Sunday, June 29, 2008

Depression

Blogblah! referenced a recent Dick Cavett article about depression.

Interesting coincidence, because I've felt it coming on again myself. I've had a lot of stuff going on lately. Well, it's a lot of stuff for me; others might consider it a light schedule.

I've got the landscaping project going on, coupled with a huge cleaning out of my garage and back yard. I have an impending trip to visit my stepmother — the first in eight years — and I'm frankly not looking forward to it. And I'm just a little overloaded by it.

I've made a running joke out of my love of doing absolutely nothing, but under the humor, there's a sincere desire to let go of everything and just sit. And I don't mean sitting meditation, although that's an option. I mean really just sit — and watch the rest of the world go by. I salute other people's goals and enthusiasm, at least in some cases. But that isn't me.

Maybe I'm just the ultimate burnout case. But even in years long past, I wasn't as motivated as other people I knew. It seemed to me they were chasing phantoms, and I couldn't understand why they would put so much effort and time into getting so little.

When the sky is blue and temperature is pleasant and I've got lunch on the way, I'm about as happy as I'm going to get.

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Ants

I killed, with some reluctance, a nest of ants that had set itself up in my attic. I could see them crawling through a tiny hole near a window in the attic. (My attic is not finished out; who knows why it has a window?) Dozens more were visible crawling around on the inner side of the glass.

They were definitely ants, not termites, thank heaven.

I put out two small poison bait packages near the hole, and the ants were gone within about four hours.

The Buddha taught that all sentient life should be protected — even insects and spiders. I have no problems with spiders being around the house. But I was concerned that these ants, which were probably a southwestern species of carpenter ant, would tunnel into the beams of my roof and attic. And the thought of spending a few grand on repairs up there trumped my observance of the precepts.

Get me away from the Internet

I'm starting to feel about the Internet the way I feel about TV — just a bunch of shallow, transient superficiality. A lot of the sites I used to visit regularly now bore the crap out of me. I'd rather read books.

I hope it doesn't clear off this afternoon. I like this weather.

Saturday

It looks like this will be a good day to sit quietly. I've been a little obsessed with self this week, and I'm experiencing some emotional/psychic backlash.

I've had a lot happening this week, what with the landscaping rock arriving and my old tool shed being dismantled for removal.

I'm glad to have this landscaping done because it will turn the patch of weeds and wild plants that was my backyard into a space I can actually use for something. But it's exactly the kind of self-indulgence I promised myself I would never give in to.

Someone worked really hard on this

Thursday, June 26, 2008

St. Louis update

I think the little brother's name was Roger. That's my vague recollection.

I also remember that somewhere in that neighborhood was a little variety/novelty store where one of the neighborhood kids bought some plastic vomit.

And there was a TV show weekday afternoons called Captain 11's Showboat. I distinctly remember that fake bay window on the set.



A little Googling informed me Captain 11 filled time with Three Stooges shorts, so that was probably my first exposure to the Three Stooges as well.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Meet me in St. Louis

Some of you have probably heard me mention that I briefly lived in St. Louis, MO as a child. This was when I was in the second grade — just about fifty years ago.

I haven't been back to St. Louis since the day we moved away, and I remember only a few things about it. I know that I lived in a fourplex apartment building on Chippewa Street and that I attended Dunnica Elementary School, which was within walking distance of my house.

I remember there was a tavern on the corner, and my memory is that there was a delicatessen across the street from the tavern. It was real old-fashioned deli, with huge sticks of bologna and salami hanging above the counter. The clerk was named Walter, and my parents thought he was creepy.

I remember a house where a very old (or so she seemed at the time) lady lived, and if any of us kids so much as put the toe of our shoe on her lawn she would appear at the front door and start yelling at us.

With nothing more than that to go on, I looked up St. Louis on Google Maps Street View, to see if I could locate my old apartment building.

Chippewa, as it turns out, is a rather long street. I started at the east end and worked my way west. I saw a lot of fourplex apartments, but most were red brick and older than the one where I lived. My recollection was that it was limestone and blond brick, and dated from the 1930's or '40's. Most of the apartments I was looking at seemed more like the teens or even the turn of the twentieth century.

I worked my way west for awhile, but felt I wasn't getting anywhere. Then I recalled Dunnica Elementary School. It was a short walk from my home — if I could find that, and if Chippewa ran close by, that would narrow down my search.

I remembered it as being spelled "Dunica," and I almost didn't find it. I Googled "Dunica Elementary" and "St. Louis," and Google suggested I try "Dunnica Elementary" instead. I found one reference to Dunnica Elementary in St. Louis. It was on one of those 'find your old classmates' web sites. It didn't have an address for the school, but at least I knew I had the correct spelling.

I tried Googling "Dunnica" without the "elementary" and discovered there was a Dunnica Street in St. Louis. I typed it into Google Maps, and discovered it was one block south of Chippewa and just four blocks long. I knew I was getting close.

I remembered that Dunnica school was a white frame building — not just annex buildings, but the whole school. I went to the street view again, and went up and down the whole four blocks. I didn't find the school, but I did find a large park which might have been the schoolyard fifty years ago.

And then I saw Bamberger Avenue. I know I haven't thought of that name once since I left St. Louis, but I remembered it as soon as I saw it. Bamberger was the street I walked down to get from Chippewa to Dunnica Street on my way to school. So I started scanning up and down Chippewa near Bamberger — and found what I think is the apartment building I haven't seen since I was about six years old.



I don't think that tree was there at all when I lived there. And frankly, I remember the steps as having a landing halfway down with some potted plants on it. But my memory must be faulty on that.

That small brick building to the left of the apartments is the house where the old lady lived. I remember us getting up on that retaining wall on the left side and walking along it until she stuck her head out the door and yelled at us. The buildings farther to the left of her house are newer and weren't there then.

I looked at that white building on the right several times and couldn't remember it at all. Then I noticed the entrance is on the side, not facing the street, and that sparked my memory.

I also found the tavern, but not the delicatessen.

St. Louis is where I had my first licorice, my first Bit-O-Honey bar and my first Chunky candy bar ("Open wide for Chunky!"). I remember walking up and down the alleys behind the houses, and that's where I picked up the affection for alleys that I still have today. I wish my house had an alley.

There was a girl in another of the apartments upon whom I had a second-grade crush. I was infatuated, and sure enough, I was made foolish. I was trying to impress her, and I don't remember exactly what I did, but it somehow ended with me tumbling down those front steps, banging up my knee so that it bled profusely, and her dad and my dad carrying me back into the apartment because I couldn't walk on it. I felt like an idiot – the first of many such circumstances to come.

She had a little brother, too, and I was always trying to lose him.

I don't remember their names. I had completely forgotten about them until just now.

I think the apartment on the lower left with the bay window was ours. The apartment had a basement room, with walls painted purple and a dark purple carpet.

St. Louis is where I first saw "Learn to Draw with Jon Gnagy..."



There was a "Learn to Draw with Jon Gnagy Kit" you could buy so you could draw along with Gnagy. It had some paper, pencils, charcoal, a sandpaper block and a kneaded eraser. I nagged and nagged (or maybe Gnagged and Gnagged) my folks to buy it for me, which they eventually did.

I sat down with my new kit, ready to draw along with Jon... and the TV station had cancelled the show, effective that very same day. My first chance to practice non-attachment.

I remember St. Louis still had electric trackless trolleys back then, powered by overhead wires, and they'd throw off sparks whenever the poles crossed a junction in the wiring.

A few months of my life, a half-century ago. It's amazing how much of it comes back.

Here you go.

Link

When was the last time I actually posted at 3:40 AM?

Well, something woke me up.

I said a while back I wasn't going to post any more Buddhist/Taoist stuff here. As I mentioned then, there are plenty of other places that do that better than I can, and some are listed at right.

But from another perspective, everything I've posted since then has been Buddhist/Taoist in nature. At some point we all have to live our daily lives, and unless you're a monastic, the better part of your typical day is not going to be devoted to the mechanics or rituals of your belief system.

A friend once described me as "Buddhist Lite." I guess that's true. But what would make me "Buddhist Classic"? A saffron robe and begging bowl? A shaved head? (Granted, my hair is rather short these days, but that's for convenience, not to make me look like a monk.)

Even Jesus and the Buddha had the events of daily life: waking up in the morning, eating, bathing, walking from one place to another and so on.

And what you've gotten in this blog is the daily life of someone who is trying, with varying degrees of success from day to day, to lead a daily Buddhist/Taoist life. It's just a lot of mundane, day-to-day stuff, because that's what life — even the examined, inward-looking life — is.

The difference between my life and anyone else's life is, I hope, that I'm living it with some level of mindfulness about the true nature of the universe and my place in it.

My favorite zen koan is the one where the old abbott of the monastery was sorting and weighing flax. The young monk came up and asked "What is the Buddha?" The old master replied, "Three pounds of flax."

In other words — or at least in my other words, and wiser people may disagree — Buddha nature is not some mystical floating-in-the-air meditation event. It's just the ordinary stuff we do every day. And this blog has been mostly about the ordinary stuff I do every day. The blog itself is part of the ordinary stuff I do every day.

Barring some extraordinary turn of events, I am never going to deliver a Sermon on the Mount or Diamond Sutra, so the daily struggle against cat shit is about as profound as it's going to get for me.

If you asked me "What is the Buddha?" I guess I would have to say, "cleaning the litter box."

Or maybe "Smoke on the Water."

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Cartoon time

Found via BoingBoing...

Here's a cartoon from the old Soviet Union. Stay with it and it will become evident what it is:

Google street view

I checked my house on Google street view just now... sure enough, it's there.

This picture was taken the week before the painters arrived. The house is still the old colors. Most of the wisteria has been cut out and is piled in the front yard. There are still some pieces caught in the rafters, though, which would mean this was taken Thursday afternoon or Friday morning before the painting started (whatever date that was).

My car is not in the driveway, so I was probably at the RC.

Your stuff

You do not own your stuff... your stuff owns you.

(paraphrasing H.D. Thoreau)
























Incidentally, I'm not all that crazy about Afrin. I'll take 4-Way over Afrin every time.

Changing the locks

I decided to change all the locks on all my doors so they could all be keyed identically.

This has turned out to be a bigger job than I had anticipated. Some of the existing locks were installed by the previous owner, and not always expertly. I'm going to have some wood-chiseling to do.

But not now.

Two locks are done, and now it's off to the RC to regroup.

Monday, June 23, 2008

George Carlin

The first time I ever saw George Carlin was when I was a kid. I guess he was on the Tonight Show. I remember he was clean-shaven, had short hair, and wore a coat and tie.

This was a long time ago, obviously. I Googled his name, hoping to find an image from that era, but no luck.

He did his 'Wonderful WINO' bit that night, but instead of WINO being a top 40 radio station, it was an easy listening/jazz FM kind of place, and he did the station ID by singing 'Wonderful WINOOOOOO' into a metal tumbler. (You have to be of a certain age, I guess, to even remember metal tumblers, let alone a clean-shaven George Carlin.)

I remember seeing him years later, probably on Tonight, and not even realizing it was the same guy until he did 'Wonderful WINO,' by this time updated to the Top 40 version.

I won't mention names, but I'm sure you can think of some comedians who, in their later years, got applause more in honor of what they had done thirty years previously rather than what they were doing at that moment. They weren't funny anymore, but you sat through their stuff, at least when they were on TV, mostly out of habit.

I appreciated the fact that Carlin was still funny right up to the end, and never seemed to coast on his reputation.

I hope I'm half that interesting when I'm 71. Hell, I'd be glad to be half that interesting now.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Twitter

Is anyone using this? I keep hearing about what a hot deal it is, but I'm having difficulty seeing the value.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Good lord, it's Saturday

and I haven't had anything to report since Tuesday, and that was only the brief disappearance of my dental floss.

Well, I have one thing to report: the purchase of four and a half tons of rock for my landscaping project. It will arrive next Thursday.

This is my life. Nothing is happening, which is pretty darn pleasant.

Only don't know.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Crisis averted

I found the dental floss.

Can't find my dental floss

Dammit.

The easy life

I posted something as a comment on another blog that I want to reiterate and expand on here.

I live a pretty easy life. If I wanted to, I could look at the eight-year-old car I drive, the small house in which I live and the blue collar neighborhood surrounding it and say my life is pretty dreary compared to those living in the nicer suburbs and driving BMWs and the like. But none of that rates highly in my book — they're not nearly as important as the freedom to come and go as I please and spend my time as I choose, even if I'm just taking a nap or reading a book.

I would say that my life, while not surrounded by glamour and luxury, is easier than the lives of most Americans and certainly easier than the lives of most people on this planet. And while some of that is due to my own efforts, most of it has just been dumb luck.

So how can I talk about the serenity of non-attachment, don't know mind or whatever when I have greater freedom to practice these beliefs than most people? How can I tell someone who has children to support or an elderly parent for whom to care, 'Oh, just let go of all your worries and troubles?' I can put everything down and the consequences are minimal. For others, the consequences could be disastrous, not only for them but for others as well.

This discussion began on another blog in the context of some statements by the Vietnamese zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Many of his fellow Buddhists — distrusted by both sides in the Vietnam war — died violent deaths. He fled to France to avoid persecution and perhaps murder. There's a man who has been through some serious shit. Most of us will never walk five feet, let alone a mile, in his shoes.

America isn't as tolerant as it once was, but we're still more tolerant than most of the world. Again, it's easy for me — and for us as a nation — to form judgements about how others ought to run their lives when our lives are relatively easy and trauma-free.

It's a lot easier to be a Buddhist or Taoist within the comfortable surroundings of our culture than it is in places like Vietnam and China, or more recently, Burma and Tibet.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Monday evening

Some lightning, huh?

More on landscaping

As always, I have some second thoughts about this landscaping business. Kelley, who is doing this design, suggests I'll be able to 'entertain' out there — perhaps have a cookout or something.

But I know that will never happen. No one will ever see this back yard but me.

I'm thinking of this as an opportunity to create my 'Cold Mountain' retreat right here in the 'hood.

There is also some attachment to form here that concerns me. I've been more-or-less content with the yard as it's been, and from a Buddhist perspective, I think, that's a good thing. Now I have this desire to see the yard have a certain appearance and symmetry. Aesthetically, this will be more calming and less stressful. But if I start trying to control and manipulate my environment — over which I ultimately have no control — how much frustration and dissatisfaction am I letting myself in for?

Why can I not see the beauty in this rotted-out Mustang on blocks in the neighbor's driveway? Why must I screen it from my sight? It's ironic, I suppose, that a cluttered person like myself should be offput by someone else's junk.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Attached to comfort

I am so damn glad my AC is working.

The unit hadn't been serviced in seven years, and it was, as it turned, just too damn dirty to run. The service guys found it jammed with ice, a result of the vents being clogged with dirt. In addition, a piece of flexible duct connecting the return to the unit had collapsed under the house and required replacement.

So, after about two weeks of the AC running its ass off and barely keeping the house tolerable (I dread my electric bill this month) it's now just right — maybe a little cold, actually.

It actually hasn't been all that hot outside. I don't think we've had a day above 95. But the humidity seems higher than normal. I'll go outside in the morning and the air won't feel especially warm at all, but within a few minutes I'll be sweating because of the dampness in the air. It's very pleasant having the AC sucking the moisture out of the indoor air.

But when this house was built in 1930, it had no air conditioning at all. Somehow the original residents got along without it.

I have also agreed to have a friend landscape my back yard. Her college freshman son went in and cleaned the yard out over a couple of days, and it hasn't looked this good since in six or seven years. Lots of old underbrush and weeds are gone. She's talking about extending the deck, which was something I had already considered, and adding a Zen garden and a water doodad of some sort.

We went 'window shopping' at the rock yard over the weekend. Rocks are cheaper than I had imagined. I can get a really hefty volcanic boulder for three or four hundred bucks.

I have mentioned, I suppose, that I have rarely used my backyard. My back porch, which was enclosed at some point and turned into a laundry room, is also the cat litter station, and has literally become a shithole. I hate even going back there, and my aversion to walking through my laundry room helps restrict my access to the back yard. Sometimes, I'll go out the front door and walk around to avoid traversing the shithole to reach the back door.

Another impediment is the noise frequently coming from my neighbor's garage and back yard, plus the view of junk cars that are often in his driveway. Seventy per cent of a '67 Mustang is up on blocks out there right now, half-wrapped in a tarp.

But my friend says she can screen the view and filter out a lot of the sound. If she can turn this into a yard space I can actually use, I figure it will be worth spending a few K's on it.

Then I can start working on my laundry room, and maybe work my way through the house.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Buy by Brian

Discovered via Buddhist in Nebraska (always linked at right)...

Buy by Brian is a blog by a guy who had nearly everything he owned stolen out of a moving van in San Francisco. On the day of the theft – August 22 of 2007 — he began the blog by documenting the theft. Since then, he has itemized every single thing he has acquired: clothes, furniture, the works. He details what he paid for it, its country of origin when he knows it (some of the stuff came from garage sales or was just scavenged) and his reason for buying it.

His Zero Day post is here, and the updates are here.

Brian is a designer, btw, which is a somewhat more high-falutin' version of what I do, so I'm interested in some of his aesthetic choices.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Friday AM

Weird dreams kept me up much of the night. Other than that, nothing to report.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

The house is a mess

I could probably just copy and paste one of my other 'house is a mess' posts here.

I don't know where the stuff comes from. I keep getting rid of it but it keeps coming back.

I know where the cat shit comes from, obviously.

I think I would have more serenity if the house didn't look like hell.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Hanoi traffic




Found via boingboing: A busy Hanoi intersection with no traffic signal.

How do they do that?

Monday, June 09, 2008

Another day of nothin'

Slept some. Still reading the WW2 book.

Fed cats. Still trying to socialize the babies. Some are accepting it more quickly than the others.

Following details on the new iPhone. The upfront cost isn't bad, but the monthly fees may dissuade me from getting one. The new one has built-in GPS, which would be handy – if I ever went anywhere, which I don't.

Emptiness. Nothing. It ain't nothing.

The weather

Cloudy, rainy and 72. I wish we could have about a week of this.

More fun with mcarp

It was about 7:30 pm and we had just finished dinner.

"What are you going to do now?" she asked.

"I'm going to go home and get ready for bed," I said.

"You're going to bed now?" she asked.

"No, I'm going to read for awhile, then I'll go to bed," I said.

"What are you reading?" she asked.

"It's a history of the Pacific Theatre in World War 2," I said.

"Don't you ever want to go out and have fun?" she asked.

"That is fun," I said.

I've lost track of the number of people — mostly women — who have asked me over the past ten years or so, "Don't you like to have fun?"

And the answer, if you're going to insist on defining 'fun' in the usual way is, no, I don't like to have fun.

But different people have different ways of having fun. Or maybe a better way of saying it is that different people have different ways of escaping the routine and reality of their daily lives.

Friday, June 06, 2008

It's Friday

I mention that because I've been wandering around the house all morning thinking it was Saturday.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Coming July 4

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

I assume it will show somewhere around here.

Every breath you take, every move you make...

I read an item on boingboing.net last night that threw me into a funk for the rest of the evening.

Using a set of video cameras and eye tracking software the system will be able to tell what someone looking at a window display has been staring at the longest, and will then provide more detailed information about the product via a passive or even interactive video display in hopes it will push them towards making a purchase decision.

In addition to being the most continuously-entertained culture in history, we are also the most heavily-monitored and surveilled. It's not enough for Big Brother to know what we buy by tracking our purchases with those retailer discount cards, to see what intersections we drive through with traffic signal cameras, measure our height against that ruler taped to the door sill when we walk into a convenience store and check what web sites we visit with proxy server software. He also wants to know what we're looking at while we walk down the street.

I become more and more persuaded that the only way to live relatively unwatched and unmonitored is to move so far out in the boonies that there's no economic incentive for anyone to spy on you at every turn.

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Old haunts

It's been awhile since I mentioned the Well, the online community of which I have been a member since the early nineties.

I used to visit the Well every day, and most days I would visit several times. Ten years ago, when my life was in complete turmoil, I would post long, angst-ridden posts — much longer and more detailed than anything I've ever written here.

The Well and the friends I made there helped me keep it together when everything else in my life had been turned upside down.

Nowadays, I visit the Well every six weeks or so. Not much seems to change there. Some people leave and occasionally a new person comes aboard, but the conversations seem to be much the same from one visit to the next. I generally have nothing to contribute, because there's so little happening in my life these days.

It's like going back to the old neighborhood for a visit.

Monday, June 02, 2008

Random notes

Two of the five Lark/not Lark kittens have transitioned to being indoor cats. The other three remain outside. I still don't feed cats outside, so I'm trying to lure them in to at least eat, and to get them socialized enough to be friendly, but still standoffish enough that Nina might adopt one.



I had previously mentioned the book Doubt, which is a history of atheism and agnosticism down through the centuries. It's also a pretty good overview of western philosophy. As I've mentioned before, I've read a lot eastern philosophy, but the only work of western philosophy I've read is Jonathan Livingston Seagull. So now I'm kind of up to speed on the players in western philosophy, at least up until the end of the 18th century, which is as far as I've gotten with the book.



Got the oil changed in the car today. I really dislike sitting in those little dirty waiting rooms in the oil change places, with the old copies of People Magazine and the crappy little TV with rabbit ears that can't pick up any channel clearly. But I found a place with a sandwich shop nearby, so I dropped the minivan off at the oil change place and had lunch at the sandwich place. Then I went for a short walk around the northwest corner of Mesta Park.



I also made my daily appearance at the coffee shop.



The sandal is still missing.



Every day is Saturday, as I've mentioned before.