wetware

change is the results.

change is usually something we become aware of gradually, something that is happening below our active level of perception. a shift in point-of-view, in focus, and suddenly we notice that things aren't quite the same as they were before.

sometimes change is dramatic: climactic, conspicuous, glaring and gross.

sometimes it is intentional.

dan bell traded photo-favors with a tourist (he clicked them, they clicked us) on the grounds of the bishop museum last winter. i weighed two-hundred and twenty pounds. before boarding the plane to return to hawaii on the thirtieth of july, i was one hundred and eighty three, and today i weigh almost the same as i did in 1976: 168 lbs. anyone who has carried fifty pounds around for a few years - and then laid that burden down - knows it isn't easy.

we know ourselves in ways that wiser folk forsook as folly.

we do not envy, anymore.

i've been pounding the pavement in honolulu chasing work and when i pass a sheet of storefront glass i am alarmed by my reflection. i am growing familiar with the conversion but it's like waking into a former life with the memory of frailty and some of the expectations that provoked the creation of all that insulation. sometimes, mid-stride, it feels as if i am naked on the sidewalk. i shake my head, i smile at myself. "it'll be ok," i say.

and, "damned if i don't look good!"

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Tuesday, September 24, 2002