Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Contact Overload

I spent a lot more time around other people this weekend than I usually do and I'm still feeling the effects. I should have paced myself more carefully. Now it's back to work, when what I really need is a day of seclusion.

I think I'll just be counting the minutes until I can come home. My sinuses are in terrible shape from being out in the dust and pollen all day yesterday. Tara protect me from crazy people, ambitious people and paranoid people until day's end.

I neglected to mention that I spent a short while meditating yesterday on the curb in front of the 7-Eleven at NW 36 & Penn. It was early in the day and quiet.

iTunes: Avaz-E Dashti, Yo-Yo Ma

Monday, May 29, 2006

Dream

Fell asleep and had some sort of weird dream where I guess I was a private detective.

I was investigating some sort of crime that maybe had happened decades before, and I was right on the verge of solving it. But I was being chased by a huge malevolent video game character. Not any character I'm actually aware of, just sort of a big black shape with a blue outline. I finally outwitted him by tricking him into crashing into another video game, where an NFL team tackled him and brought him down.

There was also something about running down a flight of stairs, and out onto a city street. Or maybe the street came first and then the stairs –– I don't know.

Then I woke up.

I'm going to be like Han-Shan, the Chinese poet who lived in a cave near a monastery and left his poetry written on rocks and carved in trees all over the valley. But first I have to learn how to write poetry.

I can't dance, either.

iTunes: Song of Realization, Choying Drolma and Steve Tibbets

Oh, I forgot

on iTunes: Ambuscade From Ten Sides, Lui Pui-yuen

Memorial Day 2006

Morning: I went to a certain outlet of a certain well-known chain of coffee shops – a certain outlet located on the edge of a certain affluent suburb. It's about three miles north of the limits of my usual social travels, but it is the fallback location for the usual suspects on holidays when our home coffee shop is not open.

So there I am at the certain outlet in the certain affluent neighborhood, 8:20 in the morning, and everyone there is genetically perfect. They're wearing genetically perfect clothes. They're driving genetically perfect automobiles of certain well-known luxury marques, unless they've ridden up on bicycles, in which case they're riding genetically perfect bicycles. They are perfect. Be ye perfect as they are perfect.

And I'm thinking to myself, "You so do not belong here. Run away, run away, run away, before they discover you." I felt like the Ethan Hawke character in Gattaca.

So I tried to get a grip on myself. "Calm down," I said. "Just drink your coffee and relax."

But I knew they knew. I knew that as soon as they saw me, they knew I was Not Like Them. I was a Morlock, a mutant, a sewer dweller, up from the damp depths of below-50th-street-but-not-historic-preservation neighborhoods.

"It's okay," I said to myself. "Just be patient. Friends are on the way. You are not alone."

And then the Kingpin emerged, lumbering down the sidewalk in a golf shirt and knee-length shorts that probably cost more than everything I'll wear this week, a banana-and-créme Frappucino® certain popular trademarked novelty beverage in his hand.

And I bolted. I bolted for my plain white minivan, parked at the end of the row of Lexuses and Infinitis, and took off. If you in a bag, you gotta bug out.

McGee drove up just as I was leaving. "You're on your own," I called as I headed for the minivan. "You're the Lone Ranger."

I drove around and gathered my wits, steeled my resolve, then returned to the certain coffee shop outlet in the certain affluent suburb. McGee was gone. I haven't heard from him since. Possibly someone collected a DNA sample from his coffee cup, discovered he was Not Like Them, and spirited him away. Perhaps he'll turn up later.

Later in the day, I did my volunteer stint at the Paseo Arts Festival, then hung around with executive director soartstar until the 6 pm closing. Bought 20 raffle tickets and won not a damn thing, while RJ who occasionally posts here won two pieces.

And that was my day.

Out late last night

Well, out late for me.

I'd planned to wander through the Paseo Arts Festival again Sunday evening. Got as far as Galileo, where the usual suspects were on the patio. Ate pizza, drank iced tea.

I joined the artists' association this year (even though the last hangable art I completed was in 1970-something) so I went to the little afterward party with soartstar, who reminded me of the crow's maxim to Fritz: 'If you in a bag, you gotta bug out.'

The last time I heard that expression was probably within a year or two of when I completed my last piece of hangable art.

I never saw the Ralph Bakshi movie. I only read the original R. Crumb comic. I don't remember how many Fritz stories he did before he killed the character off with an ice pick, but I remember that Fritz the Cat Bugs Out was by far the best. It probably owed a lot to 'On the Road,' which I had not yet read. 'Fritz Bugs Out' was a big deal for me at the time. I probably still have it somewhere, but I haven't seen it in decades.

Back in the present, soartstar and I wandered down to the other end of the Paseo in time to hear 'Whole Lotta Love' at the end of Pinkie and the Snakeshakers' show, then upstairs at the Blue Moon for the Fat Sow Trio. They did a cover of 'Go and Say Goodbye,' which is my favorite Buffalo Springfield song, and one which is rarely played even on album rock/oldies stations and which I have never heard covered by anyone, anywhere.

So I spent a lot of the evening in a kind of time warp. Now it's morning, I have the faintest touch of a hangover plus a little bit of contact overload. I should skip this morning's coffee shop session in favor of meditation, but I'm going to the coffee shop anyway. I'm working a trailer at the arts festival as a volunteer this afternoon (1 p.m.! It'll be like an oven!) so there's more contact overload ahead.

on iTunes: Wintry Wind, Riley Lee.

If you're in a bag...

you gotta bug out.

iTunes: Akikaze No Kyoku, Aiko Hasegawa

Sunday, May 28, 2006

Sunday PM

Morning at the Cup, a quick trip to the Arts Festival afterward.

Trying to stay cool and de-stressed.

iTunes: Maryaadakadaya, U Srinivas

Sunday AM

Most of the usual RC boomer group went instead last night to see Matt Walsh and the Mad Dogs, the great blues band (currently a quintet, up from a trio at last year's Claude Fest appearance) at the Paseo Arts Festival, I drank two beers, doubling my total year-to-date consumption. I don't especially like alcoholic stuff anymore, but sometimes it seems to hit the spot.

I've been a bit depressed lately. Some of it is just the normal cycle of depression I experience, and it will pass. Some it is related to my inability to deal with impermanence. I had settled into a certain comfort zone over the past few years which is about to be disrupted by events over which I have no control. I can't predict the outcome, but I can say it will affect a large part of my daily life and there is a strong possibility the changes, when they've been completed, will create an environment in which I will be less able or unable to function. Perhaps it will be enough of a change I will need to move to a more hospitable environment, although I can't imagine what or where that would be.

Time to reread Alan Watts' The Wisdom of Insecurity, the best book I have seen on the subject.

I have a friend who visited Crestone, CO last year and came back impressed. Maybe I could live there.

on iTunes: Nubchok Dechen, Choying Drolma and Steve Tibbets

I'm not normally a fan of Tibetan chant sound tracks, but the two Choying Drolma/Steve Tibbets collaborations, Cho and Selwa, are fantastic.

Saturday, May 27, 2006

3.27 a.m.

I could just give the house to my ex, which I will probably do at some point, anyway. The arrangement would be she could have the house if she would agree to take care of the cats -- Beasley and Smudge and the others. Room enough here for mine and hers, and a back yard for her dog.

I would take enough stuff to care for myself -- clothes and so on -- and hit the road. I don't know where yet. I'd have a destination in mind before I left, but I haven't decided on it yet.

I knew a guy years ago -- a TV executive -- who ended up a homeless person on the streets of a small town in Arkansas. Every time I think about that, I wonder why I didn't end up the same way and if I'm just delaying the inevitable by trying to hang on to my crap.

But if I'm going to be homeless, it's going to be someplace besides Arkansas.

on iTunes: Solitude, Richard Warner

3:01 a.m.

I'm ready for a retreat from the world for awhile. Like a year or so. I did this once before in 2000-2001, my "Walden" year. It would be great to do this every five years or so.

On iTunes: Red Sun, Anoushka Shankar

A bit much for three in the morning.

Friday, May 26, 2006

Back to the monastery...

I remembered reading something about "wise fools" or somesuch -- people who didn't live in the monastery, but lived near it and within its sphere of influence. Maybe a little too wack to be monks.

I think that's the ticket. Live down the road and see what wisdom you can pick up on the fly.

On Red Cup iTunes: In My Life, the Beatles.

Not that smart

I have never been a Mensa-level intellect, but I've always been a smarter-than-average guy.

Being smart is what allowed me to stay in the game of life with people who were better-looking than me, from better families than me, had better personalities than me or had more money than me.

In the end, though, it was never enough.

Occasionally something comes along to remind me that although I'm smart, I'm not that smart. Lots of people are smarter than me... and I found who some of them are today.

I'm not smart enough to be a success, and not dumb enough to be oblivious to my failure.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

On iTunes

Drink of Sorrow, Kitsu Mitsumishi and Toshiko Yonekawa.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Dispassion and non-attachment

I think I mentioned the other day I've been reading this collection of the Buddha's discourses, taken from the Pali canon and rearranged by subject.

I read one last night or the night before in which Master Gotama (and his translator) describe 'dispassion' as a desirable trait. While I think I had seen the adjective 'dispassionate,' this was the first time I had encountered 'dispassion' as a noun. I Googled it to make sure there really was such a word, and there is.

I've been wondering if dispassion and apathy are the same thing, and I've decided they aren't.

Apathy is not caring –– dispassion is caring with boundaries. The mess in Washington, for example: I do care, but I have learned to not work myself into a rage about it. I've ended my habit of posting enraged, ranting comments on political web sites. So that's dispassion, not apathy.

State politics? Apathy. Truly. I should care, but I don't.

Years ago, I had a friend lecture me about how I didn't seem 'passionate' about anything. Actually, I had several friends lecture me about it, and I sort of bought into it. Looking back on it now, I see that what they called 'passion' was what I would now call 'manufactured drama.' Even though I was neither Buddhist nor Taoist nor much of anything back then, I was actually closer to the truth than they were.

Which gets me to non-attachment, which is not unlike detachment. Those of you who've done any therapy relating to codependence, or read Janet Woititz or Melody Beattie (did I spell that right?) are familiar with the concept of detachment. Similarly, the Buddha taught non-attachment. If you're attached and you want to be non-attached, you have to detach.

I went through my list of attachments. This is harder than it sounds, because the stuff you detach from most readily is the stuff to which you're not really attached at all. Babyshit-flavor ice cream, for example. Totally non-attached to that. FOX News... non-attached. 'American Idol'... non-attached. Dan Brown novels... non-attached.

So what's the problem? The stuff to which we are really attached. I mean, we're so attached we won't even admit to ourselves we're attached, so when we're pondering the stuff to which we're attached, this is under the blobs of white-out we've painted there so we won't see it.

I can tell you that meditatation really helps. Not intense, furrowed-brow concentration, but just quiet attention to the breath. Letting ideas enter your mind, then watching them float away.

Some ideas and notions and goals to which I was very attached floated away like that.

The way you know you've detached –– rather than just denied yourself –– is that you feel liberated and released, not resigned and deprived and defeated.

On iTunes: Tala Sawari, Ravi Shankar.

Monday, May 22, 2006

What is it?

Do you know?

Find something in your house. Pick it up and hold it in your hand.

What is it? Is it anything? Do you know?

Find something else. Pick it up. What is it? Do you know?

What the hell is it?

Go outside. Look up. What is it? Do you know?

What do you know? Do you know anything?






















Really?

If you look at it, you'll see it.

If you look for it, you won't.
























I don't know anything.

And it's okay to not know.






























Because there isn't anything to know.


























Remember the words of Zen master Madge:


























"You're soaking in it."

Sunday, May 21, 2006

No Borders after all

Stayed home this evening. Ate Oscar Mayer 'Lunchables' from 7-Eleven for dinner, and had Tropicana lemonade to go with it. Man, them's good eatin's.

On iTunes: Nomads of the Tibetan High Plateaus by Nawang Kechog.

Updated my myspace profile. I rarely look at myspace. I literally can't stand the sight of it. It's hideous. You can get into it and clean it up a little, but it's like trying to duplicate Mies van der Rohe with a half a box of Legos and half a box of Tinkertoys. The thing is barely functioning as I write this.

A few technical notes

I don't know when it changed, but iTunes (at least on the Mac) can now simulcast to multiple IP addresses. If you have more than one Airport Express node on your WiFi network, you can stream via AirTunes to one or all of them, and have music playing in your den, living room, and bedroom simultaneously. Even your bathroom, if you have enough electrical outlets.

I also found this nifty shareware doodad called Remote Remote which allows the user to control iTunes on another computer from whichever one he's at. Some of you know I run iTunes on a headless 733 Quicksilver G4 that doesn't do anything but play music. I can do simple commands from my 'main' Mac without having to open up Chicken of the VNC, which used to be my preferred method for managing iTunes.

It also displayes the name of the current iTunes track, so I can tell you that right now I'm listening to 'Moonlight on the Mountain' performed by Richard Warner on the 'Quiet Heart & Spirit Wind' CD.

Sunday pm

Today was a day for some needed solitude. No Red Cup, no Borders (but maybe Borders later), but just time around the house and yard.

About the monastery thing: I don't want to be a monk. But sometimes I think it would be nice to live like a monk for a year or two. There's just too much stuff going on. Too much material stuff going on. Too much emotional/psychological stuff going on. I want to light some incense, listen to some Japanese flute music or Indian ragas, and just zone out for several months.

Too much stuff goin' on.

Friday, May 19, 2006

It's Frrrrrrrrridaaaaaaaaay.

I've completed my first appearance before the grand jury. Questions were of a general nature. Thank god they didn't ask me about the grassy knoll.

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Uma, Oprah. Oprah, Uma.

I've told my friends at the Red Cup that if the Red Cup were an online community, it would be the Well.

And I've told some of my fellow Wellpern that if the Well were a coffee shop, it would be the Red Cup.

So there's something kind of special about reading my own posts and seeing comments from Wellpern and Cuppers alike. It's like both my families meeting for the first time.

So feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

3:40 a.m.

Woke up.

I think I'd like to live in a monastery fo awhile. Not forever. Maybe a year or two years.

There's too much goin' on. I want to get away from it for awhile.

Sunday, May 14, 2006

The bubble

I live today less than a mile from the garage apartment where my folks lived when I was born. Although I have lived in Edmond and far north Oklahoma City, I find as I grow older that I want to stay closer and closer to the old neighborhood. I used to want to go no farther west than Meridian; now I'm down to May. I didn't like going any farther north than Quail Springs; now Penn Square seems uncomfortably distant. I start getting antsy when I can't see the OCU library.

I discovered when I started hanging out at the Red Cup that a lot of people feel the same way I do, and that their arbitrary 'comfort zones' are about the same as mine: May or Portland to the west, 50th to 63rd north, Santa Fe or Lincoln to the east and Reno to the south (although I can do SW 44 –– my grandmother had friends who lived in Capitol Hill when I was a kid, and I don't feel out of place there).

This area, which some folks call 'the bubble,' is also roughly the northwest corner of Oklahoma City during the forties and fifties, before annexation of hundreds of square miles of open farm land briefly made Oklahoma City the largest city in the world in area. It is an area where the houses are all old, the streets all laid out in grids and neighborhoods are filled with tall pecan and elm trees.

Actually, there are days when the borders of my bubble are the edges of my bed. But I have to get up anyway.

My brain is turning into beets

Read the first sentence of the post about the Wi-Fi routers.

What kind of bonehead uses 'two' when he means 'too'?

This is something that began happening to me about 2000.

When I was in my twenties and thrities and working as a reporter, no one had to proofread my copy. It was always right. Now it's so full of typos, spelling errors and weird stuff like using 'two' for 'too' that I'm almost afraid to write anything.

I hope this is just me getting old and not some sort of disease.

Oh... I misspelled 'thirties', too. Great.

New link

I've added a link over on the right to Karmic Ironies, whose author, Erika West, lives in Oklahoma. I don't know her except to occasionally say 'hi' as she passes, but we are occasionally in some of the same places in the Red Cup/Galileo zone. As you'll see in her blog, she was at the Andrew Rice grand opening event, which I also attended.

At least, I think that's Erika West. I guess it could be someone else.

And it's okay to not know.

WiFi routers from HELL!

About three months ago my trusty Linksys WRT54G gave up the ghost. I came home to find it with all the lights stuck on red and the case almost two hot to the touch.

I panicked and raced to the store and bought the first WiFi router I could find... a D-Link.

(Sometime I'll post about Internet dependency.)

Well, the D-Link was okay, but not the equal of the Linksys. Still, it did what I needed it to do, and I was happy.

Today, I bought a new Linksys router for a friend, and was mentioning it to my next door neighbor. "Do you have WiFi?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"Is the name of your network ____________? I saw that and I knew it had to be you."

"Well, um yeah. I thought I had the SSID disabled, but I guess I didn't."

And I came in and immediately sat down to disable SSID.

If you've taken a laptop into a coffee shop (or at least a Mac into a coffee shop -- I don't know if PCs work the same way), the first time you turn on WiFi it will show you a list of all the WiFi networks within range whose SSIDs are being broadcast.

But you don't have to broadcast your SSID and unless you're running a public WiFi hotspot, you probably shouldn't broadcast it. I became a believer in WiFi security when I was sitting at my computer one evening and noticed my DSL modem light and my router WAN lights flickering even though I wasn't doing anything. It could have been some knucklehead trying to probe my home network from the other side of the router, but it could have also been someone parked on the street downloading or uploading who-knows-what with a laptop using my DSL connection.

I thought my home network name was known only to me and discovered from my neighbor that it was visible to the world.

But as soon as I disabled it, the D-Link locked up and died. Repeated resets did nothing but shift the thing into firmware update mode, which was no improvement.

So, out came the Linksys router which I had purchased for my friend. Unknown to me, some things had changed with the Linksys since I had bought mine a couple of years ago, and not for the better: a new, non-GPL operating system and a steep cut in RAM -- both apparently done to stop third-party developers from enabling features on the WRT54G that Linksys didn't want enabled.

(Sorry. If you're a router geek this is 'way oversimplified and if you're not a router geek it's 'way more than you wanted to know.)

After about 90 minutes of fiddling, I got the new Linksys router working. The web-server based setup is really buggy, which is probably because of whatever the new OS is, and I had to reset, reset, reset and reset again to get it running. Probably eight to ten resets in all.

More plants

Three more rose bushes planted today.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Dada dada dada dada, dada dada dada dada

So you're sitting at a red light, waiting for it to change, and a big midnight blue sedan with a bubble top and huge scalloped fins pulls up beside you.

It's the Batmobile! And there's Batman, in his mask and ears, waiting just like you for the light to change. He's gotten through beating the crap out of the Joker or something, and now he's on his way home.

So what do you do? Do you honk to get his attention? If he looks, do you wave? Will he wave back? Or will he just keep looking straight ahead, like, "Hey, I'm Batman. I know I'm the shit."

Aerosmith is on the radio, and over in the Batmobile, Batman is mouthing the lyrics: "Walk this way! Walk this way!" It's like Steven Tyler's voice is coming out of Batman.

And Batman listens to the same radio station you do! How cool is that?

He fiddles with his rear view mirror a little bit, then puts it back the way it was. Plays a little air guitar.

He picks up his cellphone. Who's he talking to? Catwoman? Poison Ivy? Denise Richards?

He gets off the phone, reaches down and pulls a Dasani water from the Bat-cupholder and takes a swig, then puts it back.

You can see the light turn yellow for the other direction of traffic. Batman eases off the brake and lets the Batmobile inch forward.

The light changes green. There's a brief squeal of rubber, and zoom! he's off to the Batcave.

If you lived in Gotham City, you could actually see this happen.

Gonna sell my house in town

I have a friend who has taken the Bodhisattva vow. At least I think she's taken it. She talks about it as if she has. So she'll come back, life after life, rejecting Nirvana, until all sentient beings are enlightened.

Master Gotama was a bodhisattva before becoming Shakyamuni Buddha.

Me, I don't know nothin'. Who am I going to enlighten? I have nothing to tell anyone (which hasn't stopped me from making 270 posts here since last November). I am no example by which to live.

You start thinking about what you have to offer the world, and realize how small your contribution is or has been.

My contribution is no greater or less than most other people's – I guess I've just become more aware of how inconsequential all of it is. Like ants carrying single crumbs back to the hill.

But of course it all adds up, and it's the cumulative effect one has to consider. Every ant does its part, bringing a crumb.

Soon, you have an anthill full of crumbs.



My allergies have been doing a lot better since I got the air purifier running. It's not big enough for the whole house, but at least keeps the area where I sleep relatively allergen-free.



And if I didn't mention it, the new VGA card arrived, and the desktop Mac is back in service. Sometime I'll post about Internet dependency.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Sunday night

I went for a drive tonight, just trying to deal with cabin fever.

I turned on an old air purifier this afternoon, one with a HEPA filter, and it has helped my allergies some, as long as my head is right over it. Someone recommended the air cleaners from The Sharper Image to me, but whoa, those are a little pricey.

Still reading "In the Buddha's Words."

Feeling kind of depressed and withdrawn.

Victim or vixen redux

Okay, I saw a copy of People today, and, God help me, I opened it and read more. It wasn't Heather Locklear's husband, it was her ex-husband.

So big deal.

The real story here is that, given the chance to turn my gaze away from this tawdry cheap celebrity melodrama and read something worthwhile, I caved in like a 70-year-old detached garage.

I feel dirty somehow.

Denise Richards: Victim or Vixen?

Heh heh heh. I saw that headline on a magazine at 7-Eleven this morning. 'Foreign Policy Quarterly' or 'The Nation' or something.

Denise Richards is a sentient being just like the rest of us, (This is easier to conceptualize if you didn't see her playing a nuclear scientist in 'The World Is Not Enough.') and I'm sure her pain is just like our pain and her needs are just like our needs.

Okay, maybe not. But stay with me.

So Denise Richards married Charlie Sheen, whom, through the miracle of Shit to Brain Osmosis, I knew to be something of a playboy and cad. Apparently Denise Richards is somewhat immune to SBO, because she didn't know it. He cheated on her or something, and they split up.

Victim!

Now she has –– well, what has she done? Something with the husband of Heather Locklear. Heather Locklear!

Vixen!

Anyway, the SBO crystal ball has not revealed the details to me yet, but I'm sure at some point all will be made clear.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

Sorry, cats

Didn't make it to the pet store. I stopped at Home Depot and bought six star jasmines and two white rose bushes instead. That will make 16 new perennials I've planted around the house and yard this spring, plus a handful of annuals.

The jasmines go around the deck. One white rose went at the corner of the deck and the other across the sidewalk by the garage.

Still here

A drizzly, cool Saturday, and I'm at home. I'll go get cat food and other pet stuff later.

My allergies have been in full attack mode all week. I took some Claritin this morning and I'm okay right now, but I don't know how long it will last.

I made a promise to myself I would not talk about work here, but I will mention that my boss retired a week ago Friday, and this past week has been fairly hectic. It will stay that way until her replacement is hired.

I'm going in a little early most days, but I haven't needed to stay late.

But between that additional stress and the allergies, I've been really dragging.



I'm now reading –– I've forgotten the name of it –– an anthology of the Buddha's discourses, pulled from various texts of the Pali canon and arranged by subject.

Bhikkhu Bodhi is the translator and editor.

There are a zillion different flavors and varieties of Buddhism, but my particular lineage –– the Kindasorta (or 'Sport Utility Vehicle') School –– doesn't view the Buddha's teachings as 'God-breathed' (as some Christians describe the Bible), so if someone rearranges the text for better readability or understanding, that's okay.



The VGA card on my dual G5 cratered Thursdaay, limiting my ability to work at home. I'm thankful I also have the laptop.

There was apparently a known problem with the cards that came with the first dual G5s –– well, not known to me, unfortunately –– but reported in other places. In any event, my monitors are blank until a new card arrives from Smalldog.