Thinking Chaos, Thinking Fences

Tuesday, May 20, 2003

How California is This? A detailed guide to nude beaches (questionably not safe for work--contains occasional photos of lumpy naked people playing frisbee and lounging about) up and down the coast of California. In its fifth year, the site includes directions and advice on policing activities. From the entry on the (eep) Los Padres Reservoir: It isn't meant for swimming, and going naked certainly isn't allowed, but on the hottest days that hasn't stopped some people from jumping into Carmel-area Los Padres Reservoir without swimsuits. Others prefer to sunbathe along the remoter parts of the shore. The preferred swim spots are about 20 miles east of Carmel and some 5 miles east of Carmel Village, off Carmel Valley Road (G-16). Rangers are rarely present, but even though the reservoir has a long history of "secret" nude use, skinny-dippers are subject to citation. This, of course, led me to search out the definitive Canadian nude beach guide. This seems to be it (caution, big photo of a busy and naked Wreck Beach). 5:04:09 PM

A Brief Note on My New Subtitle Like the title, it's from a poem by my favourite poet, Michael Ondaatje. In fact, it's the first three lines of his one of my favourite poems of his, 'White Dwarfs'. The rest of the first stanza goes: - who exhaust costume and bones that could perform flight, who shave their moral so raw they can tear themselves through the eye of a needle this is for those people they hover and hover and die in the ether peripheries I did a search for 'fridge for Superman' and produced only two results. One of them was this blog, where some guy whose last name appears to be Webb, has typed out the whole thing. It's worth reading. The other search result brings me to this paper on Michael Ondaatje. Page 12 sheds a little light on the poem. I really don't know how one makes 'a fridge for Superman', but I've always liked the sound of it. 4:48:09 PM