You probably didn't see the petroglyph pictures, since I posted them real late last night. As I emerged from Olowalu Valley, walking through recently-defunct sugarcane fields--Pioneer Sugar Mill has closed its operations in West Maui for good, another weblog story for sometime else--the images of humans and canoes began etching themselves permanently in my brain, as if there were some chemical fixative in it, such as the emulsions used in old-style photographic processes. I tried to imagine what it must have been like for those Hawaiian artists several hundreds of years ago, trying tell some kind of story in as permanent a way as they could imagine. Something beyond the oral narratives they passed down from generation to generation. The stories on the Olowalu cliff walls are cryptic, however, not yielding their meanings even to the anthropology experts at the University of Hawaii. So in a way, perhaps it was a failure of the ancient Hawaiians' imagination, as what they meant to tell now seems lost. But it was definitely not a failure of the spirit. For I can't imagine how one can't but feel moved by a certain essence in the presence of these petroglyphs, some ghostly remnant of something... not a voice, nor a touch, but the feeling of a story chiseled onto stone and lava rock, that still possesses a power to sway and to topple time from its lofty perch. Someone tried to tell something to the future, once long ago... and we are listening, but now with alien ears possessed of puny power to interpret and hear.

Maybe so, maybe so. But does this stop us from telling the stories? Certainly not; like it didn't stop them who journeyed into Olowalu Valley searching for just the right combination of smooth rock and cliffwall, high enough so that the waters of the nearby stream when engorged--as happened from time to time--would not reach it and cause the stories to be erased from lavarock and memory.

And so it comes to pass that lately, these are the weblog stories that have caused me to think, and to marvel, that I hereby chisel here for all time, in digiglyphs of sheep, a bus, Chinese characters, and crows:

• Candace's picture gallery -- Habitat -- of her school, Durham University. The images are cool, the text even more so, hereby reprised sans permit ;-)
  

  On the corner lived the Howlands sheep. During the day, these were docile, friendly creatures, putting all their efforts into eating the grass. But at night, they became translucent floating beings from another dimension.

• Kati ... on frustrations
• Devin ... also on frustrations
• Kass ... on setting trends at her school
• Maciej ... continuing his immigrant's story
• Yoshiko-san ... a new bus story

• Bigi's ... extraordinary weblog on parents and family
• ... which was in response to Jeremiah's

• Spark's ... weblog redesign (What is "JD"?)
• Cole's ... weblog redesign (What are those Chinese letters?)
• Kass' ... report on her Chorissima concert in Marin
• Alejo ... on why commercialization is bad
• Jason ... on choosing a topic for his Stanford app essay
• Sam ... on a hangover, and the examined life ;-)
• Candace's ... unintentional sermon on det achme nt

• Laura's ... Miami pictures, a dream, and a murder of crows, hereby reprised, also without permission. ;-)
  

  When I opened my eyes: a murder of crows outside my panels of living-room windows, swooping in from all sides in a spectacular demonstration of the three dimensions.

Finally, if anyone lost their marbles recently, here's where to find them... or, at least, replacements. ^_^ "Goodnight, world..." as Kass is wont to say.

sometime in the morning...

Hey, I just got an e-mail from my dear friend Jane in Berkeley, notifying me that the Wall Street Journal article she was interviewed for about a month and a half ago finally came out. It's a special report on e-commerce, focusing on wireless technology. Here it is, reprised on my G4 server at ATDP. (I had to sign up for the WSJ's free 30-day account, as the original page was only for subscribers -- so I just copied the relevant text and some images, and put it on my website to spare you the hassle of signing up for WSJ). I particularly like the part about the "ritual waving" of her wireless device, as if it was some kind of magic wand:

Back on the BART train, Ms. Po has one last shot to connect to Amazon before the train ducks into a tunnel under San Francisco Bay. Her train cruises along a final stretch of open track, sun shining into the car as the San Francisco skyline comes into view. Ms. Po repeats the earlier ritual of waving her OmniSky device around. The device tries to connect to Amazon. She waits. And waits. And waits.

"Nope," she says. Her train disappears underground.

"I knew this was going to happen," Ms. Po says, putting her Palm and OmniSky away in her bag. "That's m-commerce for you."

{ net.casting }
^