Full moon roller coaster ride at the edge of the pacific.
Marsha says its a sturgeon moon, by native american folklore, but I don't know if any sturgeon are left anywhere so I'll stick with my own nomenclature. But I'm liking the white man's roller coaster, even the lines. The lines are my favorite parts, the panoply of people, there's probably more people in line for the roller coaster at the boardwalk in Santa Cruz than live in my whole hometown. And they're all different colored. I like that. I like variety. I like ups and downs. In them I feel life like a sine wave. I've always liked Santa Cruz. At the top of the Big Dipper on tuesday night, it definitely felt like an upper side of the wave. A sweet moment of exhiliaration and beauty. I should try and describe the big dipper... it is my duty to this ancient (85 years old) and wooden edifice of terror to young'uns to describe it's very essence in it's creaking wooden joints, it's drop into darkness to begin the ride, twisting and banging down deep in the bowels of the underworld, only to climb, climb, climb toward the light.- which on tuesday night was the full moon rising over Monterey Bay, a clear and broad path of silver pointing to the moon, no finger needed, solitary boats in the harbor as dark specks, rocking triangles each alone the bay. So distant. So much to think about as the chain of cars nears the clanking top. I can remember clearly my first time, I was 12 or so. I wanted off. I was so terrified, I just wanted off. Something about the slow creep up that steep incline, knowing the horrible drop on the other side... if I could have climbed out of that thing, I would've. True, it has held together so far, but there is nothing in its ancient engineering to inspire much confidence in modern sue-happy man. Now, many years later with my own teenage daughters in front of me, my wife (reluctantly) beside me, I don't want off. I want on. I want to keep riding this sweet up and down experience, this wave of existence. It is a good thing. The roller coaster has so much more value, simply being at the edge of an ocean. It's like I'm gulping great draughts of the sea, the sea and the moon and the beauty of the world filling me in waves while happy couples meander the bright lights and cotton candy world. All in big up and down swoops... But for some reason, what I think about as I'm on this roller coaster ride, is value free metaphysics, and whether that term could be applied to the moq, if properly manipulated. It'd take some finagling, I think. But why not? What if value was just another word for differentiation? In that case, we're back to socially applied values over a values-free chaos. Which doesn't make sense but it makes people happy so why not. And you wanna know something really weird? The low quality of the idea detracted just a bit from my roller coaster ride. Not a lot. But a bit. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
