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Okay, in six more days, that is, on March 22, 2006, I will be sixty years old.

Turning sixty is twice as bad as turning thirty. Not only are you really old, you’re about to die.

One way to compensate has been car-shopping to replace my old Acura. I decided to go for a dark green BMW 325i with automatic, and leather seats. I test-drove a bunch of other cars, but the BMW was the most exciting. I went up to 95 without noticing. And when I almost passed the exit to get back to the dealership while still in the left lane, I was able to skitter through tiny holes in traffic to the exit, nimble as a hockey puck on ice.

Now I realize why BMW drivers act that way. It’s not so much that they’re intrinsically bad people. It’s just that the car makes it possible to move through traffic in a different kind of way. Reminds me of the old joke: “Why do dogs lick their balls?” “Because they can.”

The other thing I did in preparation for my birthday was to go to a hospital emergency room, thinking I might be having a heart attack. Now, my back always aches, but in the last month or two I’ve had a kind of ache in the middle of my chest. It doesn’t hurt more when I exercise — I still go out mountain biking, for instance. But I was wondering if it might be angina, or heart-pain. I wanted to go see my regular doctor or a cardiologist, but it’s always so hard to get in to see these guys. And the other day I woke up and its seemed like the pain in my chest was stronger than before. So I Google “angina” and it seems to suggest that it’s actually more dangerous if your chest doesn’t hurt more when you exercise, and suggests that I “call 911 immediately”!

Sadly I packed my overnight toiletry kit, put it in my knapsack with some papers and books, and drove to the hospital. They were very nice to me. They hooked up wires to me, took blood samples, X-rayed me. I got wheeled down a hospital corridor in a bed — there’s a classic first-person-viewpoint for you. A trip to the underworld. Everyone kind and considerate.

Turns out there’s nothing at all wrong with my heart! In other words I have some slight muscle ache or stomach distress and I’m totally freaking out about turning sixty. It was kind of cozy waiting for the test results lying in the emergency room bed doing a crossword puzzle and revising my novel. Man did I feel safe. Would be great to move in there full time… Though of course I feel a bit guilty for taking up the space unnecessarily. This isn't something I've many times before; the unnecessary panic-trip to the doctor/hospital. Well, at least now I know the way there.

Oddly enough, during this little ordeal it didn’t cross my mind to pray. I was on autopilot, too anxious to think very hard. Though when I got home to my nice little grassy backyard, I was very happy and grateful. And I remembered to thank God I had some more time. Ah, the clouds.

The sky these days reminds me of the two years we spent in Heidelberg, 1978-1980. The mild blue and the puffy cartoony clouds. Spring. The start and end of the zodiac, the singular point where the world-snake bites its tail. The entrance to the underworld.

I’ll be glad when this birthday’s over. I feels a bit like how I felt right before Jan 1, 2000. As if the world is totally going to come apart into pieces. It’s just a number, Ru, just a number.

I’m still obsessing on cars, riding my bike around today looking at them all in the parking lots, peering in to examine the cabins. Seeing the world with car eyes. To all appearances a car thief.

It was nice to see the sun slanting in this morning. Everything in the world is stained glass, given a chance. Even in the dark, what with the invisible God rays permeating all of creation.

The Platonic vase of tulips becomes a shadow upon my cave's wall.

And low, a graceful being’s hands appear!

She’s off to work with two oranges.

I was driving around San Jose today looking at new cars. My faithful 1989 Acura Legend, which I love, is about worn out. Contenders to replace her. I've priced out the costs of various options and accessories to bring all to about the same equipment level:

An Acura TL, listing at $34 K (I’d get it in Redondo Red Pearl).

*Plusses: (a) The dealer is near where I live. (b) I like my old Acura, that go-kart feeling of sitting quite low and feeling the road-rumble.

*Minuses: (a) Some say that Acuras’ front-wheel drive doesn’t handle as well as rear-wheel drive, not that I’ve particularly noticed this. (b) Same old, same old.

A Lexus IS250, listing at $34.4 K.

*Plusses: (a) Nice modern shape. (b) Cool red color on the lot. (c) Feels very smooth and lively on the road.

*Minuses: (a) Cabin seems a bit small. (b) Hard to get it in all-wheel drive.

BMW 325xi, listing at $36.7 K (in the all-wheel drive version; rear-wheel drive would be $34.7 K).

*Plusses: (a) Fun to drive, feels very solid, brakes great. (b) Roomy cabin.

*Minuses: (a) Poor color selections, somewhat stodgy appearance. (b) If I got it, I’d become *aaugh* an aggro BMW driver! (c) costs a bit more.

Mini Cooper S, listing at $25.7 K.

*Plusses: (a) $10 K cheaper than the others! (b) Better fuel efficiency. (c) Cute. (d) Made by BMW.

*Minuses: (a) Dealer is far away and I haven't gotten up there to drive one yet, but maybe I will soon. (b) Possibly will feel cramped. (c) Possibly not as safe.

Opinions? Experiences with these cars?

Metadoubts: maybe I should be looking at hybrids or at cheaper cars or at two-seater sports cars.

Just one new graphic today, the others are recycled. The new one is a 12 Meg movie of Times Square which is, in some sense, like a metanovel, the theme for today. Click on this link to see the Times Square movie.

Thinking about the postsingular world, the thing that interests me most is the new or enhanced media or artforms that will arise. Think of metaopera, metasymphony, metanovel, metapainting, metamovies.

As analogy, I think of how the Northwest Native American art changed when they got hold of axes. Until then, their totems had been pocket-sized, carved of black stone. Once they had the axe, they set to work carving whole trees into piles of totems. (But fifty years later their culture was gone. A brief window.)

I see going back to a metanovel over and over, layering on detail, just as I do now in my novels. But it would be more like a movie.

My character Thuy Nguyen wants to be a metanovelist, that is, a director/novelist/composer, orphidnet style, with scenarios and words enhanced by images and sounds.

Thuy gets people to make suggestions for her metanovel — palindromically called Metotem (= totem of me, with the word “meta” suggested as well) — like I do by petitioning my blog readers for suggestions about what to put in Postsingular. She has some other metanovelist friends.

“Wheenk wheenk wheenk” was a term Thuy used to describe metanovels in which the characters spent, in Thuy’s opinion, too much time bitching and moaning, and not enough time doing and loving, Thuy sometimes imitating certain passages with quick, elegant notes on her violin.

[Excerpt from Postsingular draft of Chapter One]

Passing Hogtied Metabooks — which was a hang-out for the Mission metanovelists — Jayjay saw the bobbed-hair proprietress Darlene slumped in an easy chair she’d dragged out front. Her store had a lot of comfortable chairs, also some shelves of beat-up paper books. People did still buy books, even though you could read them on the orphidnet. You might think the rez was too low, at one orphid per linear millimeter, but each page-sitting orphid knew which letters it was near, and it passed this info into the net. Strictly speaking, you could publish a book by printing one copy and letting the orphids settle onto it. For that matter, you could publish a book by thoroughly imagining it — like the metanovelists did. Even so, there was something pleasant about the paper physicality of an old-style book, and they still sold in small numbers. Not that Jayjay owned any.

“How’s the metanovel, Thuy?” asked Darlene, her long jeans-clad legs sticking into the sidewalk, her booted feet crossed like a cowboy’s. “Still wrasslin’ it?” Darlene, who was a metanovelist too, made he living not so much by selling books as by brokering access to metanovels. Most metanovelists stored their works in secure form within the orphids on their own bodies. Your personal orphids tended to be generous about giving you memory space.

“Oh yeah,” said Thuy. “And you’re in it.” She gestured at the shelves in Darlene’s store. “Here’s an idea. Maybe I should put all your books into Metotem, too. Every word, every page, all visible in one synoptic glance.”

“Synoptic,” said Darlene, who was quite the heavy kiqqie. “Brilliant word. My shelves hold the synoptic gospels of our literary heritage; you read them side by side to see the face of the Holy Hive Mind in her presingular state. But you’ve got to be kidding about including all that data. Just do a link. If put too much into a metanovel, it gets as dull as a nearly empty file. Everything and Nothing are dual, you wave? Aim your frame.” Peering from beneath her dark bangs, Darlene held up her hands, regarding the four of them through the rectangle of her thumbs and fingers. “What’s with the Stank ad following you mangy kiqs?”

“We’re extras on the Founders show,” said Jayjay, miming himself soaping an underarm. “On the payroll. I Stank purty.”

“How was Gerry Gurkin last night?” Thuy asked Darlene. Gurkin was a fellow metanovelist who was hyping his new work Apoplexy. He’d just done a presentation at Hogtied Books. Metanovelists presented their works at Hogtied by handing out short-term read-only access permissions and giving the audience a guided tour, the hope being that people would pay for longer-term access.

“Underwhelming,” said Darlene. “These Dick Too Dibbs ads kept popping up. Poor Gerry. Not that his gig would have been much better without the interruptions. Apoplexy is an exabyte of data, yes, but it’s only some guy’s memory records. No plot, and no real characters besides Gerry Gurken. Apoplexy shows us a kiqqie who walks around all day saying he’s a metanovelist. But we’ve already got reality soaps and metablogs for that. The metanovel can be so much more.”

“It needs action trajectories, don’t you think?” said Thuy. “A bunch of archetypal plots.”

“But it has to be real,” said Darlene.

“I want to be an alchemist,” said Thuy. “Transmuting my life into myth and fable.”

Metanovelists’ bull sessions could go on for hours. Jayjay privately wondered how much work Thuy had actually done. She kept all her notes and drafts under secure protection, and had never shared them with him.