California:

Low-slung.

Bleached-out.

So easy.

These items, appearing presently on the World Wide Web, bear notice (spoiler alert!):

• Atem.metameat's quotation of some good Thoreau, and Eggleston-esque vignette.
• A rather good faux-Chu.
• A splendid modern poem, incipit Like slipping jade in a red land, by one Susannah Mandel in Peter Parasol.
• A masterly Genesis, iambic, by Nigel Britton, also appears in Peter Parasol.
• The pseudopodium notes, in CONSTABULARY NOTES FROM ALL OVER, Hilton Als' terrific comeback on Christopher Durang's flippancy.

Ah but I've already said too much.

The man with the hands is pouring the milk. I can only watch his hands—how does he do it?—with his hands like that? He will not be stopped. Boiling veggies, spreading butter, transferring crackers into a special cracker storage unit. Shifting from first into second and on up to fifth. Making a critical right turn. The man has opinions, myriad opinions on current events. MOREOVER he wants to know your opinion on the matter. Not your thoughts but opinion. A crudité for discussion. What would you do in this situation? he asks, rehearsing a situation told baker's dozens of times. We don't know what he really wants but he is very calm.

Why are those cars coming right at m—oh.

Salman Rushdie said exile is the dream of glorious return.

I have been away, Unknown, and now intend to be back.

There was a long, hard journey in a rough place. Survival transpired.

The rain in this homeland is warm; good portents.

In the heavy rain, the kids are walking home from school.

Bloody hell.

So I've been working on a big project for a while now. Almost four years. This past Monday I transformed it into three single-sided, 1½-spaced, cheaply bound 210-page books, signed them all and handed them in to the College office where they didn't give me a bell to ring.

What was the project? A dissertation in programming languages. I helped create a new language, the ill-christened Links. And wrote up my contributions, formalized them mathematically, threw in some explanatory diagrams. And allowed my life to be governed by the cruelties of the academic system.

It was awful. Don't ever do this.

One day I will write about the awfulness—the boredom, the abuse, the hypocrisy, the never-ending spiral, the inability to walk away. The trapped feeling, of solitary confinement.

But now is not the time for such tears (take the rag away from your face).

Now I'm on to the next thing. I've been slightly out of it for a while & I hope to get back in it real soon now.

I learned a hell of a lot about a lot of things: about computer science, about logic, mathematical proof, about technical writing, about programming languages. About rigor and criticism. Moreso I learned about how not to run a research group, or any kind of team. I learned about Scotland, England, Europe, and living abroad. I met some great people, played a lot of Ultimate Frisbee and drank a lot of beer.

Monday I begin closing my Edinburgh life; the next Monday I'll start a life in another place. I've worked hard and survived punishment. I can do more things than before. At last I'll progress to something new, perhaps even something better. Tonight let me raise my glass to Edinburgh, to the science of information process, and to survival, ultimately survival.