I just got an image of a new version of the cover for The Lifebox, the Seashell and the Soul. It should be out in Fall, 2005.

That starring cone shell is sitting right here on my desk. I got her (I believe she's female) from Stephen Wolfram a couple of years ago in Boston.

Today Safia, one of our diving partners from Palau, emailed me some underwater pictures of Jellyfish Lake. Thanks, Safia!

I knew at the time that Jellyfish Lake was great SF material, but am only now figuring out exactly how to work jellyfish into my novel-in-progress, Mathematicians in Love.

My characters will tunnel through to a higher universe called La Hampa. La Hampa resembles Micronesia, but some of the islands will float in the air. That is, you’ll see the thousands of small muffin islands like you see off Palau, but some will be floating above sea level, up in the sky like clouds, and other islands are wholly submerged in the seemingly bottomless sea. We’ll also like to have little suns of all sizes, so there’s no determinate scale at all. Seas, islands, air bubbles, suns, endlessly nested above and below.

Our universe is but one sheet of many, which are stacked in a so-called hyperverse. The dimension in which our universes evolve matches the time dimension of La Hampa, called hampatime. The successive universes in the hyperverse are in some sense better and better, like successive drafts of a novel. So our universe is a single spactime sheet in a series of alternate universes which, taken together, make up a hyperverse. [I referenced the hyperverse idea earlier in the blog in terms of an answer to the EDGE annual question, although at that time I hadn't yet started using the word “hyperverse.”]

Each hyperverse is coupled to a single La Hampan organism called a nataraja (from dancer king, which is used in India as synonym for dancing many-armed Shiva). The natarajas resemble jellyfish.

As hampatime elapses, a nataraja jellyfish is beating its invisible spacetime veils, flexing them to make them lovelier. And as the veils get more beautiful, as their hyperverse evolves, the nataraja begins to glow. And at some point it begins to resemble a sun. And that’s when the cosmic novel is done!

I spent yesterday and today in San Francisco. Friday afternoon I hung out in North Beach, one thing I wanted to do was to check out this place called Tang Fat Hotel. I’m thinking of setting a scene in my novel there, the crazy mathematicians are hiding out there, it’s not really a hotel, more like a boarding house.

Stopped by Washington Square Park, I always remember Jack Kerouac’s description of taking a nap there in Big Sur. Here’s a little flock of drinkers.

Some odd stores on Grant Street a block away, this window was especially spooky.

Then I got together with Rudy Jr., who lives in SF. He has a kind big dog named Slug.

Slug is vigilant.

We went to a little art opening at the the Atlas Cafe and saw Linda, one of Rudy’s friends, she’s almost always cheerful. She says she’s a yea-sayer to life.

We went to a surprise birthday party for one of Rudy’s other friends. She had nice boots.

Rudy’s friends Jericho and Rafael were there. Jericho organizes these art-carny events involving bicycles, it’s called Cyclecide. Rafael and Rudy go way back, he's also one of Rudy's co-conspiritors at Monkeybrains.

This morning I walked around with Slug looking at the Mission. An interesting mural next to the Southern Exposure gallery.

Lots of nice stencil spray-painted graffiti around; used to be I only saw those in Europe. Here’s three in one square. With Slug's paw.

This head was in front of the eyeball mural.

This infinitely regressing menacing snowperson is fractal and Mandelbrotian. Nice background too.

They had a Mission flea market starting up.

In the afternoon we went to a very small-scale rock festival in McLaren Park called the Mindzap Festival. They had a big cardboard model of a roach with dry-ice smoke. This band here is called Weed Wolf. I said to the woman with the accordian, “Now all those years of lessons pay off,” and she said, “I just started playing it two weeks ago.”

I got a free Mindzap headband from Rafael! To keep my brain from falling out, natch.

Good old San Francisco. Thanks for showing me around, Rudy and Penny.

Cone shell of the day: Conus Auratinus, photo by Scott Johnson. This shell is greased and ready to kick ass, as Sha-Na-Na used to say.

I was gonna write an attack-of-the-cone-shell scene today, but went rambling in Castle Rock park instead.

There’s these giant smooth rocks piled up here and there. Moss in the trees from all the fog.

My hair is getting so long I was wearing a pony-tail today, to the disgust of my family members. Haircut soon.

Some kids tore the moss off one of the rocks to write a certain number ( I won’t state the number here, as it seems to attract bots), which means, like, “hooray for a certain herb!”

All the madrone and manzanita trees were blooming. Buzzing bees. This was a good place to sit. I have this tendency to do something and then think “Now what,” and move on too quickly. Once you're somewhere as good as this it doesn't get better. Your on a local optimization peak. I sat there awhile.

Madrone trees have great smooth fleshy bark. Note the crotch bulge.

I saw a spot on some bark that looked like a dog. Bark dog.

Then I got lost. A rock like an Easter Island tiki. Apparantly this special weird gnary hollowed out rock that you get in Castle Rock Park is called “tofini.”

Ended up down in the San Lorenzo River Valley. Water carrying our gnarly paracomputation, yes. Note the living checkerboard.

I worked my way up the stream to reach the base of the big Castle Rock Fall that I knew was there. Some green plants said, “Hello.”

A rock poised beneath a log on a ledge in a waterfall. A living koan. I may never make it to this spot again. All this perfection out there.

I reached the heart of the big fall. A rainbow in the spray.