at homebrewing today. Simple wheat beer to begin with, make sure 
I don’t do anything majorly stupid. It was while boiling the wort that I realized I had no real recipe. so I kind of half-guessed, half-researched the amount of hops to add and at what stages. Hopefully it turns out alright. Bottling day in two weeks…

     You ever have a recurring image in your head? Like a theme in your life you keep revisiting? You’ve never seen it before and perhaps it’s heavily influenced by something but it jumps out of you from the depth of your mind? There has been such an image I see lately:

     A black, barren landscape. There are shriveled dead trees sprinkled about the horizon. The sand covering the earth is black and cool.  The sky is painted a deep blue with an altogether overly huge moon shining behind a couple strands of clouds, the way a woman would look wrapped up in a towel. Through it all there is a breeze, light and cool but carrying the scent of ash from a distant land or time. Although things look bleak here I get the sense that the time is ripe for change. I get the feeling that great things can be built here in this place away from the oppression of the sun (and MAN has it been hot here lately.) 

     Cause and effect are muddled here for me. I can’t tell if this image is the direct result of my recent forays into Black Metal, Death Metal, Technical Death, and Progressive Death or if my exploration of these genres represent a changed state of mind for me. Regardless, the two feed each other in ways that only serves to realize my said vision. This seems to be a marked departure from my teenager years of fast paced landscapes, jets of fire, chrome and steel. The days of Thrash, speed metal, Power Metal, NWOBHM. Though I still sing along to every song that plays my mind is constantly craving something new and I seemed to have arrived at it. Maybe this is how musical taste matures. Maybe after the fast-paced rush to grow up I have gotten to a point where I need to step back a bit and build the foundation for the rest of my life… or maybe it’s 5 a.m. and I’m thinking too deliriously. Introspection can suck it.