Whoa.

I really mean it.

Whoa.

Blah blah blah enough

My problem here, see, is that I exist in a world where I don't always get to be the arbiter of my own worth as a human being.

Well, I can always just ignore the arbiters of my worth, but since I rely on them for certain things which they can withhold, they have some control over me.

Hence, the attraction of the Cold Mountain lifestyle, where I would always be the arbiter of my own worth, because I wouldn't have to spend any time around ad hoc "hot/not hot" rating boards measuring my conformity to standards set by VH-1, GQ, the Gazette, or whetever it is people currently rely on to be told how they're supposed to look, act and think.

If a man walks through the forest wearing ten-year-old running shoes and no one is around to see it and go 'ew,' is he still weird, unaccessible and boring?




Come to the Red Cup sangha, and I shall return your book.




The pessimist stands on the railroad track
From mid morning to early evening
Then leaves disgusted, dismayed and disheartened
Because no train came to run over him

But the optimist stays
And is run over by the train

Actually...

It was, "Hey good-lookin'... we'll be back to pick you up later."

As I confirmed just moments ago on the Internets.

Good morning, Vietnam!

Went back to sleep and had a dream about a bunny rabbit falling out of a helicopter. He landed on a Target store. Woke up wanting a root beer.

Just kidding.

Anyway, it's off to another day of not being hip enough, fresh enough, sexy enough, exciting enough, affluent enough, Edmond enough, hyperanimated facial expressions enough, blah blah blah enough.

Hey, good-lookin'... we'll be back to check you out later.

Dream addendum

The helicopter from which the guy fell was dark green, about midway between forest green and olive drab, and had the initials 'IBC' on the side in white, gray or silver. It was a serif typeface, possibly Bodoni, and there was some kind of border around the letters, like a shield or square.

IBC could be the bank, the root beer or something else. I did a quick Google image search, but didn't find any matching logos.



Something like this. I don't know what it means.

Why is this stuff in my brain?

A dream

Just woke up, soaked with sweat, from a dream in which a lot of odd random stuff happened, including guys riding around in a red forties-era roadster stolen (according to the handy information packet that seems to come with many of my dreams) from an heir to the Target family fortune. (I have no idea if there really is a Target family fortune. Someone should call the Daytons and the Hudsons and see if they have a car missing.)

At the end of all this random stuff happening are two helicopters flying, not together, but in the same general area. One is performing clearly dangerous aerobatic stunts. I'm watching from the ground, wondering not if, but when the pilot will make a fatal mistake. The pilot of the other helicopter is now hovering nearby, watching the first pilot with alarm. Sure enough, the first pilot suddenly loses control and the helicopter plunges to the ground. And as the people on the ground are screaming and gasping with alarm, someone falls out of the second helicopter and lands on the street about thirty feet away.

His landing, while probably not scientifically correct, is very graphic (but not bloody)... he lands on his back, bounces about a foot back up, then comes down again. He lands again on his back, more or less at his shoulders. His body rolls backward, so that his legs and feet fold over his head, and he is briefly folded almost like a jackknife at the waist. Then his legs straighten out again, and he comes to rest flat on his back, and presumably dead, on the pavement.

My dreams seem to be frequently filled with violence or threats of random or accidental violence. I am never committing the violence in my dreams, nor is it ever directed at me. I have a lot of dreams about plane crashes, and they always occur with me standing on the ground watching –– never as a passenger or a pilot.

Plus all the dreams in which tornadoes drop down out of the sky, and the occasional drowning dream.

My inner psychologist says these dreams are not so much about violence as about me feeling like I have no control over my own destiny and feeling like I'm just tossed about by threatening conditions. If I retired to that cave near the monastery, would I still have nightmares?

Maybe I have calm, peaceful pleasant dreams I don't remember.

Does anyone dream about quiet, blue lakes? Fields of flowers? Bunny rabbits?

The Weekend

Spent another weekend being an indolent sloth. I did some laundry Saturday and pulled weeds for about twenty minutes Sunday, but other than that it was a weekend of eating, sleeping, some drinking and a lot of sitting around.

The sage acts without effort.

Ate lunch Sunday at Pho Cuong on Classen. Vietnamese chicken soup was a new experience for me -- good stuff.

iTunes: Prabha, Debashish Bhattacharya

The Kitten Welfare State

A few weeks ago, I heard a small squeaking noise in my back bedroom, which is piled high with boxes of old clothes, obsolete computers, books and art supplies.

I moved some debris, and found the source: the squeaking was coming from one of three kittens who had, unbeknownst to me, been born back there.

They are now beginning to explore the house:







As soon as they're old enough to get new homes, I'll be too attached to them to let them go.

Something terrible

I know something terrible's about to happen to me.
If I have to, I'll arrange it myself.

But other than that, things are peachy

It's 6:15 am. I've been up since 4, obsessing.
So many things that can go wrong.
So many disasters, poised on tiptoe waiting to happen.
A pile of rocks is precariously balanced at the edge of a cliff.
I stand at its base, checking my watch,
Wondering why it's taking so long for them to fall on me.

Cats live in the moment

...but cats also, at least in domestic situations, live in the perfect welfare state. Their needs are met by others. In my neighborhood, they wander from house to house, mendicants grazing for alms left in bowls on the porches.

Easy to 'just be' when someone else puts the food and water out.

There's been some research on this subject... when domestic cats are placed into situations where they must hunt and otherwise forage for themselves, taking responsibility for their own survival and well-being, they cluster into workplace task groups where they spread rumors about each other's personal lives, circulate 'who's hot and who's not' lists of co-cats, spam each other's email with 'Proud to be a Bush Republican" Flash animations and snark about each other's fur markings.

Do I need air conditioning in a cave?

Back to this Cold Mountain thing... Han Shan didn't live in a monastery. He lived near a monastery. I don't know how far a day's walk is in that context, but I would guess eight miles or so. (Or in my case, eight blocks.)

For me, the point is that Han Shan somehow managed to survive in that environment unemployed, out of the system, off of what constituted "the grid" in those days. And he was happy with that life, as I suspect I would be today.

And Han Shan was not without friends whom he occasionally visited, just as Thoreau would do 1100 years later while living in seclusion at Walden Pond. Neither lived in total isolation.

It's a little after 6 a.m.; I've been up since 4, obsessing.

The browser cache

I frequently use Firefox as a web browser, which caches certain form information I enter. For example (as I just discovered), about one hundred Google search terms are cached. Some of them are searches I did months ago, but I can still refer back to them instantly.

(Oddly enough, there must be hundreds more I've done that weren't cached. I wonder why some were saved and some weren't.)

One of them was the words 'Bonar' and 'twin.' I don't even remember doing that, I can't imagine why in the world I would have. I had to click on it to find out what it was about.

Bonar is the twin brother of actor Conrad Bain, who was in... Diff'rent Strokes? Mork and Mindy? Some sitcom or other. ('Bonar'... what a crappy thing to do to a kid.)

And at some point in the dim past, I apparently needed to know that. Or thought I did. "Bonar is the twin brother of Conrad Bain." More trivia to clutter my brain.

iTunes: Raga Madhu-Kauns, Ravi Shankar

Cold Mountain

I mentioned in some previous posts the poet Han Shan, who lived in China circa 700 AD and spent his life living in a remote cave about a day's walk from a Buddhist monastery.

I'm reading Red Pine's translation of his work.

That life still looks appealing to me. I get worn out dealing with other people.

I'm old and tired and not very interesting these days. Previously, I was younger and tired and not very interesting.

I keep running into people who think I have a personal obligation to them to change myself into something more to their liking. Why can't I be shorter, taller, thinner, younger, named Blaine or Ridge or Austin? Why can't I drive an SUV or a BMW? Why can't I, like, you know, totally talk like, you know, real people, mmmkay?

(Or, alternately, how come I ain't folks? How come I ain't got a mullet? How come I ain't in the Assembly of God? How come I ain't got a king cab pickup, and bowling ball callouses on my fingertips? Why do I hate Mur'ca?)

When I worked in TV, I was frequently told by my bosses that I wasn't "accessible," which was a way of saying –– well, I never figured out exactly what they were saying, nor could they explain it. The best I could figure was that it seemed like they were happy with my work, but they thought I sucked as a human being because I wasn't 'Edmond' enough.

If I lived alone, away from other people, I wouldn't have to be 'Edmond' enough. I wouldn't have to worry about being too big, too puffy or dumpy, too sleepy-eyed, too this or too that. I could just be me, and no one else would have to look at me, be offended by me or feel uncomfortable around me.

I could just be me.

I have no ambition to be anything other than me.

("Gasp! You bastard!")

Get buy-in from the stakeholders

I used to laugh at that expression (along with 'conceptualizing strategic initiatives' and 'leveraging robust assets') but I have lately become convinced of its truth.

You're dealing with the person you think is the go-to person for a project, only to discover after you've gotten into it that some other person you didn't know about –– who maybe isn't even directly connected –– doesn't like what you've done.

And it matters.

Years ago, in my previous life, I worked long and hard on a project that was scuttled by my boss's boss's wife. I didn't get it then, but she was a stakeholder. Maybe she shouldn't have been, but she was, and a more savvy person than me would have seen that.

Now I deal with it all the time. When the chain of command is fuzzy, the list of stakeholders is likely to grow.

And everything is about human relations, human needs and psychology. By "everything," I mean everything, whether you're talking about building a skyscraper, writing a screenplay or running for office.

So identify the stakeholders, and get that buy-in.

Then you can leverage those robust assets.

Tuesday

This is the first night I've come straight home from work and stayed home in, like, forever. I keep saying I'm going to spend more time being a hermit, but something always drags me out.

Food, mostly.

Too bad you can't get wisdom at drive-through windows. Kentucky Fried Enlightenment, with a jumbo Diet Pepsi.

iTunes: San'An, Tajima Tadashi, followed by Sanya, Kohachiro Miyata

A dream

I dreamt I was riding on something like a big rocket- or jet-powered sled. Everyone else on the sled was a Japanese teenager. We were in a huge parking lot for a grocery store.

The sled was being chased by dogs. One of the dogs caught up with us, and the teenagers were all kind of hopping and scrambling across the sled to keep the dog from biting them.

But as it turned out, the dog was after a sandwich I had in my hip pocket, and once he had it, he left us alone.

Then I woke up.

More on the compelling inner life thing

Lifted from flibbertigibbet!

"There's nothing so delightful as being aware. Would you rather live in darkness? Would you rather act and not be aware of your actions, talk and not be aware of your words? Would you rather listen to people and not be aware of what you're hearing, or see things and not be aware of what you're looking at? The great Socrates said, 'the unaware life is not worth living.' That's a self-evident truth.

"Most people don't live aware lives. They live mechanical lives, mechanical thoughts--generally somebody else's--mechanical emotions, mechanical actions, mechanical reactions."

- Fr. Anthony De Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

Lifted from Network! by Paddy Chayefsky:

"You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here, you're beginning to believe that the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal! You do! Why, whatever the tube tells you: you dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing, WE are the illusion!"

-Howard Beale

Lifted from a coffee mug that came with my space-age foam Tibetan meditation cushion from Zen Mountain Monastery:

WAKE UP!

I can't speak for all those people I suspect are just zombified by marketing, media and materialism. I can only tell you that I was 45 years old before someone finally explained to me what was going on with me, and gave me enough info that I could get myself started on the path that led to where I am tonight.

My therapist had worked as an adviser to a governor, so he knew whereof he spoke when he went down a list of people –– famous, powerful people in the state –– whom he personally knew and whom he suspected simply had no inner life or sense of introspection. Like De Mello, he was pretty sure that a lot of people weren't much more self-aware than a typical household pet.

There is a level in some forms of Buddhism called 'stream-enterer,' which is sort of like being a novitiate in some Christian denominations. A stream-enterer isn't enlightened, but has decided there must be some such thing as enlightenment and wants to find it.

(Remember what the Zen master said, though: "If you look at it, you will see it. If you look for it, you won't.")

But how do you start to look for enlightenment or anything else if you can't pry your eyes away from Desperate Housewives or the mail order catalogs?

I remember a time in which I was almost hypnotized –– or so it seems now –– by GQ, Esquire and other men's fashion magazines. All my desires were dictated by what I saw in ads. I didn't have time to think about what I wanted –– I was too busy processing what Ralph Lauren and other big-name '80s designers were telling me I should want.

I went to a movie at Quail Springs over the weekend. I used to go in the mall all the time and think nothing of it. Now, after years of inner city living and spending most of my consumer time in small, locally owned businesses, the mall seems like a freakin' space station. It's like Logan's Run in there. All the neon and processed air and animated kiosks. But it took me years to notice.

From the time it opened to about 1999, I was so used to wandering around in the mall with my eyes glazed over, bombarded by canned music and sale ads and mannequins in windows that I never even noticed how bizarre it was. I was a consumer, and it was my job to consume, dammit! Must... have... Mountaineer Jacket! Must... have... Adirondack Boots!

I was, as Howard Beale said, a human slowly turning into a humanoid.

Thanks to a series of remarkable incidents, I have gotten most of my humanity back, and I live among the other humans in the little human enclave in the old part of town.

Blow up your TV.

Get out of the mall.

Live.

That mcarp... man, he's fat. But he's so wise.

Now the question is whether it would be easier to lose weight or gain wisdom.

---

dzaster: Are you still in town?

nina: That is the pic. Keep that one.

Wise man update

First a quick note on the weekend: I did next to nothing, and enjoyed every minute of it. Spent much of Saturday slightly buzzed on 3.2 Tecate and a Sierra Pale Ale, and just sat around the Red Cup and later, after the beer, the Paseo.

Saw 'Snakes on a Plane' which I would say see or don't see, not that big a deal. Samuel L. Jackson needs some stronger supporting cast in this.

Suzanne and I went to an art show at OCU's Norick Gallery based on tip from Buddhist friend JenJen.

Ate wonderful stir fry Sunday evening prepared by soartstar. I mean freakin' awesome stir fry, best I've ever had anywhere.

---

Now, on to this 'wise man' thing. First of all, I realized over the weekend that some of this wondering is ego driven... sort of idle daydreaming about what it would be like to be recognized as some sort of –– well, not a guru, really, or a teacher, but just as a sort of serene, laid back dude who had a lot of answers. "Yeah, that Carp... he's really wise." Total ego thing, as well as pretty far removed from reality.

Seriously... I actually found myself thinking that since I can't keep my weight down anyway, I could just blimp up like Hotei, the fat 'laughing Buddha' you always see in Chinese takeout places, and just sit around being a fat wise man.

(For the record, I have few answers. I know most state capitols, but that's about it.)

I remembered something I posted back in February:

"Wen-tzu talked about the Taoist sages who did nothing to draw attention to themselves. That included not obviously seeking to avoid attention. Imagine that there are sages among us today, yet we don't see them because they blend in so well as to be invisible. Maybe you passed one on the street today and didn't notice him. Maybe you saw her just moments ago and you've already forgotten her.

"If you made a list of all the people you know, public and private, who might be sages, you'd miss the ones who actually are. They wouldn't occur to you."

Well, yeah. That's what it is.

I need to focus on wisdom versus being a wise man, and by wisdom, I should say a deeper awareness of and flow with the Tao.

---

What I really want to do at this moment in my life, by the way, is sit around on the Paseo, eat and sleep. And maybe drink beer. I am totally without ambition now. I'm ready to be fat, lethargic and totally introspective.

If I were a wise man, what would my life be like?

I'm wondering about this a little.

I don't mean a wise man in the biblical sense, but just a guy with some wisdom. And I don't mean, "How would I arrange my life if I were wise?" so much as "How would my life be if I had wisdom?"

Because I'm thinking that were I truly wise, my life would be different because I would make different choices. I wouldn't be thinking, "Oh, here's what a wise man would do." I would just have a different life as a natural result of having wisdom. I wouldn't even see it as a wise man's life –– I would simply have that particular kind of life, and it would be as natural to me as the life I have now, except that I wouldn't find myself questioning my own wisdom for the choices I'd made.

Wise men: I'm thinking of people like Ajahn Chah, DT Suzuki, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama. All four are religious figures. What about secular figures? I can think of a lot of people who are smart, even brilliant, but not necessarily wise.

The wise man, I suppose, would be someone who isn't necessarily successful in the material sense. Maybe he's rather poor. He may not be popular, but he is not widely disliked. He conveys to those who know him a sense of serenity and calm. Maybe his advice is valued, or maybe he doesn't give advice. He's never angry, never manic, always pleasant but not gratingly cheery. He is tolerant and compassionate.

I know people personally who have some of those traits, but no one who has all of them. The monks, teachers and lamas I listed above may not have all those traits, either. I've never met any of them; maybe I've arbitrarily ascribed these traits to them because they're the kind of traits I want a wise man to have.

Maybe the Dalai Lama loses the keys to his minivan, and gets frustrated and rants under his breath while he looks for them under piles of magazines and fast food wrappers. Maybe Thich Nhat Hanh needs to clean the litter box.

Maybe the wise man of which I am thinking doesn't exist, and is just an impossibly perfect fiction.

I am not always the most talkative person in the room, but I'll tell you I usually go home in the evening thinking I've talked too much. I am frustrated at the end of the day at the things I've said which would have been better left unsaid. The wise man probably doesn't speak much.

Do you know a wise man?

I think you have the capacity to be happy

I said a few days ago I would respond to this comment, and I've delayed it long enough.

The original comment from Patrizia:

I think you have the capacity to be happy. I think the single revelation that stands between you and happiness is this: everyone on the planet has an inner life as compelling as your own.

I think once you realize this, you will see those Tommy Hilfiger-clad souls sitting in restaurants as brave & gallant & doing the best they can under circumstances that are far from ideal -- just as you are -- and that will move you and release you from your anger towards them.

'Cause you know, depression is really anger turned inward...

I drafted a response to this that included quotes from the Buddha, Wen-Tzu and my therapist as well as an embedded photo of George Bush and then realized I had gone on for nine paragraphs and was getting nowhere.

And so I come back to Seung Sahn:

I just don't know.

That ain't much, but that's what it is.










By the way, here's the Bush pic. Make up your own context:

Beta switch

I switched to the new beta version of Blogger this morning, and discovered after the fact that this may affect the ability of some people to post comments. All I can say is try it and see what happens.

3:40 am

I'm at an odd point in my life -- I suddenly seem to have more friends who are humans than friends who are cats.

I guess the cats are okay with this. I'm not as home as much as I used to be, and sometimes they eat late because I don't get home at the same time every evening.

Sometimes I miss having the time with the cats, though. Cats are easier to deal with because they think whatever I want to pretend they're thinking. I don't have to deal with a lot of differing opinions or temperaments.

On the other hand, I haven't had any humans shit in my potted plants.

Then again, I haven't let any humans in my house yet -- except one who goes by the nickname Kat.

Make of that what you will.

Hey, all you crazy cats and chicks!

Whilst sitting in the loft at VZD's tonight, Blogblah! wondered about the definition of the word 'kemp' as used on the hand-lettered signage across the street at Beck's Garage: "Hot Rods • Kemps • Motorcycles"

I didn't know it, either, but here it is, courtesy Kustom Kemps of America:

What is a Kemp? It’s a slang word used by teenagers in the late 50’s, and early 60’s to indicate a car or a truck. When you say Kustom Kemp, it means kustomized car or truck. So a kustom kemp can be any make, model or year vehicle, from 1903 to current year. The word "kemp" gained national recognition on a famous TV show called 77 Sunset Strip, where Edd “Kookie” Byrnes used it often, and in the little 25-cent Rod and Custom magazines.

I should mention for some of you –– maybe most of you –– that 77 Sunset Strip was a detective show produced by Warner Bros. back in the late fifties, when WB pretty much owned the detective and western genres on TV. Kookie was a sort of Fonzie-like character (although predating Fonzie by twenty years) who hung out with the detectives.

Here's more.

Kookie drove a T-bucket hot rod built by Norm Grabowski, and here's more on Grabowski and the car.

Monday PM

I sat on the porch this evening.
Rain running down the gutters,
Lightning forking across the sky.
Satori the cat sat beside me on the glider
Grooming himself, unconcerned.
A breeze blew, cool and damp: 73 degrees.
Rain, lightning, wind, cat –
All one thing.
I'm only looking at myself.
Why does anyone need a mirror?

Nothing, really

There was a man who had nothing.
Having nothing, nothing could be taken from him.
Wanting nothing, he was never disappointed.
When he died, he had the same thing as everyone else.

Gimp the Cat

Still pretty ratty-looking, but at least he's put on some weight.

There's nothing wrong with his eye, by the way. That was the second flash shot, and he's still squinting after the first one.

Here's some good news...

Well, for me, anyway.

Forget casual Fridays. In many workplaces, it's casual everyday as corporate dress codes have gone the way of fedoras and white gloves.

Office workers, from executives to receptionists, now wear pretty much what they want...

Los Angeles Times

Too hot to think

...which is my excuse tonight for not responding to Patrizia's post, or blogblah!'s excellent comment.

I went out in the early afternoon to shoot pix for work, and got a few that were usable. The temp was in the upper nineties, but I was comfortable.

Then, for dinner, I went by the Red Cup with the intention of hanging out the rest of the evening. But just the drive from downtown to 31st and Classen took a lot out of me -- up to 102 or so at this time -- and I ended up leaving early. When I got home, I was wiped out. I fell on the sofa at about 7:45, fell asleep almost immediately, and didn't wake up until about 11:30.

The capacity to be happy...

patrizia said...

I think you have the capacity to be happy. I think the single revelation that stands between you and happiness is this: everyone on the planet has an inner life as compelling as your own.

I think once you realize this, you will see those Tommy Hilfiger-clad souls sitting in restaurants as brave & gallant & doing the best they can under circumstances that are far from ideal -- just as you are -- and that will move you and release you from your anger towards them.

'Cause you know, depression is really anger turned inward...

I just want to acknowledge this post right now, because I'll come back to it. I don't want to respond with some glib BS, so I'm still thinking about it.

iTunes: Kaede No Hana, Yamato Ensemble

Just sayin'

A later evening dream

Went back to sleep and dreamt I was watching a TV commercial in which Fred Flintstone and Jack Nicholson were duck hunting or something like it. I'm not sure. It was a younger Jack Nicholson, Five Easy Pieces era or thereabouts. He was wearing a white shirt with a cardigan pullover sweater and slacks. Fred Flintsone was wearing what he always wears.

Jack was upset because Fred was just shooting sort of wildly into the air and was still getting more ducks than Jack, who only had a golf club and no rifle.

An early evening dream

I just woke up from a very disjointed dream in which a young woman is trying to remember something or trying to understand a reason for something... I'm not quite sure what the situation was. It was very disjointed compared to my usual dreams.

The young woman sees or acts out a few scenarios that explain how certain undefined events happened the way they did, and finally concludes that a friend of hers -- I think it was a friend, anyway, but maybe it was a stranger -- drowned in a car.

I wasn't in the car, but it was like I was right there with the car as it sank into deep, still water, darker and darker as it drifted downward.

Then I woke up, slightly gasping for air, heart racing. Good lord.

I frequently fall asleep and begin dreaming right away, and wake up just a short while later.

That was creepy as hell. Now I don't want to go back to sleep.




iTunes: Mandala Offering, Choying Drolma & Steve Tibbets

If I smile, please give me some bad news

Unless we've attained a certain amount of mastery over our own brains through meditation or some similar process, we're always thinking about something. We even think in our sleep, which is dreaming.

It has always been true that my mind tends to focus on the negative. I even know, from my serious therapy years, why this happens: home life as a child and adolescent was full of weird shit, mostly alcohol-fueled but also driven by oddball parental sexual hijinks with family friends –– along with all the drama those escapades were intended to create –– and I was constantly on the alert.

I watched vigilantly for things that might intrude on the stability and well-being of the small calm space I tried to reserve for myself, and which was always under seige. I always worried about bad stuff happening because bad stuff really was about to happen.

In 2006, the situation has changed, but the habitual thinking of 1966 is still there.

When I am alone and in a quiet place, I find myself occasionally dwelling on bad things that happened to me in the past, and much more frequently worrying about bad things that are about to happen to me in the future. Although I haven't been successful in changing this mode of thinking, I have at least come to understand why it happens.

Soartstar and I were in a far north side restaurant the other day, and we noticed how the people all around us seemed happy. They weren't happy in a way either of us would want for ourselves –– they had that sort of bland, glazed-eye, pasty, doughy happiness that comes from a general ignorance of the world in which they live. They've managed to surround themselves with plenty of Tommy Hilfiger and Chevy Tahoe body armor, and the credit cards haven't maxed out yet, and their news comes from FOX and the Oklahoman, so they think they're okay and all's well with the world.

That's not for me. I don't want to be happy because I'm ignorant. But is it possible to reorient one's mind so that, in those quiet times without distraction, you really are, forgive the Pollyanna-ish expression, 'thinking happy thoughts' about daily life?

I very very rarely find myself naturally thinking about the good things that have happened to me. Granted there haven't been as many for me as for some others, but there certainly have been some, and it's hard to keep those in mind. Occasionally I will catch myself in the midst of negative thinking and try to make myself reorient my thinking. But I usually draw a blank... nothing good comes to mind.

Meditation has helped to get the 10,000 screaming depressed monkeys to shut up now and then and give me a few moments peace, but I'd also like to find out if there are any cheerful screaming monkeys who would like to have a say.

I know people who had the same kind of childhood I had, only amplified a few hundred percent, and they seem to be able to conjure up some pleasant, positive hopeful thoughts now and then.

Sometimes I think this is the point where a real physical in-the-flesh guru or teacher might help, as opposed to relying on books to self-help my way out of this. I believe there must be a physical process to modify this (without becoming a sheep), but I don't know what it is.

I will tell you that the negativity is exhausting. The older I get, the more it wears me out. I wish I could quit worrying and obsessing.

Also...


iTunes: Wild Geese Descend on the Smooth Sand, Lui Pui-yuen

Photo redux

A friend says this picture

doesn't capture my "sparkle."

Well, maybe so. It is kind of a glum, bleak photo. I looked around in that folder, and found another that is maybe more sparkle-ish...



It's amazing how a smile can completely transform a person's appearance.

Happiness is overrated

I had a conversation with a friend yesterday about happiness. She believes in it.

I believe in it, but with the following caveats:

Happiness and misery are different sides of the same coin; as with yin and yang, light and dark, hot and cold, you can't have one without the other. Don't seek one if you don't want the other as well.

It is better –– for some people, at least –– to seek a middle path that embraces neither happiness nor unhappiness. We have that 'reach out for the gusto' attitude in our culture which encourages people to constantly seek happiness (or, more accurately, pleasure) and distraction and entertainment. That road doesn't go anywhere in particular; it just kind of peters out in a field at the edge of town.

There is an ancient taoist parable of the ugly useless tree which survives to old age because its wood has no apparent value while the younger, more attractive trees are cut down for furniture and woodwork. If you are happy, you're like the attractive tree and someone will try to take your happiness just because it's there. We have a government now that thrives on human misery, and blooms like a flower in the desert when death and destruction are all around. I imagine Donald Rumsfeld, for example, viewing peace, calm and happiness with great unease and alarm. He and Dick Cheney are simply more comfortable in a world of war, violence, misery and unrest, and they have the power to create it. The sages also talked about staying the hell out of the way of governments and politicians, which was easier in the sixth century BCE than it is today.

If you are already unhappy or at least neutral, people will leave you alone because you're like the ugly old tree no one wants.

(Of couse, the author of that ugly tree parable never saw an expressway or a planned unit development come through and take out everything, whether it had value or not, simply because unpaved surfaces are an abomination unto the Lord.)

Getting back to this picture for a moment... it's not very flattering, but it is, after all, what I actually look like. This is why a I need a proxy to pretend to be me for public consumption. It's hard to persuade people your ideas are fresh, sexy and exciting when you look like this.

Heat

From Blogblah! ...

MCARP says he’s no longer young and I wonder if he, too, finds just going to the grocery and the dry cleaner and sitting outside at the RC is a chore.

Hell, yeah.

So to speak.

Fortunately, I don't have many dry cleaner problems (good lord, dry cleaners are insufferably hot whenever the outside temperature is above 60... I can't imagine what they're like now) since I rearranged my wardrobe to be more washing machine-friendly, but everything else has been basically draining.

The air conditioner in my car doesn't work. A relatively inexpensive part is broken but I've read on the net that a full day of labor is involved in replacing it. I can't afford it and more importantly, I can't be without the car for a day.

But what makes this heat especially insufferable is the fear I have that this is not an anomaly, but a preview of most summers to come. And as the temperature climbs, and as the glaciers and ice packs melt and the aquifer water tables drop, our number one national climatological goal is maximizing oil company profits.

I suppose when the trophy wife of some Exxon/Mobil director has a perspiration-induced mascara meltdown on a Riviera beach, the situation will become serious enough to warrant a comprehensive and coordinated federal response. In the meantime, we're reassured by our president, vice president and our senior US senator that nothing's happening, everything's fine and we need to quit being so selfish and show some Christian compassion for our suffering millionaires and billionaires.

Besides, with all the gay marriage going on, Jesus is bound to come back soon to settle accounts, so why worry about the heat?

A certain lyrical quality

"watching cat hair float through the air on a Saturday night"

I don't know what this is about, exactly, but what a wonderful turn of a phrase!

Cat people are familiar, of course, with the gentle drift of cat hair, sometimes even in small clumps, drifting along through the air, and the way the afternoon sunlight streaming through a window catches individual strands –– especially the light-colored ones, sailing along carefree.

God is doing much better, by the way

Gimp looks markedly better than he did just a few days ago. He's more alert and he's already put on some weight (eating four tins of cat food a day -- I finally realized his teeth were too bad for him to eat dry food comfortably).

The first time I put food out for him -- on a shelf where I feed the other cats -- he made a feeble jump that took him only about seven or eight inches off the floor then dropped him back. Now he's climbing around everywhere like the other cats. I don't think I've seen him looking this healthy in the past four years. He slept by my head last night.

So what if Gimp is god (or vice versa)?

One of the stories from the Bible that still rings with authenticity in our time is the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham was instructed by God (or so he thought) to make a human sacrifice of his son, Isaac. We've all seen the famous painting in which Abraham has Isaac pinned against a rock, knife raised over his son's chest, when God suddenly says, "Never mind."

This story has the ring of authenticity because this kind of thing still happens all the time. I recall a story I covered about a woman who drowned her child in a bus station toilet because God told her to.

And even though we now treat this as mental illness, most of us still somehow think that in Abraham's case, it was the real deal, and ascribe all sorts of complex theological meaning to it.

We now sometimes call Judaism, Christianity and Islam the 'Abrahamic' faiths because of their common origin with this hallucinating tribal chieftain, and of course, we all note how famously all his descendants get on.

I personally believe God is 'way more likely to visit me in the form of a hungry stray cat or dog (or even a homeless panhandler, for whom I admittedly show less sympathy) than as a burning bush, pillar of fire, or red-faced cable TV screamer with perfect hair.

Friday night!!

I am a bundle of energy, always on the go.

An old cat

I brought Gimp the Cat in Tuesday. Gimp has been around the neighborhood as long as I've lived here. I call him Gimp because he has a bad leg or hip that causes him to walk with a stiff, awkward gait.

He looks like he's older than dirt, and over the past year he's gotten thinner and thinner. He was stretched out on the porch, barely moving in the heat, and he looked miserable. So I brought him in. I want to say he wandered in by himself sometimes a few years ago, but my memory may be wrong on that.

He ate voraciously when I put food down for him. I think he was abandoned here by someone who moved away, and he's had to forage for food. As he's gotten older, this has gotten harder and harder for him.

Last night I bathed him. He's never been good about grooming, and he had gotten filthy. He's part-Persian and he had matted hair with pieces of twigs and stuff trapoped in it. I've had a bit of experience in bathing cats and it's not really hard if a) you know what to do and b) the cat's too old and feeble to resist.

So he was clean and fed, and he had more energy yesterday than I think I've ever seen him display. And he stuck to me like glue. He would've slept with me, but Smudge growled at him from her position by my knees.

He's so thin it's obvious he's lost muscle mass, and I don't think he'll make it through the summer. But at least he'll spend his last days in a cool and confortable place.

My electric bill

$256, which is only about ten dollars more than last year.

But the heat is wearing me down. Will it ever cool off?

By the way

I feel led by some unknown force to repost this series of pictures, lest anyone who reads this by some chance be thinking about trying to unnaturally preserve youth through cosmetic surgery:

God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life.

soartstar previously commented:

"This isn't a dress rehersal; we're well into the third act of closing night. And you keep choosing the same part to play? You must get something out it."

I saw the light, I saw the light.
No more darkness; no more night.
Now I'm so happy no sorrow in sight.
Praise the Lord, I saw the light!

Image vs. Reality

I don't watch a lot of TV anymore, so I don't know if stations still do this.

But at one time, you'd see an occasional news promo showing Keanu Ogle or whomever jumping up from his desk, shouting instructions to the newsroom staff. Then, he'd dash out the door, necktie flying over his shoulder, and leap into the NewsUpdateStratoCopterCamCopter, which would then take off and disappear into the sun.

What you didn't see, after the marketing department photog had all the shots he needed, was the NewsUpdateStratoCopterCamCopter turn around and land, dropping off the anchor who would then return to the coffee and Chips Ahoy! cookies at his desk.

Because generally speaking, anchors never get off their asses except to shoot promos. I mean, why do you think they call them 'anchors'?

But in TV, as one of my bosses used to say, 'perception is reality,' so if a lump of gelatinous anchor flesh is shown being carried aloft to pursue the Big Story somewhere over the Oklahoma horizon, it must really be happening.

Meanwhile, the people who actually covered the stories labored in relative obscurity, because although they were doing the work, they didn't look like people who'd be doing the work, so they were unsuitable for the promos.

The issue for me, then, to clarify my previous post, is not whether I'm an artist, but whether I look like an artist, or more specifically a creative class "Graphics Design Consultant."

(Because, gawd, who wants to be a 'commercial artist'? That's some nerd with an X-Acto knife clipped in his shirt pocket and spots of formerly molten adhesive wax solidified into his pants. Have you seen my sheet of 10pt Helvetica bold LetraSet? How did my Zipatone get all creased up?)

And to narrow the scope even more, the question is whether I look like a Graphics Design Consultant to someone who has a certain conception of what a Graphics Design Consultant looks like, which is to say younger, thinner, more Lycra-clad and skinny-eyeglassed than me.

Because although I may be doing the work, I may not look like I'm doing the work. Perception, reality, etc.

What it is.

I'm a Happy Bomb Maker, Paul Hipp

Remington Steele

Remember how on Remington Steele, Stephanie Zimbalist hired whatisname -- James Bond number five -- to be Remington Steele because no one would believe she could be a private detective?

That's what I need: a 30-something dude with skinny glasses to pretend to be me... just go hang out at LiT and SKYY Bar and the art museum handing out my card, so people will think I'm actually an artist.

Getting older

One of the problems with getting older is that you are no longer young.

It's not only you that's old: your lifetsyle is old, your clothes are old, your ideas are old. Dressing young and acting young only makes you look ridiculous.

Several generations back, we turned physical attractiveness from an attribute –– like shoe size or hair color –– into a virtue –– like honesty or compassion. Then we did it for youth as well.

The rest of us are the old people, the boring people, the stupid people. We're the bad people. I was old, boring and stupid as a TV reporter when I hit forty. Now I'm old, boring and stupid for everything else.