anted, looking ready for Spring. There's that loose cobble stone that's been there forever, that wobbles and makes a hollow sound if I ride my scooter over it.
I wasn't being practical today. I walked along my old path, knowing I would not be able to cross where I always crossed. I didn't forge new paths to the north to see if I could find a better commute to ease the bother it has been. I didn't even ride my scooter; I carried it and just walked, inevitably closer to the point where it would suddenly stop being all the same and familiar.
I even lost my orientation for a moment in what should have been the familiar: a restaurant on the corner of this building -- wasn't that an expensive knick-knack store? They've rebuilt that fast? But no, I was at the wrong corner -- I was confusing it with the next corner -- this had always been a restaurant, only it was normally unapproachable for all the people there.
My corner knick-knack store is no longer there, everything all boarded up. The entrance to the upscale apartment complex around the corner no longer has its pain-in-the-butt non-flush-to-the-rest of the sidewalk mini marble plaza -- the square on the walkway is now just black asphalt in the middle of the cobblestones. The dead-end turn-around traffic-circle in front of this entrance is just as busy with deliveries as it ever was, only now it's not a truck full of Snapple beverages or exercise equipment outfitting a new gym: now it's bars of steel and other non-finished, raw materials, disappearing into the boarded off areas through entrances of clear plastic and duct-tape.
And 'round the corner to Liberty Street and what should be a full view again of the giant skyscrapers and the busy Westside Highway and pedestrians trying to cross and eternal construction of the new bikepaths and greenway.
Of course, I can't really get to the corner, it's all cordoned off, I can't even approach on the side of the sidewalk I used to use. And yet it could all still pass for normal, because of course normal is that things do change somewhat everyday, and this all really does seem so familiar after all, until, crossing Liberty, through the gaps in the plywood and trucks, you suddenly see..
"Holy shit..."
NOT what your brain had filled in as supposed to being there, but a big huge SPACE, and a big huge HOLE, and cranes and rubble, and a clear view across that shouldn't be there, and what should be, missing.
And the scarred buildings remaining. The gutted out, boarded up, wounded looking perimeter, sentinels around the new vast open space.
I knew it was there. I've been staring in at it daily for six months now from the other side. But this was from somewhere I haven't been in six months, yet had been daily for a year and a half before that. A place that had changed, yet hadn't changed, right down to the loose cobblestone, and suddenly was very, very different. In my mind, though, it has always been the same -- and why shouldn't it be, the pragmatic brain, natively wielding the razor of Occam, asks? Extraordinary hypotheses require extraordinary evidence. I won't believe it till I see it.
I still don't believe it. A year and half's worth of daily exposure isn't that easily dislodged, especially in today's world of special effects. Hell, I even have what it's supposed to look like on video. On video! Video doesn't lie!
And since I can't go my normal way, I go around in a long detour on new streets I don't know. And new streets don't have built-in notions of what they're supposed to look like. And since I walk new streets, my mind can guard my old streets as eternally there, unchanged, same as they've ever been.
March 30, 2001
[trumpet fanfare]: Fernanda and I got married! Links to the wedding on the main page. Trip to Brasil followed (still hating those two-weeks-per-year vacations...).
2001, a Space Odyssey
And life continued, 9 to 5. The interactive web development company mercifully was released from its year-old merger with the advertising firm, and is now without a doubt the best job I've ever held, even if the company is struggling. To think I get paid for this...
Space, 1999
OK, so what happened then is that I stayed busy working at Drexel ELC, training the replacement for the position I was doing interim, taking on more and more computer work, trying to unobtrusively update the web site, and actually hanging out with people and having fun and ups and downs and boy's night "smut nights" that weren't, and so the rest of the year slipped by without me doing anymore updates here. Read some of what I was up to
here
.
Along the way we moved out of the ghetto of West Philadelphia to a more civilized place along Benjamin Franklin Parkway by the art museum. Definitely worth doubling our rent for the sake of sanity!
Fernanda graduated in December, and we moved to northern Jersey in the beginning of 2000 when she took a job with Syncsort. I sent out an email telling people of my new address and phone number, and without even trying, got a job with my old college friend and suitemate in lower Manhatten, a block and a half away from the World Trade Center, at his interactive web development company. So now I was a professional web developer. My first ever real "9 to 5" job, I joined the commuting masses. And life went on. We quickly discovered that despite our combined now unimagineably great income, we could not afford to buy any sort of house higher in grade than "outhouse" in northern Jersey, so we continue to rent our "short-term" apartment. In September we travelled to Austria and Germany as Fernanda had to leave the country to get her work visa at an American Conulate outside the US. Two-week-a-year vacations suck...
April, 1999
We went up to Boston for Lauri's 30th birthday; first we drove up to Jeff's, then on to Boston the next day en masse.
March, 1999
Can't talk -- working...
February, 1999
The psychohistoric equations must show that this is a Cusp Time; a Seldon Crisis when suddenly everything happens at once. I got promoted today to take on my boss' position for the interim period until a formal search finds a permanent replacement. Meanwhile, the help desk position job that I had already written off suddenly turns out to be still on, and I'm "one of the stronger candidates". Not only do Fernanda and I finally get out and go to a party of some Brasilians on Thursday, but on Saturday our Danish friends call to finally get together on Sunday after like 4 months of meaning to. I get mail from Germany from people who've seen my online resume and are interested in me, as well as email from others about more or less the same. Tax refunds give me back more than was withheld, and I have more reading material than I could get through in a month of Saturdays (well, maybe just enough). When it rains, it pours!
January, 1999
We got furniture! A couch, and a table! Our living room looks cool! Now we just need people to come and visit...
December, 1998
They took away the cgi stuff I was using!! No more text counters, but more importantly, I can't embed my finger information in my page anymore! I can't have my web page say whether I'm logged into my e-mail account or not anymore! It was so nice and I was so pleased with it, and now it's gone!
December, 1998
Looka-me! I'm a tree! (At Longwood Gardens)
November, 1998
So, we're driving along I95 at night, going to a movie. The battery light is on, and before you know it, Sptt-thpbtt! ffffttt... The engine dies. So here we are, on the side of I95, dim lights, cars wizzing by at hundred miles an hour. We have no phone, there are no phones on the highway, yay. A friendly neighborhood tow-truck guy on his way home sees us, stops, and so we get towed to his garage. He takes us to the train station, we finally get home around 11, still not having managed to get to the movies. The next day, I take my bicycle, get on the train, ride out to where the guy left us off the day before (a one platform station, and me all the way in the back of the train... I had to jump down onto the tracks, with the conductor handing me my bike...) So off I ride down "Street Road" to get to the garage, and the road is so
crappy
my bike starts to disintigrate. First my rear light falls off (
OK, gotta get there before dark
), then I ride along a bit, and POW!, something breaks, hard. Turns out it's my rear tire gone flat, and me still miles away from the garage. Would have been better off without the bike at this point, just walking the whole distance... Fortunately, after a mile or so, a nice guy saw my plight, and drove me the rest of the way. Got the car,