Evan is now 8 and a half months old and I have had little time to write about the experience of fatherhood. I take what little downtime I find to pursue other interests which have been crowded out by this little visitor from inner space.
I have wanted to document certain activities or actions, what i am calling phases, that he exhibits which strike me unusual or remarkable. They may just be the usual steps of growth ina baby, but strike me as unique, which every parent sees in their baby's first actions I'm sure. The first one, I may have mentioned, is the great use of his tongue as a kind of weathervane. He has had his tongue out since the beginning and seems to use it to feel the air. His smile with tongue has encouraged me to smile with a bit of tongue also. I am learning from his habits probably more than he learns from me. The second phase or odd habit of Evan is what I used to call Pre-kaboo, because it is similar to peekaboo but came ahead of the call-and-response actions of peekaboo. When lying down, Evan will grab a towel or "burp cloth" and throw it over his face, covering his eyes. He then begins kicking and flailing a little, seeming to be in a kind of euphoric state brought on by the absence of defining vision. Pretty fascinating. This started at about 3 months and continues. The third phase is less pleasant for Evan because it is his response to teething, with which he has had some pain since he was 4 or 5 months old. (Drooling is another indicator of teething pain.) His response I've called Pile Driving, as he takes one hand or an object held close to his mouth and then uses the other hand to beat the first hand or thing into his face. Seems to lessen the focus of the pain for him. Weird but real stories from the the trenches of BabyLand.
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Yikes, Babyland trenches. Good on you. I found this blogpile doing a search on Kip Chinian and began to rummage through it.
I've tried to keep track of you as we were, in moments, friends. It was interesting to see my absence in so many accounts of things WMFO and I get the sense the allusion and sensitivity to conflict that runs through many of the web traces you leave left me on the enemy side of some half forgotten conflict.
It was a strange environment with class conscious underpinnings over a brittle attempt to embrace the bums as long as they weren't too inconvenient.
I see you have one blog on carlessness. God I never have and never will own one and have piles of links to the carless outlook.
It is interesting to see the contrast in our approaches. You eschew links which actually are endorsements of things one holds dear and they enhance utility.
http://baystatements.blogspot.com/ is my catch all thing mainly political but other stuff. Filmers Almanac has been linked in it for a year.
http://brilliantcornersabostonjazzblog.blogspot.com/
is a music blog mainly for jazz but other idioms as well. It seems to have an international readership albeit small but someone from Italy just mailed me about some thing today.
I'm about to design another that is a sustainability/ecotech prototype for a dynamic site I'll be building down the road as a cohesion tool for the growing scene.
It is funny to see the contrast in our approaches. I'm utterly transparent, my e mail is included in profile and political blog is crosslinked all over the netroots so anyone who wants can find me and quarrel if they wish.And comments are allowed in all with minimal fuss
Yours are very opaque as if you have things to get off your chest but can't bear intrusions from the grubby world.
If it's any comfort, most of the grubby world doesn't give a shit about the arcana that intrigues us so you were never at much risk.
http://www.myspace.com/brooklinetaichi is yet a third url that brings you to Hahn Rowe. I had to set up a myspace for a concert series I did in boston that moved on. You could really have fun with this one as Albert Marcoeur and Etron Fou are among the many friends, Hector Zazou too.
I sometimes communicate with Charles Hayward and actually cheered up his bassist Trefor Goronwy from Camberwell.
I know myspace is owned by rupert murdoch but it is a subversive corner of his holdings where I have 600 musician and support friends all over the planet from a Tokyo Samba singer to a Pat Benatar Clone in Hungary.
I bring tidings of old tufts friends as well. Anna Stahl left America for good and moved to Argentina, probably with help from Claudia. She is a well regarded latin american writer from Buenos Aires and had a very successful book in literary circles.
Sweet Monica owns the best bakery in New York City http://www.grandaisybakery.com/index.html
Bloom is well but seared by tragedy as his second wife died. I saw him several months ago.
I last saw you in Seattle I guess. I read your dads obituary.
It's funny, WMFO became the basis of all useful work I ever did as a grant writer and advocate and I've been writing a CV lately because a bunch of people want to pay me for advice but I have to lay out the years of work. I actually had to research what years I worked with Globe Unity where you annoyed Alan Silva in a very funny and charming way when he whined about the bass we got him. "But you're an improviser".
I had to look up the year of the Ornette and Butch projects. I made peace with Butch who misses me. Ornette is now big time but we chatted on the phone six months ago, funny old guy.
SO Owen, we were dear friends once but the trail you have on the web suggests a thin skinned sensitive person who broods on real or imagined slights as evidenced by your own words in your many bits of web spoor whether at the radio stations in California, your various blogs and so on.
My god the world has generally been your oyster compared with my hard labor lot. I helped Jake gut and rebuild his vashon farmhouse and spent a year there but there was odd cruelty to manage where I got to be belittled over my building trades knowledge while doing all the ugly stuff.
Jake is funny. He gives away the farm when drunk in some maudlin way but takes it all back when sober. This gets confusing and I eventually grew weary of the game.
If we had a conflict that still wounds you decades after, it boiled down to this. You would encourage nihilistic doofuses like Tim to wreck rare and valuable community stuff that I busted my ass to get as if Tufts property was fair game.
If you really believed in mashing up rare recordings in 'forced skip' experiments, you would have handed Tim your own rare and valuable stuff to wreck but is clear from your detailed worried account of LP degradation in your own blogs that this would never happen.
I'm sorry old buddy but this is a very cavalier outlook.
I'm thinking that this thin skin is just an impediment. You were always at your best when you transcended the trust fund imposition and became the happy lilting Irishman transposed to Ammerikay.
We deal with conflict differently. I suspect. I negotiate and work things out and handle gray areas. You seem to have an all or nothing approach that doesn't work well with human fallibility.
That aside, you are basically a wonderful and kindly human and you disfigure yourself by overreacting to petty shit.
You can do no good for me, ever and I am several thousand miles from you now having fun and advocating for hapless gifted types.
As you brood and agonize over ancient stuff, I groove and build things. One day your own magnificence will dawn on you and you will stop brooding.
Prosper and thrive
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