Two weeks ago, I went down to San Luis Obispo, California for a five day Jupyter team meeting with about twenty five others. This was the first such meeting since my return after being away for two years, and I enjoyed meeting some of the "newer" faces, as well as catching up with old friends.

It was both a productive and an emotionally challenging week, as the project proceeds along at breakneck pace on some fronts yet continues to face growing pains which come from having to scale in the human dimension.

On Wednesday, November 9th, 2016, we spent a good chunk of the day at a nearby beach: chatting, decompressing, and luckily I brought my journal with me and was able to capture the poem you will find below. I intended to read it at a local open mic the same evening, but by the time I got there with a handful of fellow Jovyans for support, all of the slots were taken. On Friday, the last day of our meeting, I got the opportunity to read it to most of the larger group. Here's a recording of that reading, courtesy of Matthias Bussonnier (thanks, Matthias!).

November 9th, 2016

The lovely thing about the ocean is
that it
is
tireless 
It never stops
incessant pendulum of salty foamy slush
Periodic and chaotic
raw, serene 
Marine grandmother clock  
crashing against both pier
and rock

Statuesque encampment of abandonment
recoiling with force
and blasting forth again
No end in sight
a train forever riding forth
and back
along a line
refined yet undefined
the spirit with
which it keeps time 
in timeless unity of moon's alignment

I. walk. forth.

Forth forward by the force
of obsolete contrition
the vision of a life forgotten
Excuses not
made real with sand, wet and compressed
beneath my heel and toes, yet reeling from
the blinding glimmer of our Sol
reflected by the glaze of distant hazy surf
upon whose shoulders foam amoebas roam

It's gone.
Tone deaf and muted by

anticipation
each coming wave
breaks up the pregnant pause
And here I am, barefoot in slacks and tie
experiencing sensations
of loss, rebirth and seldom 
kelp bulbs popping in my soul.