Don't I know you from somewhere?

Sometime last month was the eighth anniversary of my departure from the TV news business. Even now, people occasionally recognize me –– usually from voice rather than appearance –– and ask, "Don't I know you from somewhere?" The last time it happened was yesterday.

I usually just say, "I don't think so." There is no way –– I mean literally no way –– to say, "Yes, you probably me recognize me from television news" without sounding like Ted Baxter. So I just wave my hand and say, "I am not the droid you are looking for."

One of the smarter moves I made after leaving TV was not to capitalize on the 'former news personality' angle by doing car commercials or some such. Besides, if you ever saw me on TV, you know I wasn't the kicky, trendy, 'Wow! Take a look at this!' kind of news person. I was pretty boring, and I didn't have a delivery that would lend itself to marching down the Magnificent Mile of Cars, waving my arms and yelling like a circus barker.

So when I left TV, I also left town for a couple of years, worked in San Antonio where no one knew who I was, then came back home as a private citizen.

I don't miss TV (to put it charitably –– I still have nightmares about it once in awhile), and I'm ambivalent about what I accomplished during that time. I was never a big local news star –– really I was just one of the foot soldiers. But if you think you know me from somewhere, that's where.

A pretty good day

I have been gradually, day by day, getting my energy back. I finally faded about 6 pm today after being up since about 5:30 am (I didn't go back to bed after writing the 'hooked on Foleygate' post), but that's the longest I've been up and about in days and days. It was just a couple of weeks ago that I was able to go for about two - three hours at a stretch, then needed to sleep for two or three hours.

The doctors told me a way to know if I still had internal bleeding from the ulcers, and apparently I still do. But the fact I'm up and walking around indicates I'm not as anemic as I was. It will take a while for the ulcers to heal enough that the bleeding stops altogether, and then a while longer for my body to replace the lost blood.

But I feel much, much better. Of course, I'd normally be at the Red Cup at this hour, but I don't have the energy for that; I'm at home alone, just resting.

But barring some unforeseen change in my well-being, I plan to go back to work Monday.

I try to explain being hooked on Foleygate

The previous post on Foleygate is, well, a little strident. Maybe not in comparison to the stuff appearing on the political blogs –– some of which is utterly delusional –– but for a guy trying to 'only don't know,' it's a bit overwrought.

Several dozen posts back, I wrote that getting unattached from some things was easy. Those are the obvious things, and the things you didn't care much about, anyway. For me, getting unattached from fashion was easy. Although I was obsessed with it in the eighties, I had already long lost interest in it by the time became interested in Buddhism. Giving up television was easy because I found it mostly unpleasant to watch.

There haven't been any things I've had to 'give up,' per se (other than aspirin, as of this week). Rather, as the periphery of my spiritual vision slowly expands, I find that I'm losing interest in a lot of things that once seemed important to me. They're still in the picture, but as the edges of the picture spread further and further to include more of the landscape, these things shrink in relative size until they're just little dots.

With all that in mind, I have to admit that I'm having trouble unattaching from my contempt for and anger toward the greedy bazillionaire/crabby moralist/lightweight fascist axis that has taken over the leadership of the United States. It's one thing to be activist, but something else to be filled with the rage and resentment I feel toward these people. I find it very difficult to pray for or even 'send beams' to these people. I admit I take joy in seeing Speaker Hastert hoisted now on his own petard.

I think I understand where this comes from. I could probably write several paragraphs about it, but it would be beside the point.

The point is it does me no good to harbor these feelings. In fact, it probably diminishes my overall physical well-being. It's like I'm chasing the Republican party around my own personal wheel of samsara, and even though I know I'm doing it, I can't seem to stop.

(Although God knows I've slowed down. Compared to how much I was ranting and raving two years ago, I'm pretty calm on this today.)

I explain Foleygate

The muddled, panicked GOP response to Foleygate makes a lot more sense if you consider the possibility that everything said by every GOP operative is directed to an audience of one person, and that one person is Dr. James Dobson.

That doesn't mean that every Republican thinks like Dobson. In fact, the opposite is true, and that's part of the problem.

The Republican leadership knows it can't hang on to power without the support of the American Taliban –– but it doesn't care anything about the social conservative agenda. So it lies to them just like it lies to everyone else who isn't among the 10,000 wealthiest Americans. In this case, though, it's blown up in their faces. And the reason the GOP leadership is furious with Hastert isn't because he didn't do something about Foley, but because he offended Dr. Dobson and jeopardized the Republican hold on power.

Foley gave in to his own sexual fantasies, which was bad enough, but Hastert played the social conservatives for fools by letting it go on, and Dobson and his morality police know it.

The quid pro quo the fundamentalists have with the Republican leadership is this: enforce our sexual mores on the public, and we'll look the other way while you steal and graft and lie. But Foleygate reveals Hastert hasn't kept up his end of the bargain.

The only power social conservatives have over the senior GOP leadership is to withhold followers' Election Day votes, thereby slamming the government cookie jar lid down on the senior Republicans' pudgy little hands.

So what will the Republican leadership do to placate the Great Moralizer of Colorado Springs? Will they vote Hastert off the island? Conduct a purge of the newly-rumored 'secret Republican gay cabal'?

Friday morning

Years ago, even before I embraced Buddhism and the Tao, I felt like I had overcome my fear of death. Maybe overcome isn't the word; maybe I should say I had just grown tired of fearing death.

It wasn't that I was suicidal –– I wasn't going to seek death. But I had been at my father's side when he died, and after I had been a reporter 25 years, I felt like I had seen so much drama of all sorts that I wouldn't resist or resent it when the time came to leave it all behind. Death could be painful, and sometimes a hell of an inconvenience, but being sucked dry by emotional vampires of all sorts is also exhausting, as is watching humanity act out the AA definition of insanity –– 'doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results.'

But on the Sunday before I entered the hospital, I wasn't so sure about accepting death. I already had the 'untreatable stomach cancer' scenario unwinding in my mind, and was imagining the moment when the doctor told me I was going to die. I had been with my dad when the doc told him he would die. I wanted to play it better than he had. He took it calmly but resignedly, with a sort of general muttering about unfairness. I wanted to be able to accept it with a good pleasant Buddhist equanimity. I wasn't sure I could do that.

I think the very fact I was rehearsing my response, though, suggests I wasn't prepared to accept the inevitable arrival of death of Sunday night.

But by Monday morning, something had changed. I was in a cheerful, rather buoyant mood –– better than I had felt in weeks. I was no longer rehearsing for my big scene. I was ready to accept whatever happened. It was beyond my control. And it still is. It was all okay and remains okay now.

Pic is ready

I've had some trouble getting this to post. I had originally intended to post two pictures, but I think this one tells the story. One ulcer is at the top of the picture and a smaller one is at the bottom.

Photos

I hope to get the ulcer pics scanned this evening. In the meantime, while we wait, here's a classic from 2001, when I banged my foot on the metal frame of my futon.

Lou Dobbs on class warfare

Saw this on Flibbertigibbet! this evening and followed the link.

Dobbs: Are You a Casualty of the Class War?

More credits

In addition to thanking JohnX for the loan of the Watts bio, I want to thank Suzanne for the rides to and from the hospital, and Rena, Kathryn and Jen for dropping by to visit while I was hospitalized.

One of the bad things about having no family is that in times like these, one feels truly alone. Jen and the Red Cup circle have been like my family for the past year, and in these past few weeks, I literally don't know what I would have done without you.

And thanks to Sweeney, one of my fellow Wellpern, for mentioning me at the well-being service at her zendo in California. Thanks to Catie, Lark, slf, Autumn, Patrizia and my other Well friends for the posts and emails.

I promise to have ulcer pix posted soon, because I know how much you all want to see them.

Changing tastes

Have you ever noticed that after an illness, all your food cravings and preferences seem to reset themselves??

After the Festival of the Barf a few weekends ago, I had a craving for chocolate milk. I've had more chocolate milk in the past three weeks than in the previous twenty years.

I've had almost no soft drinks (and that will drop to zero until the ulcers heal, and maybe forever) and very little junk food. I used to hit KFC two or three times a week, but I haven't been in a month.

Looks like ulcers

Home from the hopsital after three units of blood and an upper endoscopy. I have two bleeding ulcers and prescriptions for a variety of drugs. I even have photos, which I shall post when I get them digitized.

Some things are going to have to change in my life.

Thanks to JohnX for lending me Zen Effects: The Life of Alan Watts which I read while propped up in bed during the transfusions.

Find out more about peptic ulcers at the Mayo Clinic web site.

Getting ready

I go in to the hospital for more work tomorrow. I'm not sure what to expect. I'm told a blood transfusion and a colonoscopy are on the agenda.

I wasn't given any instructions or laxatives for the colonoscopy. I don't know if they intend to do that tomorrow or Tuesday.

This is the first time I've been a patient in a hospital since I was eight.

I feel fine now, with the H2 blocker allowing me to get a decent night's sleep. Still tired, but that's the most I can say.

I'm trying to keep right mindfulness and attitude about this. It's a great opportunity to focus on original mind. I don't actually know anything, but of course my imagination keeps running forward to all kinds of scenarios, most of them unpleasant.

But I still don't know anything.

But assuming the worst... well, no. Let's not assume anything. That's the point. I don't know, and there's no point in projecting all my anxieties, fears, hangups, emotional baggage, etc. onto a situation where I don't know anything.

Read this

Flibbertigibbet!

I'm getting back into television!

New blood tests show my hemoglobin has dropped just since the first test Tuesday or Wednesday or whenever. I'm going in the hospital Monday for tiny cameras down my throat and up my ass.

Guess I need to find that IFB. (Or, interruptible feedback... the initials are used in TV to refer to that little headset you see TV reporters pulling out of their ears while they're talking because jackinapes producers are babbling incoherently at them while they're trying to do their live shots.)

3:03 a.m.

Woke up with a pretty bad headache, but a headache is something I can deal with. The really good news is that the ranitidine seems to have worked: no chest pain, cramps or anything else all night.

I rattle on a lot about renunciation and non-attachment, but what about non-attachment to health?

I've been miserable the past few days: pain, exhaustion, blood pressure up and down... and yet I can right off the top of my head think of two or three people whose health is worse than mine, and they rarely say anything about it.

Shunryu Suzuki-roshi continued giving talks at the San Francisco Zen Center even when he knew he was dying of cancer. Some of those talks have been included in his books.

Thanks again to soartstar who, inspite of having a lot of big things going on in her own life, spent hour after hour taking care of me. I hope I can repay some day.

(Good news! Bucky has been released by the vet to resume his normal dog activities.)

Well... I've taken some aspirin for the headache. Back to bed.

Thursday night

Having tried everything else over-the-counter I could think of, I decided to try a generic brand of ranitidine, which is the active ingredient in Zantac, Pepcid AC and a few others. It seems to be helping.

Anything to get a little relief from the pain, which seems to be more or less constant when I'm lying down and trying to sleep, or whenever I get up and move around.

(In other words, I can sit here and blog and feel okay, then get up and walk to another room and suddenly get hit with the chest pain.)

I downloaded that picture of Edgar Buchanan for nothing

Got a phone call from the doctor's office today... blood work and ultrasound show nothing wrong with my gall bladder at all.

They did find I'm anemic. I don't which TV star that goes with. Wally Cox, maybe.

Anyway, I go back tomorrow for more tests.

Slept a lot today.

Oh, and I forgot to mention...

... the whole lightheadedness thing. Doc suspects a potassium deficiency caused by the barf-o-rama. Eating, oh, twenty-two bananas a day ought to level me right off.

This is just so me

From the University of Pennsylvania Surgery web site

(emphasis mine)

Chronic Cholecystitis (Billary Colic)

The majority of patients with symptoms from their gallstones will suffer from chronic cholecystitis. The attacks are caused by a stone becoming stuck either in the junction of the gallbladder and the bile duct or in the duct itself. The muscle in the wall of both gallbladder and duct contracts in an effort to move the stone and this produces intense pain usually felt under the ribs on the right-hand side of the abdomen. However, the pain may also be felt under the V of the ribs or may extend right across the abdomen and spread around to the back, below the right shoulder blade.

The patient may vomit and is usually restless. After several hours, the stone either falls back into the gallbladder or, by virtue of the muscle contractions, is passed down the bile duct and into the intestine. Some patients suffer from a constant dull ache in the upper abdomen and many complain of discomfort and flatulence after eating a fatty meal.

---

Billie Jo, Bobbie Jo, Betty Jo, I think I got me one o' them gall stones afflictin' me. I gotta get Sam Drucker to send me sumthin' down from the general store. Meanwhile, if I commence t' fartin' 'round the hotel, y'all will know why.

Of course, this whole gall bladder thing skews a really old demo

For some reason, talking about my gall bladder acting up gives me the mental image of Uncle Joe sitting on the porch of Petticoat Junction's Shady Rest Hotel, waiting for the Hooterville Cannonball to arrive with the mail and the latest news from Pixley.

(It occurs to me some of you will have no freakin' idea what I'm talking about, which only reinforces the notion I skew a really old demo.)

Doesn't exactly help create that hip/edgy/interesting/hyperanimated-facial-expression image a designer should have. Here I was all set to get some skinny eyeglasses and start scrunching my hair up into a dorsal fin in the middle of my scalp, and then muh goldurn gall bladder starts a-actin' up on me.

When gall bladders attack

It's been a bumpy couple of days.

The doc thinks there's something wrong with my gall bladder. He was alarmed when I told him how much I'd thrown up during that first 48 hours. The good news: my BP was 122 over soemthing-or-other, which he said was the best reading he'd ever gotten off of me. I remain suspicious, though, that the BP medication is somehow contributing to this... not causing it, but making it worse.

Yesterday was miserable. I worked about two hours and left. I still have an intermittent sharp pain in my chest just below my sternum. Yesterday it was so bad I couldn't stand up, couldn't lie down at times, and was breaking out in a cold sweat.

It has eased up today, replaced by a headache that's hovering in my left eye socket.

I went to the radiology clinic this morning for an ultrasound of my abdominal area, including my gall bladder.

So I continue to wait for answers.

---

I have to wonder, of course, how ol' Cold Mountain would have dealt with this -- lying there alone, flat on his back, barfing and groaning in his mountain cave. Would he have written a poem about it? Would he have just laid there and died?

Of course, this could be all stress-related, in which case it wouldn't have happened to CM in any event.

---

While this spell has been worse than the previous ones, it's not the first one. I'm thinking my first extended barf-o-rama was when I was 13. I remember that clearly because my mother was livid because I threw up on the floor. She was not the nurturing type at all. The fact that I was sick wasn't on her radar at all -- she was just furious that I was inconveniencing the diva of the Shreveport bar scene.

I've had barf spells like this about once a year ever since. And unfortunately, they always remind me what a distant and aloof person my mother was. Don't get me wrong: she was very popular. Other alcoholics loved her.

The Devil and Hugo Chavez

There was an uproar last week about Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez referring to President Bush as 'the devil' in a speech to the United Nations.

"Yesterday, the devil came here. Right here," The Los Angeles Times quoted him as saying. He crossed himself. "Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today."

This got a big laugh from the General Assembly, and of couse, the right-wing commentariat was outraged.

But it was funny, which is obvious from the reaction it got.

What makes it funny?

First of all, it's funny because Chavez is a little like the mouse making the 'last grand gesture of defiance' to the cat. A lot has been written about Chavez's potential to be a spoiler in corporate America's plans for Central America, but regardless of what his actual power and influence is or may become, he's still the leader of a small nation sticking it to the leader of the most powerful nation on earth.

Secondly, it's funny because while President Bush tries to portray himself as a no-nonsense, two-fisted, plain-talkin' kind of guy, he's actually an obviously snippish, peevish, thin-skinned but ineffective oligarch posing for silly photo ops and in front of increasingly silly-looking prefab "Gotta Love Me Gotta Love Me Gotta Love Me Gotta Love Me" backdrops.

The mainstream media in this country still try to put the best face they can on the president, not because they like him or respect him, I suspect, but because of what he represents: the tippy-top of the economic pyramid wherein reside, among others, the corporate media execs whose signatures appear on six-figure monthly paychecks written to network correspondents and widely-read pundits.

But Chavez says it like it is, and many General Assembly members laughed in appreciation. Not that Bush is truly 'the devil,' because Chavez mocks his own melodramatic statement by crossing himself and referring to smelling sulfur, but that Bush is simply a dangerous man to have leading a nation as powerful as the U.S., and Chavez, at least, is willing to defy the strained, overwrought reverential tone the U.S. government and media still try force on the rest of us regarding the president.

And thirdly: the fact that Chavez can mock his own accusation displays at least one attribute Bush lacks: a sense of humor about himself.


iTunes: Gauri Manjari, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan

Okie Blog Awards

This blog was voted "Best Unusual Blog of 2006" as announced at the Okie Blog Awards last night. Thanks to all who voted for it.
A list of all the winners can be found here. And a list of all the nominees can be found here.

Sunday AM update

I have not had much to write about, and when I do, I'm too worn out to write it.

After a very good Thursday health-wise, Friday was so crappy I went home at noon and dragged around the rest of the day and into Saturday. Felt well enough to go to the grocery store Saturday with Suzanne, but the bottom fell out while I was there and I ended up leaning on the checkout stand, apparently groaning loud enough to alarm the cashier. (I say 'apparently' because I wasn't even aware I was groaning. But Suzanne says I make groaning and muttering noises all the time, like an old retriever getting comfortable on the porch.)

Without going into a whole lot of detail, I am now very persuaded that this is caused by my blood pessure medication, which seems to be working too well the past couple of weeks. I've lost some weight this summer and I'm getting a little more exercise, so maybe I need something not so strong.

I have a doctor's appointment Monday, and then I'll know for sure.

---

I'm wearing a T-shirt Suzanne loaned me that says "Aid and Comfort" on the front. I mention this because Suzanne has been a source of immense aid and comfort during all this. As I've blogged before, the brooding loner gig isn't all that much fun when you're really ill. She's fed me, come and picked me up when I've been too wasted to drive myself, and generally just been there for me when I wondered if it was really safe for me to be by myself.

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

Friday AM update

Thursday was a really big day in terms of recuperation. I seem to have shaken the dizzy spells and lightheadedness. So maybe I won't die or become a permanent semi-invalid after all, and I'll have to go back to blogging about cat barf.

Wednesday update

Called to refill my blood pressure scrip this morning, and was told I'd run out of refills. That's my cue for my annual checkup, which I thought I'd had in the spring, but whatever. I'm seeing the doc Monday, assuming I don't merge back into the watercourse way before then.

I checked my BP at the grocery store, which I've never done before. It's a grocery store machine, so consider the source, but it was 174 over something that was really low. I want to say 57. That would be a good number for someone half my age.

Eating Life cereal and Tums right now. Part of this nuritious breakfast. I think I'm going to skip the Galileo round table tonight. No energy.

Tuesday update

I am still not 100 percent, and the lightheadedness stuff is starting to worry me.

If I drink at a water fountain and stand up suddenly, whoosh. If I climb a flight of stairs, just up one floor, whoosh.

I never used the elevator at work. Since this illness weekend before last, I have to.

The lightheadedness I'm talking about lasts 8 or 10 seconds. I've referred to it as dizziness, but it's not dizziness in the sense of the room seeming to spin around or anything like that. Rather I feel much the way I do when I wake up in the morning and in the time between sleep and full wakefulness, I'm not here and I'm not asleep.

A quick Google search suggested this is a symptom of permanent heart damage. Maybe I should see a doctor. But there are usually several other symptoms present at the same time, such as swelling of the ankles, and I don't have any of the other symptoms.

An interesting point: during those eight or ten second spells, everything is there. Everything looks the same. Nothing is stretching into odd shapes like you see in movies, or changing colors, or turning monochrome. But my surroundings don't look... well, real. The effect is much like waking from a dream, except that when the blood eventually catches up to the brain, I don't 'awaken'... I just settle back into the 'dream'.

I'm not seeking to recreate the experience, because it's pretty damn scary. But when it happens, it's like I'm right on the brink of losing my illusions about the existence of objects, only to be brought back to this world.

I came home this evening, ate two peanut butter and banana sandwiches, a bowl of microwave vegetarian vegetable soup, and a handful of chips. Went to sleep by 6:30 and am only now waking up.

You know what I need to do? I mean, besides see a doctor? Make a will.

Monday update

One of the kittens died overnight. I don't know what happened. She was right by her food dish. She had exhibited no signs of illness or listlessness.

I used to get very distraught about kittens dying. I think, as I have probably blogged before, that dogs and cats deserve a better shot at life than a lot of humans do.

Now I tend to view life and death as a sort of a temporary coming followed by a temporary going. I'm undecided about reincarnation, but I accept the notion, as Tich Nhat Hanh writes, that living things are like waves that appear in the ocean. Yes, we have a certain illusion of separateness and individuality, but in reality, we're all partt of the same ocean and can't exist apart from it.

---

Not much else to report since Friday. The weekend was uneventful - felt well enough to mow the front yard Sunday morning, and spent most of the rest of the time at the Red Cup or at Suzanne's.

Physically, I am back at almost full strength and worked all day yesterday.

I still have a little muscle soreness, and I had a sudden dizzy spell yesterday. Several people saw it, and I guess I was wobbling pretty badly.

But I'm still inching my way back to normalcy.

I lost some weight over the summer, mostly due to cutting a lot of fast food out of my diet, and some old clothes fit again. I wore a shirt to work yesterday that's probably twenty years old.

One thing I will say about my '80s-'90s fascination with fashion: I rarely bought crap, and always chose quality over flashiness. So I have lots of stuff hanging in the closet today that, while no longer stylish, looks about like it did when I bought it.

Friday evening

I spent four hours at work today, so I'm gradually returning to normal strength. I ought to be back to normal by Monday.

Ate a small amount of soup at Lido tonight.

After that, Suzanne and I went back to the Paseo, and sat on a ledge outside the darkened Paseo Pottery and talked. The Paseo was busy: a crowd at Galileo, a crowd at the new and apparently very popular Paseo Grill, and a drum circle playing outside the Woodchuck Chop.

As I write this, my agents in the field tell me Blogblah! is home eating beans and cornbread. Tall Ed is probably talking on the phone with his daughter about the Flaming Lips concert. Suzanne is at home with her still-recuperating-from-eye-surgery dog. Some of my other friends are probably at the Red Cup.

The sky is clear tonight, and there's a gentle breeze out of the south.

As I left the Paseo, I passed the drum circle and saw a middle-aged woman dancing with abandon as others played, and more stood and listened. Further south on 23rd street, I saw a group of about four kids walking in front of a vacant store front, hanging out on Saturday night with no place to go.

Not all good, not all bad. Just things as they are. I had the sudden sense that in at least those few moments, there was not a thing I could do that could possibly be the 'wrong' thing.

I'm sad about the state of the world, and by the amount of grief caused by the arrogance and hubris of my own nation. But tonight, for a change, I feel no bitterness or angerness about it, and the absence of those feelings is a welcome change. I want to speak no harsh or unkind word again in my life.

Everything is the way it is -- the suchness, I suppose, that Buddhists are supposed to intuitively see and understand. I feel like I'm on the threshhold of something in my life, but I don't know what.

I wish blessings upon each and every one of you who read this.

The 501st post

With that out of the way, a quick recap of Thursday.

It was a lot like Wednesday: I went to work, lasted about two hours, couldn't stay on my feet anymore and went home. Suffered a fairly serious dizzy spell in front of my boss, who noticed me walking like someone who's about to flunk a field a sobriety test at 1:40 a.m.

I went home and slept, felt fine a couple of hours later, then started to fade as soon as I began moving around. When I say 'felt fine,' I mean I felt fine. No aches, no tiredness, no discomfort. But the battery had only about a 30-minute charge on it.

Rested more, and later, when I felt briefly recharged again, Suzanne and I went to Boulevard Cafeteria for dinner. This was done very carfeully, with allowances for the possibility I might have to be taken home early on.

But I hung on and made it.

That was the first full meal I'd had since Friday. I had nibbled at stuff during the five days in between, but I didn't have the energy or appetite to eat anything significant. So maybe getting a full stomach will help me get back on track.

Suzanne has been an absolute blessing to me during this. God knows what would have happened to me if she hadn't helped me out when she did.

I've had plenty of home time to read, sleep and bond with the cats, and I've been very grateful for the mild weather that has allowed me to sleep on the porch in the afternoons.

The 500th post

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to fill one's blog and remove all doubt.

What a drag it is getting old

I went back to work today, thinking I had turned the corner on recuperating from my weekend food poisoning/virus/salmonella/microwave weapon exposure/whatever. I lasted about 2 and a half hours then limped home, stopping to rest once on the two-block walk from my cubicle to the parking garage. I dragged myself up the front steps, laid down on the porch glider and slept for two hours before I ever got in the house.

I used to get sick like this and bounce back in a day. Then it stretched to two. Now it's five or six days. Sunday, I sat up in bed, my feet flat on the floor, my hands resting on my knees, and looked around the room. I was alert, not feeling especially sick or feverish or anything else. But my body would... not... move. The only tricks it was going to do that day were 'lie down' and maybe 'roll over,' so that's what I did. And went back to sleep.

If I was sick on a Saturday morning 1976, I'd just stay in bed, confident that by Saturday evening I'd be well enough to go out and get something to eat and maybe some aspirin or whatever. Now, I have to think in terms of being laid up for several days, and having some kind of first aid kit with Gatorade and Immodium AD and whatever else to tide me over until I'm well enough to move enough around again.

Oh, get this.

Microwave weapons so safe, so easy to use, we'll try 'em out on Americans first.

From AP via CNN - Air Force chief: Test weapons on testy U.S. mobs

Okie Blog Awards

I found out Thursday that this blog has been nominated as Best Unusual Blog in the 2006 Okie Blog Awards.

If you are a blogger living in Oklahoma and would like to cast ballots in this vote, go here. Deadline for ballots is September 20.

Thanks to whoever nominated me.

The meditative aspects of barfing

I am in what I hope are the final hours of a weekend barf-fest that began about 5 a.m. Saturday, stayed in full swing through early Sunday evening, and is only now petering out in a random string of occasional urps, borps, gacks, and whaaagghs.

My eyes are bloodshot and bruised; I'm dehydrated, weak and tired. I have a muscle spasm in my upper chest that occasionally induces even more purging reflex.

I assume I am settling a karmic debt incurred by my mockery of the barf-related suffering of other sentient beings.

But you know what I found out?

Barfing can focus your mind. When you are sprinting to the bathroom with a mouth full of suddenly-upchucked whatever, you're not thinking about your job or your love life or Bush and Cheney or anything except getting your face over the toilet.

And when your face is over the toilet, and you've retched and retched and you don't know whether you're going to retch again –– or whether you want to retch again because it might give you ten minutes' more rest before the next time you sprint to the bathroom with a mouth full of barf, all you are focused on is the present moment. What's that little tickling in my stomach? Am I going to barf again? Or will it just be some insignificant hurrp that yields nothing?

You want to know what your original face was before your parents were born? It's that face hovering over the toilet, wondering if that next upchuck is going to be the nasty stuff or just more saliva.

---

Fortunately, soartstar came to my rescue with a care package of Gatorade, bananas and other barf-mitigating treats.

It's Friday

Back in 2000, when I was in the process of relocating from San Antonio back to Oklahoma City, I passed a community south of Austin called Canyon Lake. It's a small fishing resort with a beautiful lake, condos and a couple of small restauramts.

I thought briefly about stopping right there, buying one of the available (and cheap) condos, and just staying. I had read Walden at that point, and was still excited about the idea of living a solitary and reflective existence, but I was still looking at the world through a conventional American view of success, failure and responsibility.

Now I'm trying to rid myself of concepts entirely. Canyon Lake no longer seems a sensible option, but sometimes I think about the area around Turner Falls and the Arbuckles as a place to which I could retreat and try to keep original mind. (Of course, the notion of retreat itself isd a concept. Best not to overthink the process, okay?)

Ideally, I suppose, I would be able to do this anywhere. But I think that's beyond me. I think there's soemthing to be said for arranging my environment, insofar as possible, to reflect the life I want for myself. Maybe something down in the Arbuckles could be my Cold Mountain someday.

Man, I miss TV news

...not.

Dream

Went back to sleep and dreamt I was wandering around in a large building. I was the only one there. I walked into a corridor and down toward a larger room and realized I was in a large post office. There were big canvas-lined bins on wheels and other postal-type stuff. (I guess they still have that. The last time I was in the back of a post office was probably fifteen years ago.)

I tried to fly, but couldn't... at least not very well. I can frequently fly in my dreams, but this time I was just sort of fluttering.

Then I was outdoors somewhere and it wasn't Oklahoma. I'm not sure where I was. It was autumn, and there were rolling hills and trees starting to turn fall colors. It was a little overcast. I came to a bluff and jumped off it, figuring once I was in the air, I would fly. I did fly enough to break my fall, but I still landed on the ground below with a pretty hard thump.

During all this, I was trying to sing Hotel California, but I couldn't remember the lyrics. I decided the reason I couldn't fly was because I was too focused on trying to remember the words.

Then I woke up.

All I can think about.

Went back to bed and couldn't stop thinking about this.

Corner of 31st and Classen... EMSA is there, they've got the victim in the back but he's not going to make it.

The slow-moving Aztec mummy is at the curb, talking to an officer. He's standing there, leaning forward, one arm extended. He's got a slow-moving vehicle thingie stuck to his ass. "He just came out of nowhere, officer. There was nothing I could do."

Another officer has the wheel-on-a-stick thing and is measuring skid marks out in the middle of Classen. People are watching the scene while pumping gas at the 7-Eleven.

I'm sure that's not how it happened in the movie, but that's my mental picture: killed by a slow-moving Aztec mummy.

If I could keep original mind, maybe I'd be asleep now instead of thinking about this.

Killed by a slow moving Aztec mummy

That's probably how I'll go: killed by a slow-moving Aztec mummy. It would be just my luck.

Journey to Simplicity

Original Mind

...so I'm reading Wanting Enlightenment is a Big Mistake by Seung Sahn, right? This is the guy whose other book I read, didn't get it, didn't get it, didn't get it, didn't get it, bing! got it. So this book I pretty much get.

I used to be a pretty big gossip and rumor fan. I'm talking ten years ago or more. I got to where that stuff seemed more like industrial toxic waste than anything interesting, so I'm much less enthusiastic now.

But: suppose I could keep original mind. Always just a step ahead of the point that any of it has any significance, good or bad, I would be neither interested nor repelled. It would be nothing.

I'd like to be that way about most everything, instead of always obsessing. Just let it all go. I guess someone needs to worry about, for example, the web page for the RFQ to hire the consultant to review the other consultants' findings, but how about if it's someone besides me?

I have 'way less pointless crap in my life than the average American, and I'm still awash in it.

Once you get a little glimpse of that clear state, it's hard to stay motivated about anything else.

Life is too full of script-acting and pointless habitual behavior. Shove a little of it overboard, and you find you want to chuck all of it. And go live on Cold Mountain with some cats.

iTunes: Ragas Sindhu Bhaivari and Gurjari Todi, The RajDhani Quartet

By the way...

Little Miss Sunshine: wildly dysfunctional family enters youngest child in JonBenet-like beauty contest, learns important lesson about life.

No, wait. That's not right... I don't think they learned anything. They sort of come together as a family. Or something.

I'm not sure.

Then they drive off. That's how it ends: they drive off.

Great cast, though. We should see more of Alan Arkin.

Tuesday

Okay... after a busy three-day weekend, I have a shitload of solitary brooding to catch up on, so let's get started.

Item: A shopowner friend of mine describes the rather rude and cavalier treatment she received from her new landlord, who seems to be planning the purchase and trendy-stripmall-ization of about five miles of one major Oklahoma City street. Eventually, I predict, this will be a long avenue of Starbucks, Chico, Williams Sonoma, Tommy Bahama, Restoration Hardware, The Loft, whatever, you name it. The most downscale thing there will be the Supersonics Souvenir Shop. Otherwise, all quite upscale. Quite affluent. All the best people will shop there –– you simply won't be anybody unless you're seen there. I will drive out of my way to avoid it.

Item: The house smells like cat pee. The source of this, I suspect, is cat pee. Go out and leave cats alone for 72 hours, they're probably gonna pee.

Item: It's cool enough to go out and finish mowing the yard. So I have to come up with a different excuse, even if it's only to rationalize it to myself. The sage acts without effort.

Item: My five-year anniversary on my current job occurs next week. Who woulda thought? I kept one job for 17 years, but I think five is a long time to stay on a job, especially if it's creative.

Item: The great thing about cat pee, if cat pee may be said to have a great thing, is that you get used to it very quickly. Only keep original mind.

Labor Day weekend

Friday: gallery walk, dinner gathering
Saturday: Red Cup breakfast, more goofin' around, dinner gathering
Sunday: Starbuck's breakfast, goofin' around, dinner dathering
Labor Day: Starbuck's AM, lunch, Little Miss Sunshine, pizza at soartstar's house.

This is about six months' worth of social contact for me, yet I don't feel headed toward a meltdown. Everything is okay.

Still not depressed.

Hey.. it's me

Quick update as I dash between social engagments.

Today's Dilbert: "You don't have the image of success." That's very close to what I've been trying to say.

Bought new Birks Saturday. The old mules have retired.

Got Seung Sahn's "Wanting Enlightenment is a Big Mistake" and a couple of albums this morning.

Really glad it's cooled off.

Not depressed, for a change.


Later.

Nina wrote:

Everywhere I go I bring along those 'not enough' voices in my head.

How do you extinguish them?

Not an all-inclusive list, but:

• Turn off the TV. That's the best advice I can give anyone. Turn it off.
  
  TV has one purpose: to sell you stuff. It does that by making you feel inadequate –– not sexy enough, not affluent enough, not smart enough, not exciting enough –– in the hope you'll buy some SUV or living room furniture or ab blaster to compensate for the perceived shortcomings the tube has instilled in you. No one but Bill Gates and Warren Buffett can afford all the stuff, so eventually you're bound to feel inadequate. Television is evil, evil, evil.
  
  (This from someone who watched Red Freakin' Dawn last night.)


• Stay out of shopping malls and Edmond for the same reason.


• Friends don't let friends find fault. Anyone who regularly tells you what you 'need' to do is really trying to give themselves a sense of superiority over you. (But note the word regularly. Don't reject all advice. I, for example, am a fount of profound, insightful wisdom.
  
  And... I'm a bundle of energy, always on the go!)


• Get a bunch of cats, and learn from them.

One of the reasons I'm entertaining this Cold Mountain fantasy (or maybe not a fantasy) is because it would further insulate me and isolate me from the barrage of 'not good enough/buy this' messages to which I'm exposed every day. I'm pretty far removed from what constitutes 'consumer society' already, and I still feel like I'm in a blizzard of marketing crap.

In the early days of Taoism, I guess, politics was the big marketing tool. Government service was the measure for success. The tests for government service included such things as physical attractiveness and skill in poetry, so there was some incentive to conform in word, appearance and deed.

That's part of the reason the Boys Named Tzu urged people to avoid government service. It was just a big con to get one to sacrifice spirituality in favor of commercialism, rumormongering and backbiting. Now we have TV and other mass media for that.

The sages went off and lived in Luther, Jones and Choctaw to get away from the crap.

Friday

It's Friday again, and I've spent another week almost completely away from home. Why have a house if you're never in it?

Not much else to say, for a change.

Watched Red Dawn on cable last night. What a great film.

Wolverines, you muthas! Wolverines!

Monday is Labor Day, isn't it?

Whoa.

I really mean it.

Whoa.

Blah blah blah enough

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

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

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

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




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




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

But the optimist stays
And is run over by the train

Actually...

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

As I confirmed just moments ago on the Internets.

Good morning, Vietnam!

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

Just kidding.

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

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

Dream addendum

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

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



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

Why is this stuff in my brain?

A dream

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Weekend

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

The sage acts without effort.

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

iTunes: Prabha, Debashish Bhattacharya

The Kitten Welfare State

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

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

They are now beginning to explore the house:







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

Something terrible

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

But other than that, things are peachy

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

Cats live in the moment

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

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

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

Do I need air conditioning in a cave?

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

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

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

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

The browser cache

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

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

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

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

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

iTunes: Raga Madhu-Kauns, Ravi Shankar

Cold Mountain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I could just be me.

I have no ambition to be anything other than me.

("Gasp! You bastard!")

Get buy-in from the stakeholders

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

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

And it matters.

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

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

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

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

Then you can leverage those robust assets.

Tuesday

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

Food, mostly.

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

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

A dream

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

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

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

Then I woke up.

More on the compelling inner life thing

Lifted from flibbertigibbet!

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

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

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

Lifted from Network! by Paddy Chayefsky:

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

-Howard Beale

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

WAKE UP!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blow up your TV.

Get out of the mall.

Live.

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

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

---

dzaster: Are you still in town?

nina: That is the pic. Keep that one.

Wise man update

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

I remembered something I posted back in February:

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

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

Well, yeah. That's what it is.

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

---

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

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

I'm wondering about this a little.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you know a wise man?

I think you have the capacity to be happy

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

The original comment from Patrizia:

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

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

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

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

And so I come back to Seung Sahn:

I just don't know.

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










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

Beta switch

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

3:40 am

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

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

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

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

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

Make of that what you will.

Hey, all you crazy cats and chicks!

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

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

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

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

Here's more.

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

Monday PM

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

Nothing, really

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

Gimp the Cat

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

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

Here's some good news...

Well, for me, anyway.

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

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

Los Angeles Times

Too hot to think

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

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

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

The capacity to be happy...

patrizia said...

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

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

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

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

iTunes: Kaede No Hana, Yamato Ensemble

Just sayin'

A later evening dream

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

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

An early evening dream

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

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

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

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

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

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




iTunes: Mandala Offering, Choying Drolma & Steve Tibbets

If I smile, please give me some bad news

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also...


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

Photo redux

A friend says this picture

doesn't capture my "sparkle."

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



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

Happiness is overrated

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

I believe in it, but with the following caveats:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heat

From Blogblah! ...

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

Hell, yeah.

So to speak.

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

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

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

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

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

A certain lyrical quality

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

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

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

God is doing much better, by the way

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday night!!

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

An old cat

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

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

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

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

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

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

My electric bill

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

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

By the way

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

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

soartstar previously commented:

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

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

Image vs. Reality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What it is.

I'm a Happy Bomb Maker, Paul Hipp

Remington Steele

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

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

Getting older

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

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

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

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