Megan worked yesterday with her father Jim Snell of Forward Edge Pathfinding, 19 NASCO shipbuilding managers, 1 gov't overseer (Dave), Steve (cage fighter for fun, aussie or uk), and Nikki. On the Navy base near the Pacific Fleet trolley stop. +$250, eventually, minus $5 fare.
The day before, Thursday, finished top-stitching quilt. Quilting threads and foot pocket remain to do. Walked to La Mesa to visit Scott Fraser (frasercycles.com?), and to see if two cracks in aluminum pack frame could be welded. He let me weld a bit of steel. I left a beet and $20.
I've got to asking people if I can pick their figs.
On the way, dropped off grandma's cans and plastic at RePlanet (+$6), got old frame backpack from thrift store (-$7, Kroc employee discount).
That thriftstore pack was ultraheavy (appearance and construction of torture device), but I took the bag, stripped all zippers, pockets, and fit it to my bare newly mended frame. Base weight of pack itself may now be close to two lbs. Down from five. Madly roughly sewed Thursday night by light of elastic headband-clipped single-LED WalMart booklight (to preserve the good effect of low light of getting me to sleep early) so could demo pack setup on trip to Navy base. Earlier had hacksawed off bottom bar of pack--may cut more still. Mod works, demo trip was helpful.
Who was I before I was an employee that day, and why m'I here now? "For even Hayduke sensed, when he faced the thing directly, that the total loner would go insane."
Lowgrade kemmer. Le Guin _LHOD_. PK Dick, _Castle_, novelist knows reader [some of them] has testicles and fear. Transvestite who was not. Gendered lenses. Heinlein's _Stranger_'s reverence of the difference. Vs. buddha, Thich Nhat Hanh ideals.
On to listening to librivox's reading of _Ulysses_, Joyce.
Working is so disruptive. Massively ambiguous. Well, here it was exacerbated by elements unique to Friday's program. And its post-post apocalyptic location, which has, even so, postive elements in the form of the group PT, physical training, of base residents.
Afterwards, stopped by Pt Loma on my $5 transit daypass, enforcing new smoking prohibitions at transit stops, to visit grandparents there, but did not stay the night, returning here by 1030pm.
Trolley ride, entranced by day of physical work in brightness, sat straight, still, watched mind watch gender. Undeclared or contrary gender features trapping attention most. One sat just in front, back to me, costume approximating woman, but style out of place (male trans?): brightred nonround darklensed glasses; white blouse, stiff, rumpled, wrinkles even to top of back; shoulder-length hair chemically frayed, beaten, bleached, with dark roots getting longer; three mismatched in size & type bracelets on right wrist: one thick, rainbow, bead; seven-jeweled long, not wide, ring on middle finger, and other rings too. Hand well knuckled, angular. Albino-ish hair, and hairy enough on back of arm. But starboard cheek, face, looking out window, too smooth.
What is the story here? Feeling around my gendered mindspace in trolley. She leaves at OLT, and by plump legs, rumpled short skirt, eventual friends she found: two no doubt males, Petco Park-/SDSU frat-ish, & another like her: she.
That was the ride to Point Loma. Point Loma to SDSU, two other women (with men) not made elsewhere as here, socal, sd. But not women as you, I or many-- others consider their complements/partners/companions in gender. "Gender" a spectrum/label/concept, I no longer list as male. Whatever it is.
More uber non-roadie (fixed, no helmet, courier, indie types) bike geeks than I've seen before. [Critical Mass day]
Yes employee-hood can be traumatizing. No one is telling me what to do. Generally I know, and how do I work with Lead Nikki, and her partner Steve, and Brent, company owner (by email). We must wait much this program, so I practice belly breathing.
Hmm. The second part of program, the straight belaying is straightforward.
[Employeehood may bring] A shift in being, from sensing self to sensing others- lead, coworkers client, and [which] even [happens with] Scott when working with him on welds and communicating, considering, giving exchange.
[The shift occurs] Primarily with unfamiliar people. And, though I may be putting this on everything, [involves] a kind of fear. Tho I believe I heard once that fear was a primary emotion/motivator/theme in many lives, and at the time wondered how, or when, I ever felt fear.
I may be more aware now, knowing non-fear from sitting, wilderness time, non-manicness, long times of non-employeehood and times of self-employeehood.
So,
how about a motivation map, sort of like I imagine a mind map to be.
Go to forest -> make light gear -> most recent non-paid focus.
But what's behind Go to forest?
no cars, machinery, amp sound. More beauty. Good people. Cleaner water, air. Limits on some of my self destructive habits- food, computer use. Limits requiring simple life. Challenge of living well without owning land? Time to spend with any I meet.
behind challenge course work: money and getting out of my shell and working with others sometimes in a very meaningful way. And I may someday learn to communicate with as much directness and clarity (no ambiguity except that intended) as Nikki, yesterday's lead.
but [what is your] deeper, larger vision, and why is some work so disruptive? The Challenge Course work is not always as I wish we lived.
I see the men and one woman, some with ravaged neglected bodies- doing boldly the contrived challenges. The catered lunch, Mil. Welfare & Rec (?), was mostly trash. Soda provided & drunk by some; food, fruit, & cans landfilled. Periods of breathing lighterfuel, sewage, lawn engine aerosol (minus sewage, features of non-employee out-of-forest near-apartment life too).
[Here considering unwished for effects of playing in writing. How mindful/right is this speech?]
The deeper challenge course constructing could be embedded in each one's postpostmodern life - as Jardine encourages us to sew for ourselves, so can we develop lives that [one cliché too many] our whole being, and are non-routine with constantly evolving future projects and self. Integral practice, ultimate blackbelt, preparing for adventures [and earthcare?]: concepts pointing that way.
I'm only guessing, but I may be approaching the Norte American Mount Kaliakos, or whatever the sacred Nepalese/ Burmese / Himalayan mountain that Satish Kumar visited and many others circumambulate repeatedly may be called.
In my del.icio links under PCT you could find the story that was on the front page of the LA Times on Weds, "the trail is his destination", about George Woodward (sp?)/ Billy Goat, who endlessly walks the PCT, CDT, AT, etc, now up to 32,000 miles. Age 69. Friendly on trail, walking, gruff when off and still.
That's it. I've mentioned and contemplated recent areas of focus.
With the pack renovations, and now a more thorough dry run of using what I would carry . . .
Will this be entirely a post-work day of nonprogress to the forest of no destination?
Peace,
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