JasonUnbound

And into the ocean

Sunset, as seen from our living room, about ten minutes ago. At the end of another sunny, sixty degree day in Berkeley.

It's so,so good to be here.

A colorful classification scheme

Adobe Bookshop, in SF's Misson District, has allowed artist Chris Cobb to re-classify their 20,000 used books...by color! The installation will remain until December 10. The books were tagged before their beautiful re-ordering, and will be returned to previous locations by the artist and a team of volunteers. Heather Champ has pictures of the spectrum of spines.

Jasontard loses his voice

I had a blazin' good time at the Sol System party last night, but trying to talk too much in a very loud setting has cost me dearly: I have completely lost my voice. I should've just shut up and danced more.

Watching the dawn come with my new voicelessness was poignant, but now I've spent the entire day issuing nothing more than whispers. I gave a massage today with only whispers, detoxed at yoga with only whispers, and tried answering the phone with only whispers. I have a job interview in 36 hours, and I really hope I have more than whispers by then.

Firefox: ready for prime time

Information Week calls Firefox 1.0 "a truly great Web browser." Read their comprehensive review, and then go download Firefox from Mozilla.

And when you first fire it up, you can even choose to import your IE settings, including stored passwords and cookies. Worked like a charm for me....

Jet-set Jiwon

Jiwon's coming home today! And I'm already home! So we'll both be home together!

And in one of those delightful outcomes of flying with the rotation of the earth and crossing the international date line, Jiwon departs Seoul at 6:25pm today, and arrives in San Francisco at 11:45am today.

She gets to live the afternoon of 11/16/04 twice.

Weekend summary

Where've I been? I'll tell ya:

Friday I took my Dad & Maxene to Point Reyes. We went all the way out to the dramatic lighthouse, the windiest spot on the Pacific coast. It had that end of the earth feeling you get when you're . . . at the end of the earth.

Friday night I went dancing: The Space Cowboys were taking over 1015 for the night, so while I've never been interested in the club scene, if the largest club in San Francisco is going to be full of Burners, why not check it out? I arrived around midnight, was found on the guest list (oddly alphabetized by first name), and stepped through the portal. Inside was so big, so loud, and so highly charged that I almost couldn't bear it at first. Once acclimated to the reality of 1015's expansive 16,000 sq. ft. universe, I was soon really enjoying myself. I found Amy & Jay, and a surprising number of other friends scattered about as I sampled the various rooms under 1015's roof, each with its distinct sound and lightscape. Very stimulating!

I did a fair amount of hooping upstairs, where it wasn't too too crowded, but the main room was just packed, except for the stage. Someone was hooping on that stage for a while, and when she dropped it and left, I jumped up and took over. I didn't even think about it, really. I was just grooving on the whole scene, hooping it up and enjoying the space on stage. Only later did I realize how out of character that was for me, to subject myself to that kind of attention. But it obviously felt right at the time. And I think I knew that no one really cared anyway. It's not like I was one of the bump-n-grinders on the adjacent go-go platforms. (Fun fact: Philo used to be a 1015 Go-Go boy, in cowboy boots and a G-string. Yee-ha!)

Saturday I was pretty fried from the night before, so my Dad drove, and we went to Napa Valley, toured and tasted at Sterling Vineyards, and hiked in a state park. Quite lovely.

Sunday morning Dad & Maxene took off by car. Next stop: Vegas, then Austin to see my brother. I went hooping at Cellspace. We'll be there most Sundays throughout the winter months. It's a great space. You should join us.

In the evening, my dear friend Josie had a housewarming at her new place in Noe Valley. Hurray, Josie's here! In September, she finished her PhD in public health at Harvard, and I lobbied hard for her to move to San Francisco. The pieces fell into place, and she's now an analyst doing HIV education and prevention work at UCSF. Again, Hurray!

My Dad the romantic

My Dad & his girlfriend fiancee Maxene are here visiting. He proposed to her night before last, over dinner at Raphael...with Jiwon & I looking on! I helped him set it up. It was dramatic, she was surprised, it was great. Jiwon flew to Seoul yesterday, so now it's just the three of us.

Tonight we went to see a play put on by Berkeley's Central Works Theatre Ensemble. Four actors in a small room, with a 26 member audience seated around them. It was very intimate and daring theater, and quite an experience to have the actors right in front of you.

Tomorrow's plan: Redwoods and wineries.

The terrible drip

Today's yucky sensation: Being in rabbit pose — gripping my heels and really letting it rip — and having sweat from my yoga shorts drip straight up my nose. Worse still, I could see it coming, but there was just nothing I could do.

After missing more than two weeks of yoga for massage school, I've definitely lost some ground. It's good to be back at it.

Filling out forms, standing in line

What channel would you think the television in the waiting area at the INS processing center in Oakland is set to?

Answer: ESPN. (Welcome to America! Watch some sports!) The volume was off and closed captioning on, running way too fast for most immigrants to read. Not that football commentary makes any sense anyway.

Jason's advice of the day: If you have a green card, try not to lose it. And if you have foreign travel coming up in your itinerary, really try not to lose it. Oy.

CMP

My Advanced Therapeutic Massage class ended yesterday, with a bang. My final exam was to give a 90 minute side-lying massage, including myofascial releases, joint mobilizations, and PNFs (proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitations), in addition to the techniques learned the previous week. And when it was all done, I became a Certified Massage Practitioner, with 100 hours of coursework under my belt.

In the past two weeks, I've given and received a lot of bodywork. But to my surprise, the part of me that got worked on the most was my heart. Our teacher Carlisle spoke often of the importance, as a healer, of 'holding space' for our clients, a safe space for release, for letting go, for opening. And she modeled holding space by creating it for her students, in the dome where we learned and laughed and slept and worked on each other day after day. And we opened. We opened through words every morning when we sat in a circle and shared, and we opened through touch as we gave and received.

A massage school--and perhaps one affiliated with Harbin in particluar--doesn't attract your average person, so my fellow students were already oozing more love and compassion than most groups of ten people. But from that starting point, add to it the intensity and close proximity of our time together, and the space so beautifully held for us, plus a pinch of magic, and you get what we got: yesterday's closing circle, standing with arms around each other, under the center of the dome, taking turns sharing what we were grateful for. I looked around the circle of people holding each other up, and Tim, Monica, Anthony, Shankari, Jeffro, Sarah, Allyoop, Kelly, Donnalisa, Carlisle and myself were all so exquisitely present, and as we all positively beamed at one another, many eyes filled with tears, I had just a huge heart-opening experience.

And when we were done, and we'd said our goodbyes, and I'd taken one last soak in the springs, I got in my car and started to drive. I'd barely left the property when the energy of that closing circle came back to me, and I burst into tears. I was following Sarah's car, and she was leading me to the road to get to 101. And I was crying these tears of joy and it felt so good, and I had my left hand on the wheel, and my right hand on my heart -- and I swear I had the overwhelming sensation that my heart was GUSHING, that a limitless supply of love was pouring out between my fingers.

Time came that I felt I couldn't safely drive anymore. I flashed my headlights at Sarah, put on my turn signal. We pulled over, and I found her in the same condition I was in. We sat there at the side of the road for an hour, decompressing, and reveling in it.

I then drove straight to San Francisco, and arrived at the Railroad Earth show, already in progress. I was out of the bubble, but as a reintroduction to the real world, it was a soft and joyous landing.