"Assessment Again"
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
May 13th, 2012, 1:18 p.m. pdt (begin)
May 14th, 2012, 6:42 a.m. pdt (conclude)

 
The longer we inhabit our world
The more hours, days, years clocked into our personal odometer
The shorter our attention span
The leaner our understanding
The more we make attempts to catch up
The horizon just keeps receding in the distance

Memories so ancient
Purpose so isolated
Advice and lessons remorph into questions and mistakes
As years creep unheeded into calendar existence
Wisdom shines her lamp on the balding head of melancholy
And laughs because we're forgetting what advice wisdom brings
and only ask questions in return

We don't want to make any more stupid mistakes
Life wasn't going to be easy, we knew that
But at least something was supposed to get easier,
Wasn't it?

Moreso the questions disappear yet remain,
like an overused metaphor 
Elegaic diatribes, intelligent assessments
Simply txt on the touchscreen of life
I wish I could remember when I became disposable
Culturally inadequate
Unable to communicate
Choked to perfection
by a world I didn't create
and hardly understood

Did the inhabitants change?
Or just multiply till they ceased to make sense?
Did memory stay intact?
Or did it slightly slip into shallower waters
now evaporating

No wonder wisdom maintains that at some point
It's easier to close one's eyes and accept the inevitable
I've been pondering the end since the beginning
Typing the same thoughts into eternity
And reading those same thoughts
written by the scribes of lost memories past
penned as they too
approached the assessments of purposeless ponderings

The cycle certainly ceases in serentity
And on the other side of the door we'll perceive our perfection
As I will terminally write, and as those before me wrote so long ago
When their infinities stretched father than the horizon
and before the sun sank forever into metaphor's ocean

"The Cane But Touches the Cement"
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
1971 (18 years old)

Wrinkled old white-haired rumple-suited
Man standing on the streetcorner
Waiting for a bus.
His tie is tied wrong.
His glasses are crooked.
He's a streetlamp by the roadside
A blade of grass on a hill
A tree in the forest
A spectre
Yet he's alive
    And no one knows it.

Looking out at a world he's seen age.
Who knows what goes on in his head?
Where did his life go so quickly
For men to reason he's
    Just part of the scenery?

And he is -
Simply a hitching post
For eyes to rest on but a moment
Then fleetingly move to another subject.

The bus comes and he disappears forever.

Posted: May 14, 2012 6:45 AM

When I think of Xanga these days, it's more as a "place" where opinionated bloggers can enjoy a good row every other day or so. In the old days (ahem, 2005 or thereabouts) there were some really talented and individual bloggers in the Xangasphere. Some of us old timers have been around for eight or more years. (My 8th Xangaversary arrives come Memorial Day, about three weeks from right now. ) I'm not one of the real "old timers" who still "show up" or have been silently and methodically updating their Xangas with nary a comment since 2001! I still think of myself as a relative "newbie". "Xangalegend" was applied to me around 2007 or so, and I'm satisfied with the moniker, and use it often.

If anyone were to wonder why I don't post here on Xanga more often, I guess it would be because I really don't use the computer to display my work anymore, simply because most of my work is compiled already right here on the blog and on www.allthingsmike.com. New work STILL gets posted. I'll be posting more photos from Avalon/Catalina Island. There's a short story in the works. And the entry above contains a brand new poem I just wrote. When I do post "literature" and see no comments here, and compare literature with the kinds of "front page entries" which get lots of attention nowadays, then I (return to begin to) bemoan the state of Xanga today. (I'm still pretty literate too, even in my (young) old age!)

I will eventually, I guess, turn into one of those Xangans, who plug away at their blogs, if not regularly, then at least semi regularly, with the same brio and wherewithal as they have maintained over their history as Xangans.

And at some point, I'll possibly turn into the old man whose cane but touches the cement, boarding the last bus.

At least I know 15 or 20 folks I didn't "know" in real life will possibly remember me. Unlike the old man, my suit is rarely rumpled. But I look out at a world I've seen age, and sometimes it seems as if it hasn't aged well.  MFN/PPF 6:08pm

My "59th birthday vacation" was short but quite fulfilling. I've got to apologize, but you'll probably be seeing a LOT of island themed photoposts here on the blog over the next week. I shot over 1000 photos on just one of the two still cameras, and haven't even looked at the shots from the 2nd camera, or the video footage yet. Click below for a preview (if you must.) A full blown PhotoPost (the first themed to the iconic Catalina Casino) will be coming soon! (Thanks for all the birthday wishes, both here and on Facebook.)

First Album: Catalina Overview RIGHT HERE

Living in Southern California has some wonderful benefits, including temperate weather, rich blue skies, close proximity to both the ocean and the mountains, and a wealth of cultural diversity which makes for excellent restaurant choices. The young enjoy a vibrant club scene and although we haven't had an NFL franchise in a couple of decades, sports fans are usually happy with the choices available in a number of arenas. I understand the Dodgers opener was a lot more positive this year than last! 

I'm always apt to proclaim you've gotta take the bad with the good, and sometimes there are drawbacks to living here as well. High taxes, including an almost 10 percent sales tax for example. California pretty much leads the country when it comes to attempts to control greenhouse gases. As a child, I "clearly" remember when "smog alerts" were not only common. Sometimes we were advised to stay home from school the air quality was so bad. It's still not great in the urban areas, but there are more clear days when you can see downtown L.A. from three to five miles away than in my youth. Because of the restrictions on fuel refining, our gas prices are a tad higher than the rest of the country. (We also have a LOT of automobiles out here in SoCal, so much so that the freeways resemble more of a long parking lot than an expressway during what is ironically called "drive time".)  

Whenever there is a "gas crisis" (which for some reason it seems we've been experiencing off and on since 1973 or so, with the "latest" iteration coming in late 2008 with no end in sight.) prices at the pump can sometimes spell doom for the weekly budget, esp. when one is still living pretty much paycheck to paycheck. You'll find a lot of Priuses on the roads out here. They get an average of 50 mpg, or so one of my Prius owning friends tells me.

Last year I was forced to get alternate transportation, when the supposedly "routine" replacement parts on my 11 year old sports car started to drive my overloaded budget over the edge of reason and into uncharted territory. I read Consumer Reports. I looked all across the great internet for deals. I weighed in with the hybrid owners. I bought my "Mock Evo" (Mitsubishi Lancer ES with manual transmission and 4 cyl. internal combustion 2.0 liter, 148 hp Mivec (Mitsubishi’s Innovative Valve Timing Electronic Control) engine instead of a hybrid (I really wanted a Honda CR-Z) because prices are higher for hybrids, and further "down the road" one will need to replace the batteries which allow for the 50 mpg rating.

  The first car I ever owned with "cruise control" was the Eclipse in 1999. I only used it sporadically, ususally on trips to Vegas where driving can get pretty boring. Even though my new car has a manual transmission, it has cruise control as well, and a few weeks ago, I began using it regularly on my daily commute. The Mivec engine gets up to 33 mpg on the highway. I wanted to see how high I could go during my regular commute. My first few fillups (without cruise control) were averaging about 24 mpg. Where my last car got about 18-20 mpg on city streets, my Lancer is  now averaging 27-30 mpg on a mix of freeway and city streets. (And it has gotten almost 35mpg on the open road using cruise control). I'm filling up after driving 325 miles. I fill the 10 gallon (roughly 13 with reserve) tank about twice a month now. I'm driving about 15  miles a day on my commute, and with the money I'm saving on gas, I've been able to make a few "trips around town" on weekends as well. Just this morning I took a rather long trip up into the San Gabriel mountains, to Mt. Baldy, on a photo expedtion.

I "learned" to use my cruise control (CC) in this time, and now I hardly ever turn the system off. (I do understand why some cars have "acceleration problems" however. One's foot on the gas pedal isn't in charge when a computer is basically injecting gas into the cylinders for you.) I don't advise using cruise control as I have been doing if you're not a careful or alert driver. I've been driving for well over 40 years. I've driven everything from a motorcycle to a big rig. I'm pretty good at it, and I'm not afraid to "learn" something, like how to use cruise control to save money at the pump!

My cruise controls are on the steering wheel, so I don't have to fiddle around with "looking" for anything. There are raised areas (like the home key on a keyboard) on the "acc res" and  "coast set" buttons. I will admit not even knowing what these abbreviations stood for at first. I knew I could press the "acc res" when in CC to accelerate instead of using the gas pedal. I didn't really understand the use of this button for "resume". Or for that matter, how to use the "cancel" button to it's immediate left. Let me tell you what I've learned, and again, I want to warn you, DON'T substitute the CC for the regular foot pedals. And don't get lazy. It's pretty easy to do so when the car seems like it's driving itself. I also want to impress upon you that I got the manual transmission so I would feel more like I was in control. Using the manual, and using the CC when I can, has helped me to save gas, and enjoy my commute like never before.

Sometimes I just want to bypass the freeway exit to work and keep on going. This morning I had my first actual "longish trip" using the CC, and it was almost exciting seeing the computer display telling me how much farther my mpg were going on the open highway.

The first "leg" of my commute is about 2 miles on one street. The second is another 2 miles, then about 8 miles on the freeway, and I"m at work. It takes about 20 minutes. As soon as I accelerate to about 40mph and shift to fifth, I hit the "coast set" button, which locks in my speed. I drive to work at 5:30 in the morning, and even in SoCal there isn't much traffic at that hour, in fact there's hardly any until I get about a mile from the freeway, but I have been using the CC on the trip home too. If I'm approaching a stoplight, I hit the "cancel" button, which saves my locked in speed of 40mph. When the light is green, and I upshift back to fifth gear, I hit "acc res" which resumes my locked in speed of 40mph. If I have to slow down, I press "coast set" which unlocks the CC so my car slows down. If there is an emergency, or I need to stop, hitting the brakes or gunning the gas pedal overrides the CC altogether. On the freeway, I'm getting pretty good at maneuvering through traffic using just the CC.

My trip this morning, using three freeways, and traveling about 50 or so miles, allowed me to see 34.2 mpg. Even after I went up into the mountains. (I turned the CC completely off during my 2nd and 3rd gear slolam up to the 5000 foot marker at Mt. Baldy and going downhill as well. ) I found I was getting 27.7mpg.

There are more gas concious engines available in modern automobiles. And hybrid/electric cars are getting better as the manufacturers develop better batteries. However my little "Mock Evo" has a bit more power in it's engine that I wouldn't have found in a Yaris (106hp) or Corolla (132hp) or Fit (123hp). As you probably know, I like sports cars.

I'm just cruising through life with mine. And saving some money on gas while having fun at the same time.

See you on the highway!   

REQUIRED READING: Overview of the 2011 Mitsubishi Lancer ES