Smelling marijuana

   When I am home in San Francisco, I use my car daily, but when my wife and I go on vacation to another city, we always try to take the local mass transit system. This is a wonderful relief for me from driving, especially when I am not particularly familiar with the place I am visiting, as I am usually more nervous behind the wheel, making it harder to enjoy the place I am visiting. Another wonderful thing about taking buses and trains on vacation is that it enables me to see the place without having to concentrate on anything in particular, and to see it the way that the local people do, but with the fresh eyes of a visitor.
   So, there my wife Fernanda and I were, on one of the TriMet loop trains in Portland, Oregon (I can't remember if it was the A or B loop), and had recently gone over what I believe was the Broadway Bridge. We were passing the Oregon Convention Center, when we saw a sleek retail facade, which we quickly realized was some kind of marijuana business (it actually looked a bit like a contemporary high end clothing store). My wife and I marveled at its' very professional looking exterior (the medical marijuana dispensaries back home in San Francisco look to me from the outside to be engaged in something very illegal), and agreed that it would be fun to see what it was like inside. We remembered that our taxi driver from the airport had told us that a recreational marijuana bill had recently been passed locally, and decided to get off the train to check it out (we were equipped with an all day pass for the TriMet, curious minds, and were on vacation).
   As we approached the entrance, I was filled with nervous excitement; I very much enjoy new experiences, but also have intentionally not smoked marijuana for a very long time, and thought I might be tempting fate a bit. Anyway, we entered, and after having our names entered into the system by the nice people at the front of the place, were buzzed into the main room in the back, where we were welcomed by a very friendly, burly looking gentlemen. He proceeded to tell us about the contents of the store, as well as what was available for purchase and what we would need medical marijuana cards to buy. I had a lot of questions, and the man there was very informative and seemed happy to answer them.
   There was a lot of information on the labels of the different cylindrical glass jars, and he told me (with the help of a woman from the front desk that had come back to either assist, listen or monitor), what each strain was beneficial for, medically speaking (in my experience, all marijuana was good for basically one thing; getting high). Most of all, I was interested in who got to name the strains, as many had names that I found quite amusing, such as platinum animal cookies, Tyra Banks, and my personal favorite, headband (seen in the picture below). He told me that they were all named by the individual growers, and I was a little disappointed. I think that perhaps in the back of my mind I was hoping that I could perhaps be a person that names these strains for a living.
   Next, the burly gentleman asked if I would like to smell some of the strains (I could already get a kind of group smell just by being in the room), and I was amazed how unique some of them smelled. When he said for example, "this one smells like grapefruit", it really did, and when he said "this one smells like petrol", amazingly it did too. I found it quite remarkable, and I'm as sure as I can be that it was not his power of suggestion which made them smell as he said they would for me.
   As I slowly read and smelled a number of varieties, I came across a palm-sized burlap sack, and the man told me to sniff it (it was filled with whole coffee beans) before smelling each variety to clear my nostril palette, if that's the correct way to put it. He said that the judges at marijuana growing competitions do that. I certainly had never thought about the idea of such a thing existing!
   I remembered that when I used to buy and smoke marijuana that smelling it was the best way that I knew how to ascertain the quality and grade of the stuff; never did I think that smelling the substance could be so interesting in itself.
   Although we didn't buy any of the products, I did leave a nice tip to the worker who provided us with all of the friendly, useful information, and I felt like I had just been given the best marijuana experience I had in immediate memory, and my clear-headed state had allowed this to occur.

Smelled, not smoked

The very, very sad disappearance of music blogs

   Most of the music that I've discovered during the past five or six years I've done so through music blogs. I was going to say most of the new music I've discovered, but the reality is that almost none of the music is new at all. In fact, most of it is at least one generation or older, as well as being otherwise unavailable or extremely difficult to find for purchase in any form. Of course, I am aware that there is new music being released all the time, but I find so much of it to lack the soul of older music, due in part to modern production techniques, but also, I believe, because the artists who are making new music are writing during a time when the expectations of who will be listening to it are an audience of people raised on smartphones with, in my belief, less patience for imperfection and a differing view of what it means to be in the world than I have. I'm trying not to be bias in this idea, but we all generally respond to the eras when we are born, and I am very much a product of mine.
   I wish that this blog entry was written only to praise the writers and researchers who brought to my attention (and made available) so much of this music, but unfortunately it is being written as a kind of eulogy, because very few of these blogs exist anymore, and the ones that do don't make any of the music being written about available to hear. I find music to be most moving when I can listen to it.
   The reader who knows nothing of this subject might wonder why it is that such a wonderful service, one that helps people to broaden their musical horizons, maybe the ways that see the world, and share the discoveries they've made, would be written about in a sad memorial; and the answer is, unfortunately, because these blogs are all but dead.
   It seems that the music industry (and their trade association/watchdog, the Recording Industry Association of America), in an over reaching effort to combat file sharing, has put the lean on the blog sites that post this music, forcing them to fold under legal threats from this powerful group and their financial allies.  From what I can tell, the music industry is not really interested in music at all, because their laws and lawsuits against music sharing services have had the effect, planned or not, of making otherwise beautiful, forgotten or unknown unavailable music now completely unavailable and unknowable.
   When I think about how many wonderful and varied artists I first learned about by reading and downloading music from the numerous blogs of just a few years ago, it makes me sad that it will be that much harder to have these kind of consciousness expanding musical experiences going forward.
 

An aggregate of berries and ideas

   Sometimes writing is easier for me, other times, more difficult. This particular blog entry has been one of the more difficult ones, and so I begin again with a slate that has been cleared of written words, but a brain that is still full of ideas from previous attempts at this subject. Generally, the way I write about a particular subject is to form some ideas with words, fine tune them, and edit, which usually involves me removing a few words or a sentence here and there. For this entry, I have chosen to delete everything that I have written, as I had lost control of my ideas, and felt that I had to abandon ship.

   I have never thought of myself as a writer, and only began writing four years or so ago as a way to express some thoughts that I felt needed to be exercised from my brain's exclusivity, and my visual art background and interest did not seem to offer an avenue for them. Perhaps I just needed a change of form.

   As a visual artist, I had for years taken the approach of an assembler (putting visual elements together), and the act of writing has turned out to be exactly that for me, though I never knew that would be the case. I find it beautiful that words are so impermanent and so easy to change, as it allows me to be so free when I use them, and I can just add and remove them at will, and even reuse the same one again if I so choose. Together, they form sentences and hopefully, coherent thoughts that are true to what I want to convey. Often, I end up writing about something in a way that has seemingly taken shape only through the process of writing, devoid of what I was trying to elicit.

   I began this blog entry with the intent of writing about blackberries, learning through previous attempts that they are called an aggregate fruit, as a single berry is an aggregate of sixty to one hundred berries. The challenges that I have had in finishing this piece has fostered the idea of writing and blackberries as an aggregate subject, and I consider both to be special in their own way.

   Below is a picture that I took of a blackberry that I was soon going to eat, and marveled, as I usually do, at it's intricate structure. I eat a lot of blackberries, much more so than any other fruit, because they are low in sugar (which I have to be careful of, as my blood sugar tends to run a bit high), easily transportable, and often times very delicious. Each individual berry contributes to the cluster in a way that I cannot see what holds them together, and one of my finished blog pieces feels like a similar construction. Although blackberries have a short shelf life (even when refrigerated) which pushes me to buy them regularly and often, I still do what is necessary to keep me stocked up, because I feel like I'm taking care of myself when I do so. Writing feels the same way.