chairs on desks or bang erasers on the sidewalks, making little white and pink geometric designs on the concrete. We were almost never in a hurry to get home. Although we rarely had homework, I always wanted to bring home my science book, to have something interesting to read over the weekend. Angela and I had a lot in common; our parents were of the s...

In 1986, Hurricane, Utah was a smaller, quieter version of the community it is today. On the outer fringes of Zion National Park, it was also giving birth to what is now Chums International. My family rented a two-bedroom house on Main Street. By this time, my mother was with child again. Main Street was, of course, one of the main attractions in this dry, dusty community. Along with Main Street, attractions also included a grocery store, a drug store, the state liquor store, a hardware store, a drive-in theater, a burger joint, an elementary school, a middle and high school. Most of the allure of the city was indeed its proximity to Zion National Park, and its nearness to canyon desert trails and wild. First through third grades were spent here, and if I were to sum up my memory of this time of life, it would be in a word: "Wild." This would not be not the "wild" associated with rebellious teenagers, but the wild borne from lack of discipline early on in life. As t...

  It is either the scent of a memory, or the memory of a scent that I associate with that charred, black rubble. The December sky was always gray, and it was so odd to be standing in what used to be our cozy, dark living room underneath that gray sky. Inside outside. The outside all burned up, some of the inside left, if singed, around the edges. We poked among the snow-dusted rubble. Any salvageable item would be carefully plucked from the charred black, placed in a pile. The scent of the memory was heady, almost sticky. Every salvageable item we'd find would have this cloying scent, the scent of a fireplace, almost sweet. The most impressionable image burned into my five-year old mind: the melted gaping maw of the glass and plastic television. We moved across town, where I had to start finishing Kindergarten, attending a new school. We made new friends -- they lived in the apartment by ours, and some of the ornaments were re-done. My memories of the days and months that followed ...