Tuesday PM Random Notes

My energy level has returned now that I'm through with the antibiotics. It happened rather quickly, too... about 18 hours after my last dose.

Of course, when I say that my energy level is back to normal, I mean normal for me.

---

As far as the girlfriends and physics discussion goes, I have little to contribute. More, however, here.

I guess I can say I've never been all that crazy about mystery. I'm more into a sense of the absurd.

In fact, I will say that typically in my life, I have fallen love with women after I've known them for awhile - like maybe a couple of years, which means the mystery is long gone.

---

And then there's this, from Westika:

Come to think of it, though, why the hell do men marry bitches? It's so fucking true and so fucking frustrating.

But hell. It is what it is. Of all the many examples I could give, I'll stick with this one:

Mcarp and Butthead.

Now I know this may be bad timing, but I've been thinking about it for a while. Butthead, a stray or vagrant feline, I gather, scratches the man to the point he requires prescription drugs and posts about 15 blogs about it. All I'm saying here is that's a pretty fucking bad deal. (And I am sorry about the trauma of the entire experience. I don't mean to make too much light.) And his initial response was the desire to adopt him, basically commit to him forever. And he basically did. The forever just happened to be pretty quick, even in cat years.

Well, Butthead was not my type, either in gender or species, so I wasn't about to marry him. I did plan to bail him out of the animal shelter because I was used to seeing him around (he'd been hanging around the house off and on for four years) and I didn't want him euthanized just because he had bitten me when provoked. It wasn't as if he had deliberately infected me.

Butthead was not a particularly unpleasant or aggressive cat. In fact, considering he was an intact tom, he was pretty docile. I expected him to be low maintenance.

I don't know why men marry bitches. I don't know why women marry losers. People are just wired differently.

Health note

I am still exhausted. Mentally alert but so tired I can barely move. I left work at noon, ate a bagel at the Red Cup and went home. I tried to sleep and was able to nap for a couple of hours, but I was just as tired when I woke up as I was when I went to sleep.

Didn't go out at all this evening.

End of the road for Butthead the Cat

The vet at the animal shelter told me today that Butthead tested positive for FIV. That makes him a threat to other cats, so he'll be euthanized.

I have some mixed feelings about this. He would have eventually lost his immune system and died of something or other.

But if I hadn't stuck my foot out that evening, and he hadn't bitten me, he'd still be wandering free around the neighborhood right now... possibly, of course, to infect other cats.

So one thing leads to another and another and now he's going to die for having done nothing except be a sick cat.

I had a conversation the other night with a couple of friends about the word 'deserve,' as it is sometimes used in the context, "he didn't deserve to have that happen to him." That is such a fundamentally flawed concept - that people (or animals) 'deserve' or 'don't deserve' some random turn of events that there's no point in us even making mention of it. Nobody 'deserves' anything, in that sense of the word. It just happens (or it just doesn't).

I saw two people badly hurt in a motorcycle accident the other day. Did they deserve it? No. Did they not deserve it? No. Those are equally invalid questions.

Buddhism teaches us to have compassion for all sentient beings. I have compassion for most, and that's the best I've been able to do so far. I have compassion for dogs and cats, but not for cattle and pigs - at least not enough to stop eating pepper steak and barbecue.

So I have compassion for Butthead and I feel empathy for his confusion at being locked in a cage in a strange place away from his familiar surroundings and facing certain death (if it hasn't happened already). In fact, being someone who was picked up and moved a lot as a kid makes the loss of familiar surroundings especially resonate with me.

Plus, because I like familiarity and am comfortable with it, the knowledge that I won't see ol' Butthead again is painful. That's not compassion for a sentient being... that's attachment, which is a dangerous place to be, since we're not guaranteed anything we have today will still be with us tomorrow.

Wasted

The clinic warned me the antibiotic might kick my ass: 4000 mg of Augmentin a day. But I made it through the weekend with no ill effects.

Then, Monday, wham. Now I wake up tired, I go through the day tired, I come home tired.

You may recall back last year when, unbeknownst to myself, I was suffering from severe anemia. I'd wake up and be fine but start to fade about midmorning.

This is different. I'm faded when I wake up. By day's end, my arms and legs feel like they've got lead weights on them. I'm mentally alert, but my body's so tired I can't focus.

---

I expect to be able to retrieve Butthead the Bite Cat from Animal Welfare tomorrow. Well, most of Butthead the Bite Cat, anyway, since certain parts essential to the propagation of his species will be left behind. Since about two-thirds of the cat population in this neighborhood appears to be either his direct or indirect offspring, I expect this will reduce the number of cats roaming this area within a couple of years.

An animal welfare activist explained to me a couple of years ago the theory of exponential cat population growth: one cat has three or four kittens, a year later those cats have three or four kittens, and the third year those cats have three or four kittens. Meanwhile the cats from years one and two are also still having kittens. You can see the horrific implications.

Like a lot of other theories, though, this one doesn't stand up well under the noonday sun of reality. If cats actually multiplied at the rate predicted, the earth would have already been ass-deep in cats back when King Tut was wearing diapers.

Cats are crazier than shit, by the way. I don't know if you knew that, but they are. I don't know what they're thinking.

How lucky I am

They say it's never good to compare oneself to others. One of two things will result: dissatisfaction and resentment or arrogance and pride.

But on the other hand, sometimes it's good to check in to get a point of reference. If you never met the man who had no feet, you might go on feeling sorry for yourself because you had no shoes.

With that in mind, I got some points of reference today that have helped reassure me that I am on the right track. Not because I'm smart or wise, but because of a chain of events that led me to where I am now.

I had been a little depressed today, and feeling a little sorry for myself, and then I got some reminders how good I have it.




Gata, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi swaha!

The wee hours, Sunday morning

I went to the animal shelter Saturday to post Butthead's bail. He still has about a week of observation to go, but there's no chance he'll be euthanized for lack of someone coming forward to claim him.

The foot continues to improve, but it still has a way to go.

Solitude

I'll tell ya what – there is something to be said for spending an evening at home alone once in awhile. Over the past 24 months, I've gone from being a person who spent all his free time alone to a person who spends almost none of it alone.

I haven't had any music on tonight or anything else.

There was a Taoist writer – it's one of those guys who's in "The Taoist Classics" – who pretty much dismissed music as man's half-assed effort to improve on the sounds of nature.

All I'm hearing tonight is a fan, the clicks of my keyboard and the occasional yawn or snort of a sleeping cat.

Refreshingly peaceful.

Which is more important?

Freedom of speech or the chance to make a gazillion bucks?

In case you don't know the answer.

Meanwhile, on Mars

They've found ice. Lots of ice.

Cat attack update

I'm not the only victim.



Watch it... just the first 30 seconds or so... then scroll down for context and analysis.































Cats have a way of saying "put me down."

That's not what this cat was saying. This cat was saying, "put me the fuck down."

Even as the anchors are breathlessly introducing Fox 8 News Reporter Kathleen Cochrane LIVE from Russell Township, you can hear the cat saying, "Put me the fuck down. Put me the fuck down. I am not kidding about this. Put me... the fuck... down."

But reporter Cochrane apparently doesn't get the gravity of the situation. She's too busy trying to say her lines, remember the consultant's admonition to 'show the prop, refer to the prop,' and get the roll cue for the internal package right.

"I don't give a shit if you're from Fox 8 News. I don't care if you're Oprah. Put me the fuck down!"

And then, when she says, "cats like this one," because this is like, you know, a reference cat, just in case you've never seen one before –– well, the cat was just pushed over the edge.

Exactly as I would have been.

Kathleen Cochrane's first-person account of her brush with terror can be found here.

Friday update

My foot looks a lot better (and looks are everything), and doesn't hurt to walk on anymore. However, it is still too swollen to get a shoe on. And although it doesn't hurt, it sure does itch.

I have not been as mindful today about keeping it elevated as I did yesterday. I've kept it at waist level, which is easy, but it's supoosed to be higher than my heart, for circulation purposes, and in that position, it's impossible to do about anything... even sleep.

And even though, I'm home, I have so much office work piling up that I've been trying to take care of some of it by VPN.

So, I'll miss dinner again tonight, and maybe I'll venture out in the morning for breakfast.

The news tonight

I didn't make it to dinner tonight. I'm sitting here propping my leg up.

My foot has quit hurting, even when I occasionally get up and walk on it. But the doctor told me walking on it was part of what was slowing the healing. It's not as red as it was when I headed to the clinic this morning, but it's just as puffy... maybe puffier.

Animal control put out a trap for Butthead today, and he wandered into it only about five minutes later. They'll hold him for ten days for rabies observation, as required by law.

I told them that if his owner doesn't come get him, I'll take him. I'm suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.

Nora the Piano Playing Cat

This is pretty cool.

Latest news

The doc doubled my antibiotic dosage (more than doubled it, actually) and told me stay in bed with my foot elevated. I'll be more or less incommunicado through the weekend...

Cat bite update

The antibiotic is still just holding its own. The swelling had gone down when I got up this morning, and based on that I decided to forestall a trip to my GP and go to work.

But by late afternoon the swelling was back to where it was and I briefly had a low fever. Off to the doctor's office tomorrow for sure.

New blog link

I've added a new blog to the list on the right. It's the blog of Amanda Joy. I don't know Amanda Joy. I do know that, like John Long, she is one of those people whose first name is never spoken without the second name right behind it. It's never just "Amanda" -- it's "Amanda Joy."

That makes her and John Long both sort of the anti-Tanner.

I've seen her around the Red Cup and Sauced! and she's friends with some of my friends.

And she writes, although in different words and tenor, about some of the same things I think about.

Not much to report

It doesn't seem to be getting any better, nor is it worsening. I had a slight fever when I got to the ER (no Ted Nugent references allowed, ok?), but that has not returned.

The pain is mildly annoying pretty much all the time, and worse when I try to walk on it.

Home today

The swelling increased some overnight. Still can't get shoes on.

Late Evening Update

The very first antibiotic had a very salutary effect. The swelling diminished considerably and I'm able to walk with only the mildest discomfort. I could barely walk at all when I posted previously.

I'll probably be able to go back to work tomorrow... dammit.








And seriously, I'm not mad at Butthead. He was just being a cat.

Evening Update

So along about 2:30, my left foot starts to look like a cantaloupe with toes growing out of it, and I decide I better get to Saint's E.R. and get some antibiotics.

I take a quick shower, put on some presentable clothes, and head out the door.

And who should come sauntering out from under my minivan but Mr. Rip-My-Goddam-Foot-Off-Why-Don't-You, and he's like "Hey, what's up, man?"

"I'll tell you what's up, mother******! I'm on my way to the ****in' emergency room because my foot's turning into a pumpkin! Now get the **** out of my way!"

"Sorry, man. Guess I was in a state. Well, good luck at the E.R. Mind if I take a nap on your porch while you're gone?"

"What?! You better not be there when I get back, or I'll have you declawed at the elbow and they'll be calling you 'Stumpy' instead of 'Butthead.'"

"Yeah, OK. I'm real worried. You better get out of here before your foot explodes."









The preceding was a dramatization of actual events.

I am now on an antibiotic and my foot is so sore I can barely walk. I'm limping badly. It got visibly worse during the time I was in the E.R. I hope I see some improvement by morning.

Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow

Forget anything I said about cats being all zen and shit. Cats are crazy mf's.

You never see a zen master jump up from his zafu, sprint across the zendo and back, and then sit down again like nothing happened.

Bear in mind I have nothing but compassion for the cat across the street who reduced my left foot to a bloody shredded stump last night when I tried to nudge him out the front door. He's doing the best he can with what he has to work with, and I can empathize with his fear and dismay at being pushed out into the night.

But my foot still hurts.

It's times like this you really miss having a significant other. Established medical protocol calls for me to assume the role of a 12-year-old boy, while my SO takes on the roles of mother, nurse and fetcher of Life cereal. But I have to do all that myself.

Damn, this hurts. He really whacked me good.

Ow ow ow ow ow

Never nudge a pissed off cat with your bare foot.

Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow.

Shit.

BUT... since I've already started judging and evaluating...

... maybe it's worth noting that I'm not attracted to the person, whom I don't know at all.

I'm attracted to the look, which is to say a certain pattern of light reflected off an object as it reaches my corneas and is interpreted by my brain.

And then I form an opinion. A judgement. An evaluation. An attachment.

And not an attachment to the person. An attachment to the neurotransmissions and whatever internal chemical response they create.

But that's how it always starts, isn't it? Light reflects off an object, reaches your corneas and is interpreted by your brain, and then presto! – the next thing you know you've tried on seven separate occasions to be in the same place so you can strike up a conversation (but you're pretty sure it's not stalking), or you've leased it from the dealership for 60% of your monthly takehome pay, or you've bought it and stuck it in a closet that's already jammed to overflowing with others only marginally different from it.

And you're ass-deep in debt, heart-deep in drama. And all you really wanted was the neurotransmissions.

And then a certain pattern of light reflected off an object reaches your corneas and is interpreted by your brain...

An observation

There is a meditation practice that consists of observing one's thoughts as they naturally occur and then, without judgement or evaluation, letting them pass on. I've tried this a few times, with varying degrees of success.

Think of what I'm about to write as a form of that meditation.

I saw a woman the other day who was wearing baggy overalls, no makeup, and who had obviously been painting something because her hands were caked with white paint. And there was something about that look that struck me as very appealing.

I guess it was the paint that did it, because it suggested creativity to me, even though it was probably just wall paint.

Remember what I wrote about 'I Dream of Jeannie'? That still holds. I can certainly have the appropriate conditioned response to a glamorous blonde dressed like a harem girl.

But if I had to pick things that really strike me as attractive, the mildly dishevelled 'don't give a shit' look is one of them. And god knows how the white paint factors into it. I wonder if I would've had the same response if it had been blue or green paint.

But see? Now I'm judging and evaluating.

Actually, he's right

In the post 'Turtleneck News,' I wrote

I'm fat, hate crowds and can't meditate. And yet two squirrels will still chase each other up and down a tree.

To which blogblah! commented:

MC, you ARE the two squirrels.

Which is correct. I am the two squirrels. And so are you. As you read this, you are also blogblah! And you are me. And you are RJ and Celia and Sweeney and Karl Rove (yes, Karl Rove) and Amy and Amy's dog, Bella, and William Shatner and the panhandler I turned down last night and the Rolling Stones and Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light and that guy you saw standing on the street corner talking to some invisible person standing in front of him and...

we're all the two squirrels chasing each other up and down a tree. We're all the cat sleeping on the window sill.

Because we're all the same thing. This isn't a huge philosophical concept to swallow. It makes just as much sense as the equally arbitrary declaration that we're all separate.

The Enlightenment Test

Here's a 12-question test of your understanding of Buddhist enlightenment:

http://www.beliefnet.com/section/quiz/index.asp?sectionID=10001&surveyID=112

And here's my 1-question test:

What should the 13th question on that test have been?

Get me to the Airport, and step on it.

I used a Linksys WRT54G router for about two years and was very happy with it. I don't know what fried it, but something did. So I bought another. This was one of the newer ones with the later, non-open source OS and skimpy memory.

It never actually quit, but it started acting flaky after about six months. I replaced it with a D-Link which bloated and died within a matter of weeks. That was replaced with another WRT54G, which is now about six months old... and has begun acting flaky.

The WRT54G is the Toyota Camry of routers, but I want something even more reliable. I'm worn out with this routine of reboot, reset, turn on and off, rinse and repeat for two hours until I get a functioning PPPoE connection.

Tomorrow, I'm off to PROMac to get an an Apple Airport router.

Turtleneck news

The first of my new mock turtleneck shirts arrived from Jos. A Bank today. While it technically fits, it doesn't have the loose tent-like quality I prefer.

So, I can

1. lose weight


2. send them all back and move up a size


3. sleep in them until they stretch out some


4. 1 and 3

Sending them back will be a hassle, of course. Ordered over the net, not bought at the store (that's what I was looking for during the big meltdown at the mall). So maybe I can shed some pounds and they'll fit a little better.

I'm fat, hate crowds and can't meditate. And yet two squirrels will still chase each other up and down a tree.

Bicycle news

I finally got around to taking the clipless pedals off my bike tonight. Only took about ten minutes. I had been putting it off for months. I originally liked the idea of clipless pedals because I thought I would be riding this bike mostly around Lake Hefner.

But I never did. And I never rode it around the hood because it was too much trouble to find the shoes and put them on.

So the old-fashioned block pedals went back on tonight. I'm going to try to use the bike more on weekends and quit driving so much.

I'm too damn fat.

I meditate like a wuss.

I now have that as a confirmed fact, after almost barfing in a dojo tonight.

I went to my first group meditation, and you know what? I can't do it. I totally cannot do it.

I can sit until my hips ache. I can sit until my left foot goes so completely numb I can't move it at all. But when I'm so woozy and lightheaded I feel like I'm going to throw up my dinner... when a cold sweat breaks out on my face and neck... when I'm breathing like Darth Vader... I have to quit.

So I will continue to meditate at home, gently and briefly. And probably rarely.

My cat sleeps on the window sill whether I can sit well or not.

What I saw today...

...a driver going down a downtown street in an SUV talking on a cellphone... which was wedged between her head and her shoulder so she could have both hands free to struggle with tearing open a bag of Cheetos.

Here's something else...

Shopping is just poison. Never mind the credit card debt... even if you're a billionaire and can pay cash for everything, buying stuff all the time is poison. Owning piles of consumer goods is poison. This isn't about capitalism or the free market – it's about not burying yourself under so much physical crap that you can't breathe.

Well, yes and no

What blogblah! wrote here...

Materialism, the root of MCARP’s diatribe about malls over on 3:40 a.m., is about getting laid.

is in part true, I suppose. But I wasn't thinking about getting laid or not getting laid when I was sort of staggering through the mall. I almost couldn't think at all.

Most of the people I saw were, I think, wandering the same way I used to on weekend afternoons. I started out with the need for some distraction, which was then refined and guided by Esquire and GQ, which I read religiously back in the day. I kept looking for shirts (which, in those days, were ostentatiously - and, thankfully, briefly - known as 'shirtings'), ties, braces, silk pocket squares and other sartorial paraphernalia that I thought would give some sense of individual identity.

(It didn't work, I guess, because I didn't stick with it. I described my physique to someone this morning as that of a cardboard tube of unbaked buttermilk biscuits that's just been popped open with a whack on the edge of the kitchen counter. Industrial Light & Magic couldn't give me the 'GQ look,' let alone Armani.)

Eventually, though, I began going to the mall purely out of reflex. Saturday afternoon... must... go... to... mall. At that point, all I was looking for was to be anesthetized against the misery of my life. I reached the point that I was a compulsive shopper, with credit card balances totaling five figures, before I finally flamed out and cratered.

And yesterday, the place was freakin' packed with people who seemed to be headed the same way.

Maybe this all seems so bleak because I remember how utterly depressed I was when I wandered malls. And obviously I'm projecting a lot of my baggage on a bunch of strangers.

A trip to the mall

I remember when, back in the day, Penn Square was mostly one story high, had no roof, and you could wander about John A. Brown and the smaller shops – or Montgomery Ward, if you had an appetite for crap – at leisure.

Today... well, it's a lot bigger and busier than it was back before Erika West was born.

But good lord.

It gets harder and harder for me to handle the crowds and the aural and visual noise of malls in general. I rarely set foot in one anymore.

It's not just the crowds - it's also those damn kiosks in the centers of the walkways – the ones selling the cellular moon jewel radio controlled helicopter doodads. They're just a blur to me. One little hut on wheels after another with glittery cultural detritus hanging from them. It might as well be the midway at the state fair.

I didn't find what I was looking for at the mall, by the way, and ended up ordering it over the web.

After the mall trip, I went over to a chain place for lunch. It was packed at 2 p.m. and I ate at the bar. Same thing: noise everywhere. People talking, TVs cranked up and tuned to ESPNs 1 through 110. I actually tried listening to one of the TV sets, and I kept getting fragments of words. I don't know if there was something wrong with the sound or if I was just on the brink of a psychotic episode and my brain was refusing to accept any more input.

This is why my bubble keeps getting smaller and smaller... eventually, I fear, to encompass only a small rectangle whose corners are my bed, my computer, my toilet and my refrigerator.

Actually, I could move the computer to the bathroom and shrink that down to a triangle.

It's too damn crazy out there.

5:04 am

It is now past 5 am, and I have been unable to sleep since about 2:30. I hope I can catch up on my sleep sometime today.

Grumpy middle-aged guy note

I again heard some twenty-something person talking this week about something they did 'back in the day.'

This would have been in, like, 2003.

When iPods were popular. When we were at war in Iraq.

You know, during the Bush administration. The current Bush administration.

Sorry, but if you are under thirty, you don't have a 'back in the day.'

Check with me again in 2037, if I'm still alive.

The guru thing

As I've mentioned before, I don't have a Zen teacher, so maybe what I'm doing isn't Zen at all.

When I was a practicing fundamentalist Christian in the early 70's, I desperately wanted the approval of my pastor, of my Sunday School teacher, of pretty much anyone. I said things I didn't really believe, talked myself into believing things I didn't think made sense, and basically fooled myself so as to fit in with the group.

I wanted to believe that my teachers had some higher level of wisdom. In retrospect, I see that most of them weren't as clued in as I was.

I also desperately wanted to believe that they never smoked, never drank, never lost their tempers, never cheated on their spouses or did any other nonspiritual thing. In fact, most of them were less moral than I was. But I couldn't see that at the time, mainly because I didn't want to.

I think getting hooked up with a guru is sort of like getting a crush. When you have a crush on someone, you have the looks and not much else. So you begin filling in the blanks from your own imagination.

And not surprisingly, you attribute to your crush object all the qualities and values you most cherish. For example, I'm pretty sure that Barbara Eden is one of the greatest intellects of our generation, and compassionate and caring as well. And when she was dressed in that 'Jeannie' outfit, she was even intellectualer, compassionater and caringer.

So I think it must be with gurus. You hear now and then about some guy who has a bunch of followers in spite of the fact that it's as plain as the nose on your face that he's batshit crazy. His followers saw him at a retreat or a revival or a seminar, became entranced by his personal style before knowing very much about him, then filled in the blanks from their own idealized notions of what a spiritual master should be like. Then they followed him down the primrose path to Jonestown or Waco, or contracted AIDS from him during some 'higher tantric teaching'.

The good thing about gathering teaching from a book is that it's personality-neutral. I don't need to earn the book's acceptance or fit in with its friends. I don't need to establish eye contact with it across a crowded auditorium. I don't have to hike down to the front of the sanctuary and 'rededicate my life' twice a month to get its approval. I can reject what strikes me as an unsound idea without fear of scorn or ostracism.

So here I am, teacher-less and guru-less, trying to get the big picture from books, and afraid to take a chance on letting another living breathing human being be my guide.


















Meanwhile, tell me her enlightenment doesn't transcend all dharma and precepts.