song of the day: crucify / tori amos
word of the day: verbicide / destroying the meaning of a word

where was i? yeah, so i got back from the Genpo Roshi retreat and my wife and daughter had the stomach flu of some kind. the kind where you throw up a lot. then i got it. wow, you forget what it's like to be that helpless and vulnerable. i actually quite appreciated the experience of being utterly stripped of airs- doubled over, naked on the grass beside my studio, wretching over and over with nothing left to vomit but the bile of my own stomach excretions. i burst a blood vessel in my eye, which was extra pathetic for anyone who caught site of me. i looked like i'd been gang raped by demons. i lost about 8 pounds, which appealed to the bulemic in me. when all this initially set in, i thought i could perhaps beat it by laying very, very still. i thought i could out-still the ill. but the Puke Arrow goes one way, and although, just like in physics, it's theoretically possible for a spilled substance to reconstitute itself spontaneously-and so it's possible to "get paste the intense nausea"- in fact, it only resolves itself one way, and that's a volcanic expression of your recent history. my daughter's reaction to me throwing up was quite funny, she would just get this quizzacle look on her face like "what's that?" and stare. an 11 month old scientest, just gathering data. whenever she would throw up, it seemed to catch her off guard, and she'd get a surprised look on her face like "what the...??". my wife is probably the best thrower-upper of the three of us, she's the most dignified and self-possessed of us when it comes to bearing such things. i, on the other hand, start moaning the moment i get sick, and i modulate through about half a dozen moaning-modes, experimenting with different pitches, tempos, lengths, phonetic shapes, always searching for the one that will elicit the greatest pity from my audience. moaning must have been the precursor to chanting. whoever moaned first, they almost had it. but the vibe wasn't quite there. then they put moaning and humping together. closer. then moaning + shitting. closer. then, moaning + illness + screwing + defecation...bulls-eye. they put it in 4/4 and voila'. later they added some local mushrooms and a drums and gave birth to the rave.