More shooting

A police officer trying to take in a drunk driver was shot and wounded by the driver's wife and sons last night. This happened about six blocks from where I saw the shots fired last Tuesday. Probably coincidence.

The Latest Update

Well, there's just nothing.

A Little Neighborhood Diversion

Somebody shot at me tonight. Or at least in my general direction.

I was traveling west on a neighborhood street, stopped at a light, waiting to turn north onto a major artery. A car came from the north, had the light, and turned east — toward me.

Then, three shots — BAM, BAM, BAM. I saw the muzzle flash from the third one, coming from the back seat. The car kept on going.

It took a couple of seconds to soak in. I looked around — there were no other cars on the street, nor pedestrians.

Something to break the tedium, I guess.

Two years without even a doodle

It occurred to me over the weekend that I have not done any art — not even random doodling in a notepad — in more than two years. The only exception to that has been two half-hearted attempts at starting paintings last fall.

I have never been productive as an artist. I was at my most prolific in high school and college, but I tapered off after that. I had a burst of output when I was doing it for a living for a few years, but after that, nothing.

This mildly disturbs me. But I'm not so bothered by it that I want to jump up and run to the easel.

Momentarily You

“Matter flows from place to place, and momentarily comes together to be you. Some people find that thought disturbing. I find the reality thrilling.”

— Richard Dawkins

I don't find it thrilling or disturbing. I find it to be... well, this.

The Front Porch

The front porch looks terrible. I have more stuff piled on the porch than some people have in their houses. Almost all of it is stuff that needs to be given away or tossed. Most of it is under a brown tarp that's almost the same color as the house, so it's not too visible from the street.

It's too hot to go out there and mess with it, though.

See ya around, Kos.

After weeks or months of threatening to cut myself off from political blogs, I finally did it this week. 72 hours of not looking at my usual list of left/progressive blogs, and the difference in my attitude is noticeable — at least to me. I don't feel like I'm missing anything, and I'm not making myself angry about the stuff I would be reading.

Frankly, I don't give a damn about what outrageous thing Michele Bachmann or Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin said today. Those folks' stock in trade is asinine statements. The real news would be if they shut up for awhile. Too much of liberal blogging now consists of simply reacting with outrage to some inane remark made by right-wing professional blatherers. Reporting that Palin said something stupid is like reporting "Bozo the Clown's nose was red again today."

Ignorance really is bliss, at least in this context.

I need to update my blog list on the right. Some of those blogs haven't been updated in months. And there are others I've begun reading.

Later and later

I ate dinner at 1:30 a.m. yesterday. Or, more accurately, I ate yesterday's dinner at 1:30 this morning. I'm sleeping later and later, and getting up later and later.

I received a curious email from a friend yesterday. I can only paraphrase it, because I don't have it in front of me. The gist of it was that she didn't think I could go much longer without some sort of challenge, and that everyone seemed to see this but me.

I don't have a craving for any challenges. My challege is to go through every day without any crazy shit happening to me, and without causing any crazy shit myself. I think that's challenge enough.

Rorschach

"What was once called the objective world is a sort of Rorschach ink blot, into which each culture, each system of science and religion, each type of personality, reads a meaning only remotely derived from the shape and color of the blot itself." 

— Lewis Mumford, "Orientation to Life," The Conduct of Life

Poli-blog blackout

Decided I needed a break from political blog surfing. I've gone 48 hours without reading Kos, FDL, C&L, HuffPo or anything else political. I feel better already.

Human Understanding

‎"The human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it."

— Francis Bacon

Illusion and Reality

"Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead.  We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces."

— Sigmund Freud

Actually, Not All That Ethereal

I should quit calling the Willowy, Ethereal Buddhist 'ethereal'. Because, actually, she's not. I just projected that onto her because I wanted her to be ethereal. I wanted to think she spends all her free time chanting mantras and lighting incense and wandering through fields of wildflowers or whatever, and not going to movies like "Iron Man".

But actually, I guess, she just does ordinary stuff. I say, 'I guess' because I don't know what the reality is. I have to face the fact that I didn't know her that well. I just knew the person I created in my mind and pretended was her.

I'm Just Putting the Question Out There

If you Google the expression 'anger turned inward', you'll get about 53,000 hits. Almost all of them will be about depression.

I've always lived under the assumption that my depression is biologically-driven. My father had it and so did my grandfather. But now I'm wondering if it isn't partly 'anger turned inward'.

As a kindasorta buddhist, I guess I shouldn't get angry. But I know I do. I'm angry about the state our country is in. Do I direct that inward? I certainly don't blame myself for it. But I don't express that anger outwardly very much, either.

If I got down to the core of that anger, I think I would find it's because I indentify with working class people who have gotten screwed by the realignment of our economy over the past forty years. And the reason I identify with them is because I resent the way I was treated as a worker, and I have some deep-seated anger about that.

Granted, my situation now is modestly comfortable, but that's just dumb luck. It's not because of anything I did. If I look at what I have to show for the work I did, it's not much. So is my depression due in part to unresolved anger about that? I don't know; I'm just putting the question out there.

Another question: am I angry with myself over my shortcomings and failures, whether real or perceived? Again, I don't know; I'm just putting the question out there. Most men my age have a wife, or maybe a second wife, and a family. Maybe there's a house in the suburbs, and an SUV and backyard cookouts. Me? I've been married once, and I do my own my home, again more due to good fortune than any achievement on my part. But I have no family, and I'm pretty much relationship-proof.

I tell myself I'm okay with that, but am I really? Or am I just suppressing, or inwardly directing, anger over not being able to have these things?

I don't know. I'm just putting the question out there.

Random Summer Notes 2

My appetite has been off. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since I am also getting almost no exercise. I assume the heat is largely responsible. I can't tell that this has caused any weight loss, but at least I'm not gaining.

I'm keeping a friend's dog for a month. We're at about the halfway mark on that. I think Bailey, my basset hound, benefits from having a co-dog.

I bought a couple of documentaries from iTunes and watched them on my iPad: "Gonzo", about journalist Hunter S. Thompson, and "Born Into This", about poet Charles Bukowski. I wasn't sure how I would like watching films on the iPad, but it's not bad at all. It's sort of like holding a movie in your hands as if it were a book. I wouldn't want to watch "Lawrence of Arabia" this way, but for documentaries, it seems fine.

The aloha shirts are finally gone. Now I can work on getting the rest of the crap off the porch.

Random summer notes

For about 60 days now, I've been spending most of my time holed up in the Very Dark Room. That's the master bedroom of my house, where I've covered the windows enough that at high noon, the room is about as dimly lit as the inside of a movie theater.

I still eat frequently with the Wednesday/Friday dinner group, but I'm not there all the time. I'm a rare sight at the coffee shop. I never eat at home now, but most of my meals are taken alone, usually at some neighborhood sandwich shop or café. I don't like high-end 'dining concept' places. Sometimes I'll dine with a friend, but most of the time I'm alone. Sometimes, frankly, I tire of the companionship of even my best friends, and I'm sure they sometimes tire of mine.

If you saw "I Heart Huckabee's", you'll remember how the marketing executive Brad Stand (played by Jude Law) constantly repeats a story about his encounter with Shania Twain. I have that in mind constantly when I find myself telling a story to friends, because I guarantee you, any story I tell is one I've told before. I ran out of new material years ago.

The heat continues to be oppressive, and part of the reason I'm staying holed up. My car thermometer registered 123 degrees in a parking lot today. The official high was only about 102, with a heat index of 104, but it gets a lot hotter out on a vast expanse of concrete.

I ran into the willowy ethereal Buddhist a few weeks ago, and we ended up having coffee together one afternoon. It was our first sitdown together in a year and a half.

A couple of weeks later, she called and invited me to a movie that evening. We went to see an old film at the art museum. On the way home, she mentioned she had seen and enjoyed "Iron Man". That's about the last movie on earth I would have expected her to sit through. Which goes to show that yet again, I didn't know a woman as well as I thought I did, and made assumptions based on my own preferences rather than looking at reality. Too bad I didn't learn that lesson thirty or forty years ago, when it might have mattered.

The willowy ethereal Buddhist being who she is, I might hear from her again next week, or it might be another year and a half.

More random notes to come.

Nightmare

Another of those nightmares that jolted me awake, gasping for air with my heart racing.

I have a recurring nightmare in which there's some kind of aircraft crash, and I'm on the ground trying to dodge flying debris. In the dream I just had, I'm driving a van that is absolutely loaded with stuff, balky and top heavy, and a huge helicopter is trying to take off right in front of me.

The copter is out of control, and I'm backing the van full speed across the parking lot, trying to stay from it. But it keeps coming straight at me. When I swerve, it swerves.

Finally it climbs straight up, flips over, and comes crashing down upside down on the roof of a building. I'm still backing up full speed so if a rotor blade or some other part comes flying off, it won't hit me. But I know I'm still too close.

That's when I woke up.

Aloha, Shirts

I went through my rack of aloha shirts and other silk sport shirts and pulled out 30 of them, of which I will now rid myself. A couple of them still have tags, having never been worn.

They're all in a pile in a chair on the front porch. I'm trying to get some of my Facebook friends to come take them, but if no one does, I guess they'll go to Goodwill.

That only puts a dent in my shirt accumulation.

I can't imagine why anyone would need as many shirts as I have.

(I first wrote about my unfortunate aloha shirt predeliction here.)

Insomnia

Or maybe not. Maybe it's not insomnia if I slept until 11 am and now I can't fall asleep.

Nothing to say, but here I am anyway

Sometimes I decide to post something. Then, staring at the blank Blogger text entry window, I think to myself, 'What's the point?' and post nothing at all.

This just happened to me. I woke up, as I often do, suddenly possessed of a desire to say something, only to realize I have nothing to say. Or that I could say something, but it would just be blather. I guess almost all of it is blather.

You and I may both be better off if I say nothing.

KC

During the ten years my ex and I were married, we acquired seven cats and two dogs. I left them all with her. We parted 12 years ago, and over those years, the pets grew old and died, one by one.

The last of them, a cat named KC, died Monday. She was about 19.

My ex has three cats and a dog she acquired after our divorce. Two of the cats came from me, and are descendants of Lark.

But KC, as the oldest of the pets, was special to her. KC had a long, comfortable life, but it makes me sad that she's gone.

I live now

"With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now."

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Collapsing Empire

I rarely post political or current events stuff. I hope you'll read this salon.com post by Glenn Greenwald, called "What collapsing empire looks like."

"Does anyone doubt that once a society ceases to be able to afford schools, public transit, paved roads, libraries and street lights -- or once it chooses not to be able to afford those things in pursuit of imperial priorities and the maintenance of a vast Surveillance and National Security State -- that a very serious problem has arisen, that things have gone seriously awry, that imperial collapse, by definition, is an imminent inevitability?"

Somtime back during the Nixon administration, the Powers That Be ran the ship of state into an iceberg. What's been happening since then, even during the terms of Democratic presidents, is the luxury class passengers making for the lifeboats while the rest of us are stranded on the lower decks. Now, they're yelling at us to throw down the ship's china and silverware before the gunwale slips below the waves.

Another Blog Post I Like

From Buddhist in Nebraska:

"I have no hope. No hope for heaven, no fear of hell. No hope for a better rebirth and no fear of worse. I know I will die. I seek no reward nor escape from any punishment. This life is all I have. And though I tell myself I could be wrong (what if I’m wrong?) I never seem to find enough faith or reason in such belief to spur action. Nor do I think I should."

Itchy bumps

I pulled weeds in the yard yesterday and now my hands are broken out in itchy bumps. I'm using some generic brand of Benadryl lotion on them, and it's helped a lot. I guess I'm allergic to one of the weeds I handled. Next time, maybe I'll remember to wear gloves.

A Blog I Found

I found a blog I think I like called The Scurrilous Monk.

Here's a post from 2007 entitled "Do Not Seek an Easy Practice"

"We seem to think there is a shortcut...that all we need do is to think the right thoughts, see the right things or even feel the right things......and poof.....so if we read enough books by Thich Nat Hanh or the Dalai Lama then we can be just like them. But Thich Nat Hanh's practice was tempered in a real war zone with grenades and bullets, and the Dalai Lama was driven from his country that he was responsible for and watched those friends under his protection tortured and killed."

Personally, I just have the practice I have. I guess I could have kept on working rather than retiring, but other than that, I didn't seek this out. On the other hand, I've certainly avoided more strenuous practice.

And I certainly wouldn't compare myself to the Dalai Lama or Thich Nhat Hanh. I'm not even sure I'm actually a Buddhist, strictly speaking. Do not use me as a role model or example. If something I've written during the past four and a half years had some use to you, that's great. But there are plenty of people out there in a better position to give advice than I am.

Anyway, it seems like an interesting blog. I'll probably add it to my permanent links at right.

Cats

Another Buddhist cat fancier

I am down to two cats. Gastón, who is the great-great-great-something grandson of Lark, who first appeared at my house in 2002 (I think), and Rollo, originally called Roland, whom I got from the shelter about a year and a half ago.

Gastón's sister Frannie vanished several months ago. His mother, Evil Kitty, aka Eek, hasn't been seen since spring, but she's semi-feral and often disappears for months at a time. The cat Ms. HRP and I called Grey hasn't been around since winter. But he spends long stretches of time at a house across the street. I hope he's there now.

There have been a lot of other cats wander through over the years, most of them only barely tame. At one time I counted thirteen of them.

Having two is better. And Rollo and Gastón are both completely tame, mostly indoor cats, and have all their shots. I hope they'll be around a long time.

I forgot to mention the grass

Last fall, we planted a lot of shade grass in the back yard. By spring, I had a thick green carpet across the yard. Then the elm tree grew leaves, and we had several days of heavy rain. Now, the grass is all dead and even the weeds wom't grow. It's just bare dirt everywhere.

The back yard

I like to go back and look at previous months' blog postings. In August, 2009, I wrote only two posts for the whole month, so this post puts me ahead for August, 2010. In August, 2009,
I posted photos of my new gate and the still-unfinished garage. In August, 2008, I was almost through with the backyard landscaping project, and I posted photos of that.

As I've mentioned before, I can't post pictures here with the iPad, so no photos today. But I'll describe the back yard as it looks now for you. First of all, many of the plants have gotten so big they're now kind of crowded together. Others, meanwhile, have died, so there are some blank spots around. The dwarf blue palmetto I planted in 2008 is now suddenly growing extremely fast, and looks like it will be bigger than I ever thought it would be. I'm wondering if there's a way to divide and spread this plant.

The crape myrtles also need to be pruned back, but I'm not sure whether I should do this now or wait until fall.

A lot of grass — what we used to call 'johnson grass' — has come up in the cracks bewteen the patio flagstones. I've spent some time pulling it up, but it's been extremely hot outside, and my back has not been amenable to the effort. So, there's still a lot out there.

The back yard looks pretty cluttered, especially compared to how neat and orderly it looked two years ago.

Compulsive activity

‎"Western laziness consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so that there is no time at all to confront the real issues."

— Sogyal Rinpoche

Of course, this is what I've been saying all along.

Beginning year four

Today marks the beginning of my fourth year of retirement. It's gone about the way I expected, with a couple of notable exceptions.

I have spent much more money than I intended to. Most of it was spent on improving the house, so I have the hope of getting a lot of it back if I need to. But there's no way I could sell this house for what I've put into it.

I've gained more weight. I expected to lose weight, being removed from the temptation to snack at my desk. But as it turns out, I'm not much more physically active now than I was when I was at a workstation all day.

My television career is so distant it seems almost like it never happened. But my final job, working in a municipal government office, seems like it ended just a year or so ago.

I'm still depressed all the time, or at least not viewing life through the same rose-colored glasses most other people seem to have. But I enjoy my time alone. I have more of that now than I've ever had in my life, and it seems to suit me.