Monday PM

Took off work a couple of hours early (I'm maxed out on accumulated leave - whatever I don't take now, I lose) came home, changed into shorts and an aloha shirt, and headed over to Sauced!

The patio was full.

Sat down with Andre, Ron F and Kelley O and had a beer and a pizza. The Mayor of Slackerville arrived and sat with us awhile.

The air was warm, then cooled at dusk. We were under the awning, out of the sun.

It was another of those evenings where everything seemed just right.

Can't get hooked on it... they don't last. Impermanence, non-attachment and all that. But if you can sit on a just-right evening and eat pizza with friends, why would you want to do anything else?

Sunday PM

I don't have much to write about. I have the sense that I will not have much to write about for awhile. I am at a point where nothing seems particularly important or interesting.

I know that's supposed to be a sign of depression. I think in this case it's just a sign of realization.

I mowed the front yard over the weekend. I cannot say enough good things about my Black & Decker cordless electric mower. I left the thing sitting out in the back yard all winter. It was rained on and snowed on. I rolled it out Saturday and flipped the switch and it came right on. The battery was low, which was to be expected, but in every other respect it was ready to go.

I threw out a ton of old crap in my back bedroom - enough to fill the trash can that goes out to the curb. If I can do that, oh, 20 more times, that room may become habitable.

I ordered a 750 GB Seagate hard drive Friday. It should be here by the middle of the week. I almost can't imagine 750 gigabytes. I got into computing rather late and my first hard drive was 210 megabytes on a 486/33.

I also got my meditation bench in and have tried it. It does make sitting more comfortable. Now if I could just give more of a shit about meditation.

I finished my two FEMA NIMS training courses for work. I don't remember what NIMS stands for, which tells you how much I got out of the classes. National something.

Butthead the Cat is dead and in the landfill somewhere.

Tuesday PM Random Notes

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

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

---

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

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

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

---

And then there's this, from Westika:

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

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

Mcarp and Butthead.

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

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

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

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

Health note

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

Didn't go out at all this evening.

End of the road for Butthead the Cat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wasted

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

How lucky I am

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

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

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

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




Gata, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi swaha!

The wee hours, Sunday morning

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

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

Solitude

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

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

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

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

Refreshingly peaceful.

Which is more important?

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

In case you don't know the answer.

Meanwhile, on Mars

They've found ice. Lots of ice.

Cat attack update

I'm not the only victim.



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































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

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

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

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

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

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

Exactly as I would have been.

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

Friday update

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

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

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

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

The news tonight

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

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

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

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

Nora the Piano Playing Cat

This is pretty cool.

Latest news

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

Cat bite update

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

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

New blog link

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

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

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

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

Not much to report

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

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

Home today

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

Late Evening Update

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

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








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

Evening Update

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

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

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

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

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

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

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









The preceding was a dramatization of actual events.

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

Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow

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

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

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

But my foot still hurts.

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

Damn, this hurts. He really whacked me good.

Ow ow ow ow ow

Never nudge a pissed off cat with your bare foot.

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

Shit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An observation

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

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

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

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

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

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

But see? Now I'm judging and evaluating.

Actually, he's right

In the post 'Turtleneck News,' I wrote

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

To which blogblah! commented:

MC, you ARE the two squirrels.

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

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

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

The Enlightenment Test

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

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

And here's my 1-question test:

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

Get me to the Airport, and step on it.

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

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

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

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

Turtleneck news

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

So, I can

1. lose weight


2. send them all back and move up a size


3. sleep in them until they stretch out some


4. 1 and 3

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

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

Bicycle news

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

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

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

I'm too damn fat.

I meditate like a wuss.

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

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

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

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

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

What I saw today...

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

Here's something else...

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

Well, yes and no

What blogblah! wrote here...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A trip to the mall

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

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

But good lord.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's too damn crazy out there.

5:04 am

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

Grumpy middle-aged guy note

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

This would have been in, like, 2003.

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

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

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

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

The guru thing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


















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

Is it Wednesday already?

Somebody forgot to pay the phone bill last month... minimizing net accessibility over the past few days when the phone company got tired of waiting and cut off my DSL. You'd think I would have figured out by now that when my bank balance seems unusually comfortable it must mean I've forgotten to pay someone.

Oddly enough, they left my phone service connected the whole time.

Being in 'time out' left me with more time to read. I should read more and blog less.

It is true, though...

...that I am rich with good fortune when it comes to friends.

They should have called it an 'oxymoron cookie'

doodle boy update

Australia to ban incandescent bulbs

From the BBC:

"Australia has announced plans to ban incandescent light bulbs and replace them with more energy efficient fluorescent bulbs.

"The environment minister said the move could cut the country's greenhouse gas emissions by 4 million tonnes by 2012."

More here.

A dream

I dreamt that I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom of a friend. I noticed an envelope lying on the floor, so I picked it up. On the back of the envelope was a list she had written of things to which she felt attached, and from which she wanted to free herself of attachment.

The first thing on the list, and the only one which I was able to read before I woke up, was "faucet handles."

The usual disclaimer applies

I may not know what I'm talking about.

A sense of something missing

I had a sense over the weekend of there being something missing or incomplete in my life.

I used to have this feeling almost all the time. I don't have it as often anymore –– in part because of my recently-found beliefs, and in part, I think, because I've gotten older and I have more of the perspective that comes with accumulated life experience.

The first of the Buddha's four noble truths is that life is filled with dukha, a word which is often translated as 'suffering' but which can also be translated as 'dissatisfaction.'

Dissatisfaction can nag at you constantly. The natural response is to seek something that will stop the dissatisfaction –– something that will patch over that pothole that seems to exist in the center of your psyche.

In our culture, it's probably worse than elsewhere. We're the most-entertained, most-marketed-to, most propaganda-immersed human beings in history. We not only have the dissatisfactions that are natural to simply being alive, we also have all the dissatisfactions created by advertising, marketing, motivational speakers and the like.

We're dissatisfied, and we're told the way to end dissatisfaction is to own a luxury car, to bungee jump from a bridge, to buy NFL souvenirs, to sleep with someone more attractive, to own a complete collection of Elvis commemorative decanters, to get saved, to dress differently –– you name it.

We're dissatisfied, and we're told it's because life is supposed to be more exciting, more sexy, more luxurious and stylish. We just have to buy stuff and develop the right attitude –– the right attitude being that the most important thing is to get lots of money so we can buy more stuff (or give it away to televangelists and what-not, which is just another way of 'buying' relief from guilt or the fear of punishment from God).

But the 'stuff' never works for any length of time. The dissatisfaction –– the nagging sense of something being missing or incomplete –– always comes back.

The rest of the Buddha's noble truths talk about how to get rid of this persistent dissatisfaction -- getting rid of attachment, following the eightfold path. Maybe I should be working harder at that. Intellectually, I seem to be over the need to be constantly satisfied, but at some deeper level, I'm still struggling with it.

Even getting rid of suffering can become an attachment; the dissatisfaction starts to fold back in on itself and you find you're dissatisfied because you haven't succeeded at getting rid of dissatisfaction.

But the point I wanted to make here is that feeling dissatisfied is as natural as breathing. Even after you've bought all the stuff your house will hold, you'll feel dissatisfied. Even after you've found the love of your life, you'll feel dissatisfied. Even after you've become President of the United States, you'll feel dissatisfied.

Red Cup tonight

Thumbnail sketch of a guy playing chess at the Red Cup tonight.

Bad advice

I gave someone bad advice today.

dzaster and I were in her car, in the middle of a discussion about Buddhism, non-attachment, freeing oneself of the addiction to drama and andrenaline rushes, and similar topics of mutual interest, when a purple inflatable ball about 30" in diameter came rolling down a parking lot. No one came after it.

We both commented on how odd it was for this ball to appear out of nowhere, with no one chasing it or following it.

When the purple ball reached the street, it turned south and went down the street.

"It's a sign!" I said. And then came the bad advice: "Go get it!"

dzaster stopped the car, got out, retrieved the ball, and put it in her trunk.

What I should have said to her was, "Wow, that was interesting. But now that we've had the moment, the thing to do is let it pass, carrying no attachment to the moment or to the object." And then we would have driven on.

But no. I thought not as a Buddhist, but as a guy with a house and a minivan full of crap. So dzaster, who has done more to simplify and declutter her life than anyone I know who is not living in exile in Nepal, now has a pretty much useless 30" inflatable purple ball in her trunk.

Sorry, dzaster.























But for God's sake, don't throw it away! It might be good for something someday!

Too cold

I had the idea I would go out and do something this evening, but it's just too cold. I'm back in the warmth of my house... me and the cats.

Hey, look! I'm a quiet maverick!

I took one of those online personality tests just now. I'm an INTP.

The Thinker

You are analytical and logical - and on a quest to learn everything you can. Smart and complex, you always love a new intellectual challenge. Your biggest pet peeve is people who slow you down with trivial chit chat. A quiet maverick, you tend to ignore rules and authority whenever you feel like it. You would make an excellent mathematician, programmer, or professor.

What's Your Personality Type?

I had a much more complete version of this test done about eight years ago by a certified Bristol-Myers instructor (or is it Briggs & Stratton? I can never remember). I think it produced the same result. I remember she said I was more 'P' that anyone she'd ever tested.

INTPs generally have the following traits:

• Love theory and abstract ideas


• Truth Seekers - they want to understand things by analyzing underlying principles and structures


• Value knowledge and competence above all else


• Have very high standards for performance, which they apply to themselves


• Independent and original, possibly eccentric


• Work best alone, and value autonomy


• Have no desire to lead or follow


• Dislike mundane detail


• Not particularly interested in the practical application of their work


• Creative and insightful


• Future-oriented


• Usually brilliant and ingenius


• Trust their own insights and opinions above others


• Live primarily inside their own minds, and may appear to be detached and uninvolved with other people


• Burst into tears at apparently random points in movies


• Drive a minivan crammed with shit


• Sleep with a cat they named after their therapist

Find out more here.

I took some other test like this once where I turned out to be in the smallest of the classifications. It accounts for something like 5% of the population.

Doodle boy update

The new version of Corel Painter -- version 10 -- is out. I don't find this as significant an update as the 8 to 9 version, for whatever it's worth.

This is a teacup at the Red Cup.

They were wondering at Starbuck's what holiday it was

Note to JohnX: when the Red Cup is closed, as it often is on holidays, we cross the 63rd street frontier and go to the Evil Empire Starbuck's in Nichols Hills Plaza. Kathryn, Rena, Tall Ed, dzaster, Ned, the Gary, Dave and I were all there this morning when unforeseen circumstances delayed the Red Cup's opening.

You're always welcome to join us.

Addendum

Jacking in from the Red-Cup-is-open-again port...

The Jane Monheit version of "The Waters of March" was the first version of it I ever heard. It was on an Internet radio station. That's been maybe four years ago.

I had never heard the song before, and started Googling it. I found out, of course, it was by Jobim, of whom I was dimly aware as the composer of "The Girl From Ipanema."

I've heard a few other versions of it since then, but the Jane Monheit version is the only one that moves me to tears every time I hear it. In fact, I don't listen to it very often because it's so emotionally overwhelming for me.

And I have no idea why.

Years ago, I saw the movie 'Contact' in the theater. This is the science fiction 'chick flick,' based on a novel by Carl Sagan, about a woman (Jodie Foster) chosen to make the first face-to-face contact with an alien race. To go meet the aliens, she has to travel in some sort of giant teleportation device built from blueprints the aliens have sent us.

The movie is mostly blah, but there's a scene where she's been strapped into the ten-story-tall teleporter and the mission control chief tells her, 'you're good to go.' They fire the thing up, and it starts shaking and rocking around and they're not sure if it's going to work, or not work, or blow up, or what.

Jodie Foster is bouncing around in the cockpit chair, saying to herself, "I'm good to go... I'm good to go... I'm good to go..."

For years afterward, I would start to cry whenever I thought of that scene.

"I'm good to go... I'm good to go... I'm good to go..."

Again, I don't know why.

One day, something made me think of it while I was in Lowe's Home Center. I was standing there in the aisle looking for grommets with tears streaming down my face.

My therapist told me, "Something's trying to get out."

I don't cry over 'I'm good to go' anymore. Maybe I'll get over "The Waters of March" as well.

What it is

Jane Monheit



The lyrics, in case you can't follow:


A stick, a stone
It's the end of the road
It's the rest of a stump
It's a little alone.
It's a sliver of glass
It is life, it's the sun
It is night, it is death
It's a trap, it's a gun.

The oak when it blooms,
A fox in the brush
A knot in the wood
The song of a thrush
The wood of the wind
The cliff, a fall
A scratch, a lump
It is nothing at all.
It's the wind blowing free
It's the end of the slope
It's a beam, it's a void
It's a hunch, it's a hope

And the riverbank talks
Of the waters of March;
It's the end of all strain
It's the joy in your heart.

The foot, the ground
The flesh and the bone
The beat of the road
A slingshot stone
A fish, a flash
A silvery glow.
A fight, a bet
The range of a bow.
The bed of the well,
The end of the line,
The dismay in the face.
It's a loss, it's a find.
A spear, a spike
A point, a nail,
A drip, a drop
The end of the tale.
A truckload of bricks
In the soft morning light,
It's the shot of the gun
In the dead of the night.
A mile, a must
A thrust, a bump
It's a girl, it's a rhyme
It's a cold, it's the mumps.
The plan of the house.
The body in bed.
And the car that got stuck
In the mud, it's the mud.
A float, a drift
A flight, a wing
A hawk, a quail
The promise of spring

And the riverbank talks
Of the waters of March
It's the promise of life
It's the joy in your heart.

A snake, a stick
It is John, it is Joe
It's a thorn in your hand
Or a cut on your toe,
A point, a grain
A bee, a bite
A blink, a buzzard
A sudden stroke of night.
A pin, a needle
A sting, a pain
A snail, a wasp
A riddle, a stain.

A pass in the moutains
A horse and a mule,
In the distance the shelves
Grow three shadows of blue.

And the riverbank talks
Of the waters of March
It's the promise of life
In your heart, in your heart.

A stick, a stone,
The end of the load,
The rest of the stump,
A lonesome road.
A sliver of glass,
A life, the sun,
A night, the death,
The end of the run.
And the riverbank talks
Of the waters of March,
It's the end of all strain,
It's the joy in your heart.
It's the joy in your heart.
It's the joy in your heart.
It's the joy in your heart.

Words and music by: Antonio Carlos Jobim

From the Wikipedia entry:

In Jobim's English version, "it" is a stick, a stone, a sliver of glass, a scratch, a cliff, a knot in the wood, the wind blowing free, a fish, a pin, a buzzard, the end of the road, and many other things. All these details swirling around the central metaphor of "the waters of March" can give the impression of the passing of daily life and its continual, inevitable progression towards death, just as the rains of March mark the end of summer and the beginning of the colder season [in the southern hemisphere]. However, Jobim's English lyrics also speak of the water being "the promise of life / ... the joy in your heart," which allows for other, more life-affirming interpretations.

---

"Take the world lightly, and your spirit will not be burdened. Consider everything minor, and your mind will not be confused. Regard death and life as equal, and your heart will not be afraid."

–– The Taoist Book of Leadership and Strategy,
2nd century BCE,
translation by Thomas Cleary

---

I guess I can stop being maudlin now.

But not as trippy as this

Dream

I went to bed and had a dream... I don't remember all the details, except that in the dream, I was in bed just as I actually was, except that there was a woman in bed beside me (this is how I knew it was a dream).

The woman was someone I know, but not someone any of you would know.

In the dream, I know I'm dreaming, and I'm trying to wake up, but I can't.

"Wake... me... up," I say to her, and I'm saying this out loud in my sleep, and even realize I'm saying it out loud.

"Wake... me... up. Please... wake... me... up."

Now I'm starting to get frustrated, because, dammit, I know I'm right on the verge of waking up, and I seem to be stuck there.

"I... need you... to... wake... me... up."

This went on for 15 or 20 seconds, I guess. Finally one of the cats came up from the foot of the bed and woke me up.

This is the second dream in a week where I've been right on the brink of waking up and talking out loud in my sleep.

Pretty trippy.

You know you're getting old when...

...you sprain your back sneezing.

Ow.

Another Saturday night...

and I'm home with a cold... which is inhibiting the performance of my duties as Ambassador of the Universe to the greater Red Cup metropolitan area. I'm going to find a book I haven't read yet, if I have one, and crash on the futon, coughing and sneezing and trying to stay warm.

When was the last time...

...you ran your fingers over the bark of a tree?

...got grass stains on the knees of your pants?

...stopped and watched a squirrel watching you, and waited for him to make the next move?

...fell asleep on your front porch?

God, Galactus and the Universe

The photos that have come back from the Hubble telescope have had a fairly profound impact on me.

I'm a little conflicted about this. On the one hand, expending all the time, money and energy to see stuff billions of light years away (or billions and billions of light years away, if you remember Carl Sagan's Cosmos) seems sort of pointless and silly.

On the other hand, well, holy shit:



Some of those bright spots are galaxies, as you'll see if you click on the thumbnail for the larger version of the picture.

Astronomers will make one thing of this, and I will make another.

Even though someone could probably tell us what the field of view is in that picture, it's a number so large we can't conceive of it, even as we're looking at it right there in front of us.

An experienced world traveler might have some concept of the size of the earth, but for the rest of us it's just a number from the World Almanac: 24,900 miles. We can't even actually conceive of that, let alone the view in that Hubble picture. (And personally, my sense of scale tends to lapse into the fabulous anywhere beyond Danforth Road.)

Imagine that picture projected onto the side of a 20-story building. Now, it's pretty damn big by our earthly standards, yet still not even a thumbnail representation of the real thing. But look at that twenty-story picture, where the earth, were it to be shown, would be maybe the size of a marble.

How big would your concept of God be in that picture? As I thought about it, I decided that my concept of God –– and I'm talking about the traditional Judeo-Christian Sistine Chapel God –– would probably be about 20 feet tall compared to a marble-sized earth.

(Galactus would top out, by comparison, at about three feet.)

And yet God –– as my limited imagination pictures him –– would still be dwarfed by the scale of that picture.

We are led to believe that whatever force created that huge cloud, billions of miles across, and made those galaxies spinning like 4th of July sparklers through the sky is profoundly concerned about gay Teletubbies, the Dixie Chicks, and concealed carry.

Well, you decide what you want to believe about that.

But here's the deal: that picture is a picture of you. You are all that. And all that is you. It's all one thing. At the subatomic level, you can't even tell where the traditional concept of 'you' ends and the traditional concept of 'everything else' begins.

You are all your friends and enemies. You are George W. Bush. You're me. You're an apple. You're Beasley the cat.

All one thing.

The universe.

Beasley the cat.

All one thing

An apple, a quasar, Beasley the cat: all one thing.

You are in the universe, a portal to everything else in the universe... and you are the universe. And so am I. And so is an apple, a quasar and Beasley the cat.

The universe.

Another time slice

I went to Borders this evening, bought nothing, and emerged at twilight. There in front of me was the NW Expressway, and beyond it the hospital, the fitness center, Warwick West Apartments and Union Plaza –– the black glass tower with the brick-red corners.

Looking out over all that I felt something almost the opposite of what I felt Friday night –– a sense of bleakness, remoteness, aloneness, pointlessness. I still feel the same way now, although getting back to the comfort of my little house helps some. Again, there's probably some memory, some prejudice or preference or aversion that evoked or guided that response, but it doesn't help to know that.

Life feels bleak tonight. Nothing has changed in my life since Friday; only my attitude is different.

One of the things I wanted from a relationship –– when I was still pursuing relationships –– was a woman who could help me through these dark moods. Maybe that's why I developed my affinity for the goddess Tara.

But I understand now that it generally doesn't work that way. Significant others are not therapists.

Even so, I find myself wishing sometimes that there was someone here who could ease that sense of dreariness so I didn't have to carry the burden of it all by myself.

Wishing does not make it so. This sense of despair is mine, and no one else's.

Winning by not playing

Blogblah! has a post here that you should read, if you haven't already, before continuing with this one.

The details are different in some particulars, but generally speaking, his story is my story. I've haven't questioned a lot of other men about this, but I've talked about it to enough others to know that he and I are far from alone.

One thought in his post suggests a response. It's a point on which he and I differ:

"I know several people who don’t date at all and don’t want to. They have their imaginary self, imagined love and their memories. That’s it. They never have the rush of a new relationship and a new sex partner nor the high of feeling confident and fulfilled, but they never suffer the fiery hell of a relationship in flux and shambles, leading to a pit of burning lost love excrement up to one’s nose. They “win” by not playing.

"In my opinion, they have put life on hold and in my opinion this is a fate worse than death. It’s also the option I believe I am most likely to choose."

That describes how I live pretty accurately, but not my attitude about it. When John says we "'win' by not playing," he makes the assumption that there is a 'win' and a 'lose' to these choices. I had that same belief at one point. In fact, it was that belief as much as anything else that kept driving me to bang my head against the brick wall of trying to get a whole series of 'Miss Wonderfuls' into my life.

Because of the kind of woman to which I was attracted (cute but not beautiful, extremely intelligent, borderline personality), these 'relationships' inevitably ended with her yanking the rug out from under me and standing there laughing or offering mock sympathy -- as often as not, arm in arm with the ne'er-do-well 'bad boy' heir to the Fahrquahr Humate Company fortune -- while I again sat on my bruised ass on the floor trying to figure out why repeating the same actions had once more led to the same results.

But I kept doing it, and for a long time I assumed I kept doing it only because I was lonely and/or horny.

My view was also tainted by the 'if at first you don't succeed, try, try again' maxim, whose point of diminishing returns I had passed by about 1980.

After getting into therapy about ten years ago, I had a couple of relationships that were not based on the need to 'rescue' a cute, bright psychotic. Those relationships were all brief and in every case I was the one who ended it.

I was bored by them, and I was faced with the discovery that having a crazy person wreck my life by exploiting my gullibility and naiveté at least offered some emotional payoff, while being nagged about my clothes or my car or my pets was just a drag. It was at that point I pretty much gave up the relationship hunt.

Eventually, I came to face and accept another unpleasant fact: I had viewed the pursuit of all those cute, bright, crazy women as a win/lose situation, and also to a certain degree a competitive situation in which I was losing by not 'getting' the same women other guys were 'getting'.

I considered myself a socially enlightened guy and not someone who 'objectified' women. But that's what I was doing –– not in the same way that Larry Flynt does it, but objectifying them nonetheless.

Nowadays, I don't think of it so much as win/lose anymore. Sometimes I slip back into that mode out of habit or depression, but it happens rarely.

Instead, I follow the zen and taoist belief in viewing things as they are and only as they are, and not viewing them in comparison to other events or other things, or through the distorting filters of prejudices, preferences and memories.

I am alone, and that is neither good nor bad. It is neither the right way to be nor the wrong way to be. It is simply a way of being.

This is actually at variance with the Buddha's own teaching, which was that romantic love was a grasping, controlling, attaching emotion that was as bad as jealousy or anger or anything else.

We glorify that kind of love in our culture, in my opinion, for the same reason we glorify driving around in big circles at high speeds, invading other countries or watching guys line up and then suddenly jump up and run into each while someone tries to sneak a ball past them. We just love crazy, pointless, adrenaline-producing stimuli.

My life is far from being 'on hold.' It's true that I'm more-or-less drifting with no goals, but I'm aware of that and fine with it. My life is actually busier now than it's ever been. I have more friends today –– including John Long –– than I had cumulatively from 1980 to 2003. So for me, at least, this is not a fate worse than death.

A time slice

I did part of the Paseo gallery walk tonight. On the way back up the hill from JRB, I was right outside Blue Moon and was suddenly struck by the way everything was in that moment: the cold, the lights on the street, the people walking by, patches of snow on the ground.

In that moment –– just that time slice of only a few seconds –– my life was exactly what I wanted it to be. There was nothing special happening, but I had a moment of perfect satisfaction.

I could go back to that same spot tomorrow night at the same time, and it would feel different and probably not as satisfying –– the same river twice, and all that.

I've had many moments like that over the past 20 years or so, but I wish I had more.

I wish I felt like that all the time.

Mmmmm... it's a great feeling!

So, after the previous post, I went to bed and stared at the ceiling... thinking about that woman in the Pearl Drops Tooth Polish Ad.

As I remember her she was blonde, very Scandinavian looking, with huge, perfect teeth (naturally) and she was wearing a light-colored turtleneck. And she did this thing where she licked the front of her front teeth with her tongue to show how polished they felt.

I thought about that for maybe an hour. Turns out I'm not the only person who remembers it. Here's someone else.

Anyway, I finally fell asleep. And then I had a dream in which I'm in the back seat of a car, with my dad driving and my stepmother in the front passenger seat, and I'm trying to explain to them my obsession with Pearl Drops woman.

Then I woke up.

And what about The Rifleman? I was on my way to the Red Cup for lunch, and instead of perceiving the suchness of the 31st and Military Avenue intersection, I was thinking about The Rifleman.

First thing in the show, dude's walking down Main Street, right? And all of a sudden he just cracks off about five rounds from his rifle... his Rifleman rifle... right down the middle of the street.

Then he just keeps on walking like nothing happened!

Hey, Chuck! What was that, man? Did you just kill someone, or were you just chipmunkin' around?

And Chuck would look up at the camera and be like all, "Don't fuck with me, man. I'm the fuckin' Rifleman."



Yeah... that's what I'm talkin' about.

So, you see, as I try to perceive things as they are, free of attachments, prejudices and other distortions, I've got all this... stuff... floating around in my brain, getting in the way. Household alcoholism stuff. TV stuff. Movie stuff. Algebra class stuff. Failed relationship stuff. Ex-wife stuff. Tons of stuff. Compared to my brain, my minivan looks like an operating theater.

The thinkier I become, the wronger I get

...and that's why I don't want to think at all. I'm worn out with thinking. I don't trust thinking –– not my thinking, anyway. I don't want to think, and I really don't want to think about what I'm thinking.

I'm back to wanting to do the Cold Mountain lifetsyle: near-total isolation, nothing to understand, nothing to sort out, just direct experience of a simple life as it happens.

I've been thinking (Dammit! There it is again!) about this notion of experiencing life without doing the concurrent internal running commentary. It sounds like it can be incredibly liberating. And while a hut at Walden Pond isn't absolutely necessary to master it, it seems like it would be a significant aid.

The one thing worse than a woman who tries to change my clothes, my car and my habits is a woman who doesn't try to change me at all. Because then when blind panic sets in, I don't have a valid excuse for fleeing into the night.

But I do it anyway. I don't know about L4, but my heart is in lockdown mode because it, like my brain, is a helium balloon dancing on the end of a string, ready to float off into fantasy and unreality the moment I loosen my grip on it.

I don't trust my thinking. Nor do I trust my feeling, for that matter. There's nothing I can trust. It's all tainted with judgments and prejudices and childhood traumas and self-justification and self-disdain. Tainted with flawed data from Hollywood movies and Pearl Drops Tooth Polish ads from the seventies. Tainted with pop music sentimentality.

I want to move to the country, eliminate all the conflicting input, and get grounded in reality.

And I'm going to do that as soon as we win the lottery.

More cheerful stuff

The reference to Noah in the overnight post got me to thinking about that whole story.

I've forgotten why God decided to flood the earth, but I suppose it was because of gay marriage or the Dixie Chicks or people not sacrificing enough goats or some other thing.

Usually when you see a picture of Noah and the ark, he's an old dude with a big woolly beard, and the ark's a big boat with a couple of giraffes sticking their heads out the portholes and maybe some monkeys scampering about on the rigging.

And that's the flood story.

But think about the pictures we saw from hurricane Katrina. People on their rooftops, screaming for rescue that sometimes didn't come. Bloated bodies floating down streets. Block after block of homes and stores ruined.

Now imagine those same scenes multiplied a million-fold or so, and there's your great flood.

Ahem

The '3:24 a.m.' post, is, I suppose, a good example of falling off the 'don't know mind' wagon.

Not that I would try to sway your opinion or anything...

but here is C|NET's take on Windows Vista Ultimate:

"The bottom line: Windows Vista is essentially warmed-over Windows XP."

3:24 am

And I'm bored and depressed.

Depressed, I think, because even though I think I begin to understand how things really are –– how the machinery of the cosmos really works –– part of me would still prefer it to be another way.

In other words, I'm depressed because my fantasies aren't reality.

Nina has broken up with L4 –– his heart, she writes, is in 'lockdown mode.' Blogblah! speculates that 'maybe someday' he'll have a relationship that will be good. Erika West, at 27, has decided she'll never be in a relationship again.

I wish I had some optimism to offer here. But all my empirical data tell me Erika has probably hit the nail on the head.

I decided a few years ago relationships weren't for me. I've tried a couple of times since then, but halfheartedly, because I already know I'm no good at it. I don't like calling it 'celibacy' because for me, the connotation is that I've had some sort of pious vision, when in fact I've just gotten tired of being always on the defensive, always tiptoeing on eggshells, always wondering when I would commit the social, cultural or consumerist fuckup that, while innocuous-seeming to me, was the deal-breaker for her.

For me, relationships were always like paddleball... you know, that wooden paddle with the rubber ball attached by an elastic string. You can play it, but no matter how good you get at it, you know that eventually you're going to miss. You keep swatting it, and eventually you break your own record, but you know the miss is coming, and now it's not an idle diversion, you've got to... keep... swatting it... even... though... you... know... at some point... you have to... aw, shit.

And then she'll be with her friends at girls' night out dishing about what a clueless loser you are, and you'll be at home with the cats and a bag of Doritos –– and thanking the gods you didn't give up your lumpy white minivan for an SUV or a sports sedan like she wanted you to, or get rid of the cats like she wanted you to.

Because even if you had done those things, she still would have met the ne'er-do-well 'bad boy' heir to the Fahrquahr Humate Corporation fortune and dumped your ass, anyway.

Being a charismatic leader, the Buddha probably had women approaching him rather frequently. But history tells us that after his enlightenment, he gave up relationships and sex completely. And in so doing, he gave up a major contributing factor in overall human misery and craziness.

"Be fruitful and multiply," God told Noah and the other flood survivors. Buy some SUV's. Get breast implants and hair transplants. Have your eyeliner tatttoed on. Buy Harley Davidsons. Get some misdemeanor convictions. Lie to each other frequently.

Above all, spend money and create drama.

Here's some more of that so-called 'intelligent design': reproduction is necessary for the survival of the species, yet it is the most painful, unpleasant, crazy-making aspect of being alive.

That's why I'm all for human cloning.

Hope that cheered everyone up. Y'all sound kind of bummed out.

Check out those pictures of Saturn.

Saturn photos

NASA conducted a contest to let users choose their favorite photographs of Saturn and its moons taken by the Cassini explorer.



Yeah... that's a photograph.


More results here.

The thing in itself is not a titmouse

I was watching birds eating sunflower seeds on the front lawn this afternoon.

I found myself trying to identify them. I didn't even make a conscious decision to do that - it just happened out of habit. First I was in the moment, then suddenly I was half in the moment and half in some bird-watching book my schoolteacher grandparents gave me when I was eight.

So instead of just seeing and experiencing the birds, I was trying to name them all. Was that a sparrow? A finch? A wren? A Fahrquahr's Ruby-crested Titmouse?

(There's actually no such thing as a Fahrquahr's Ruby-crested Titmouse. I just made that up because I like saying 'titmouse.'

Titmouse. Titmouse. Titmouse.)

This brings me back to the question: what is it?

If I say it's a sparrow, does that mean it is a sparrow? Or does that just mean I have a name for the thing that I don't what it is?

If I say it's the wind, or the sun, or life, or love or Angelina Jolie... what is it?

Do you get I'm saying? What is it?

I don't know, and as always, it's OK to not know.

But don't think that just because you have a name for the thing in itself, you know what it is.

(Titmouse.)

Ace of Clubs

I'm gonna effin' sue you, David Blaine!



If you haven't already seen it, watch now.

Another permanent link

About three years ago, I was at the IAO Not-So-Silent Night auction when I spotted a sculpture back in the alcove. It was a plumb bob (at least I *think* it was a plumb bob) hanging from a short chain, which in turn was attached to a piece of metal extending up from a chunk of concrete. The metal had been bent at a right angle so that it resembled a gallows, with the plumb bob hanging from the end.

Pieces of rebar extending from the concrete had been bent at angles all around the plumb bob.

At least that's the way I remember it. I immediately identified with it, because it was pretty much me... dangling helplessly from a chain, with a cage of rebar to keep away all the things that might cause me pain. (I was in the midst of having my heart ripped out at the time, so I was a little depressed.)

The sculpture was created by Larry Pickering, to whom I was introduced that evening by a mutual friend.

I run into Larry all the time these days, either at the Cup or Galileo, often with a sketch pad in his hand.

Added to the links menu at right is pop*modern, his relatively new blog. I didn't know until just now that he designed the sign outside Rococo.

I already know what the State of the Union is, thank you...

...so no, I didn't watch.

I came home this evening after dinner and decided to take a nap. I had a dream, and in the dream, I was lying on my bed, but in a room that wasn't my room. There was this odd itching sensation around my right ankle. I looked down, and saw that the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote were having some kind of fistfight while clinging to my right ankle. I tried to shake them off, but they wouldn't let go. Then I woke up.

--

Then I went to a party. Happy Birthday, Kat.

So what if I did know a 'wise person'?

What would I get from that relationship? Would I be wiser? Kinder? More responsible? Would I be able or willing to change my life in even a small way because a wise person told me to?

I already know I'm overweight. What have I done about it?

I already know my car and my house are a mess. What have I done about it?

Would a wise person give me some secret mantra to chant that would make me healthier? More self-disciplined? Harder-working?

Maybe the teacher hasn't appeared because the student isn't quite ready. I haven't used or followed all the wisdom already at my disposal. Why should I seek more?

---

Apropos of nothing else, I had a dream Saturday night in which I was lecturing a bunch of executives at a TV station about why television sucked and why they didn't do anything about it. I asked them which they would prefer to be: a Tiffany's, a Target or a Wal-Mart. I reminded them that William Paley had grown rich and successful with top-rated programs and still was able to have a news division that was highly-regarded and well-respected. I made fun of their consultant-driven programming.

I found during this persuasive talk that it became progressively more difficult to speak. I wanted to talk, but my mouth didn't seem to want to move.

I woke up at the end of it. The cats were climbing all over me because I had been giving my harangue out loud in my sleep, and they thought I was talking to them.

It's been eight damn years. I don't watch TV. I don't hang out with friends from my TV days. But it's like having some low-grade infection or something.

Wisdom

Blogblah! raised the question over dinner Friday night: "What is wisdom?"

First, let me say how grateful I am to have someone even raise a question like that.

If you know me and suspect that's sarcsam, it isn't.

And given my propensity to overthink things, it should be no surprise that I am still pondering the question:

What is wisdom?

In the context in which the word came up Friday night, my Mac dictionary says

the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment

Being wise doesn't mean being infallible. We should accept that even our wisest men and women will sometimes be wrong.

I have in my mind a concept of what a wise person should be like. Wise people are always serene. They rarely speak, but when they do speak, their words are always carefully considered and usually heeded. But that's just my concept, and it's more informed by characters in fiction, I'm afraid, than anyone I've known in reality. Remember the old woman who lived in the Nebraska cornfield in 'The Stand'? She was wise.

But what about real life? Where are the wise people in our world? I'm having a hard time thinking of any as I sit here.

One might also assume that a wise person leads an exemplary life. We would disagree, though, on what constitutes an exemplary life. The life of the Dalai Lama? Of Warren Buffett? Keith Richards? Okay, not Keith Richards. How about Jimmy Carter?

Buddhists sometimes refer to someone who has 'crazy wisdom.' At one time, this meant the person understood the dharma and followed the precepts, but lived an otherwise eccentric lifestyle. But in contemporary times, 'crazy wisdom' seems to have become sort of a euphemism for 'fucked up.' Roshi thinks he's risen above the precepts, transcended the dharma, and now he can do any damn thing that pops into his head and it's okay. Is that wisdom? Not to me. The defintion says, 'good judgment.'

Again, I am reluctant to get involved in organized belief systems, and that's part of the reason why.

But your mileage may vary.

There are also some Buddhist and Taoist proverbs to the general effect that a person who considers himself wise almost certainly isn't.

That's one I don't have to worry about. My ego would like me to be seen as a wise man, but the overwhelming evidence to the contrary prevents me from falling into that error.

This is going to be another of those posts that rambles on for awhile and then just peters out.

Sorry.

Still awake.

Reading some Alan Watts in the hope it will calm me down some. It's helping a little, but not much.

"Alan Watts is not Zen!" some zen master once exclaimed.

Maybe not. I don't care. Still works for me.

Crap.

I am trying to turn my brain off so I can go to sleep.

Can't do it.

As JohnX reminds us

This is a good time to feed the birds. Throw some crumbs or seed out on the ice. Take a bird to lunch.

The Lone Buddhist

After a couple of years of studying Buddhism, and embracing the tenets of Mahayana Buddhism (along with some Taoism), I have yet to get involved in a sangha.

The three gems of Buddhism are the Buddha (or Buddha nature, in some variations), the dharma (roughly –– and I mean very roughly –– equivalent to a gospel or a dogma) and the sangha, or congregation.

In the early seventies, as I've mentioned before, I was a devout 'born-again' Christian for about four years. I was totally caught up in a doctrine that today seems to me nonsensical and basically heretical.

I went to church all the time: Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, sometimes Friday night, Bill Gothard Institute, Navigators classes, plus various Bible studies and other activities. I was surrounded ten to twelve hours a week by people who were being indoctrinated the same way I was.

If you haven't been there, let me tell you it's easy to be persuaded of the goofiest notions on earth if you're surrounded by people who think the same thing. I don't care how smart you are, or how good your critical thinking skills are. One of David Koresh's followers was a Harvard law graduate. Peer pressure leads you to accept without question. If you're lucky, something comes along to jolt you out of your intellectual lethargy (thank you, Hal Lindsey, for what I'm sure you would consider unintended consequences of Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth).

Part of the reason I've avoided 'joining up' with a Buddhist community is because I don't want to find myself tripping down the same mindless path that led me to fundamentalism in the seventies.

What I believe about Buddhism is really what I believe. It's not something I talked myself into because I wanted to be accepted by a social group, or because a Sunday school teacher was leaning on me about it.

It would be great to know more people who share my beliefs, or who are struggling with the same questions I have. But I don't want to end up being more worried about fitting in than about learning the truth, and I know that I have had a weakness in that direction in the past. I don't want to be lured into force-feeding myself a bunch of crap so I won't be ostracized by other people who have force-fed themselves the same crap.

Is it spring yet?

Just checking.

No?

Okay. I'll try again later.

I really really really want out of the house

I'm not going to go anywhere. It's too miserable out. But I'm restless tonight.

Now, as I was saying

The post I made earlier about seeing reality unadulterated by personal filters was itself adulterated. It couldn't help but be.

Even our efforts to see past or around our filters are bound to be contaminated by these filters. In my case, that's a wall of glass 54 years thick, tinted not only by all the things that happened in my life, but

• all the things I think happened, but maybe didn't;


• all the conclusions I've drawn from the real experiences, plus all the conclusions I've drawn from things I think happened, but didn't;


• plus all the assumptions I've made based on the conclusions I've drawn.

Finding the truth in there is like trying to find a particular pair of socks somewhere in that huge and ever-present pile of laundry in my bathroom.

But I'm pretty sure I never even imagined inviting anyone to move to the Ozarks. Other than that, that anonymous comment seemed entirely plausible.

I won! I won!

WINNING NOTIFICATION
PEE SOFTWARE INC.
SWEEPSTAKES DIVISION.
4 NEW ELLAND PARK
WARSAW,POLAND.

Dear Winner,

Congratulations!

With utmost joy, we are pleased to inform you of the result of the Pee Software Inc. promo draws held on the 12th January 2007 which drew a cash prize of $500,000.00.

Your e-mail address attached to Ticket/Code number 0087411652337 with claim/reference number 085093785/06 drew these lucky numbers 007-49746-041-764-64-2091, which consequently won in the 1st category. You have been approved to receive a cash prize of $500,000.00 (Five hundred thousand USD).

Be advised that due to incessant mix up in cash prize transfer to previous winners, we advise that you keep your winning information confidential until your claim has been processed and released to you. This security measure is crucial; its a measure put in place to avoid double claims, transfer and unwarranted abuse of this program by other participants.

––

Well, Pee Software is pretty commendable for giving out all this money, but I'm holding out for the big prize from Shit Software.

Oh, what can it mean to a daydream believer?

I have a daydreaming problem - one which I only recently noticed.

There are people, of course, who are utterly unable to separate fantasy from reality – to the point they can't function in the day-to-day world. I'm talking about something less dramatic than that.

My problem is (I think) that I tend to start with a real occurrence, or phenomenon, or even person, develop speculative assumptions or even fantasies, then forget where lies the demarcation between reality and fantasy.

An example of this would be a woman I knew about ten years ago who I thought was very interested in me. We spent a lot of time just hanging around together, and I began to speculate about what a relationship with her would be like. Not just sex, but how we would live, what we would do with our free time, where we'd go on vacation.

I never reached the point that I actually thought we were in a relationship – I'm not that easily self-deluded. But the line separating reality from my fantasy was off in the gray mist somewhere, beyond my range of vision.

So when I actually suggested a relationship, and she looked at me like I had just dropped stark naked from out of a tree, I was jolted back into a rather unpleasant reality from which I had taken something of a vacation.

Now, part of this may have been – probably was, frankly – that she deliberately encouraged it. She wasn't interested in me, but she was interested in me being interested in her. She enjoyed the attention.

But I've come to realize that an equal or larger part was that I got confused about where our friendship actually stood, and came to conclude that we were much closer than we really were. Even now I can't tell you where the line between reality and daydream really was. I just know that some of what was going on between us was happening only in my imagination, and I lost track of what had really happened versus what I just imagined had happened or wanted to have happen.

I don't think I'm unusual in this respect.

Buddhist teaching covers a lot of ground about seeing things as they are, and not seeing them through the distorting filters of desires, attachments, fears, suspicions, prejudices and the like.

Daydreaming is, it seems to me, about seeing things totally not as they are, but giving full sway to all the distorting filters.

Sometimes the results are beneficial. Jules Verne could daydream about Captain Nemo and his mysterious submarine and even invent the periscope in the process. But that didn't lead to him walking down to the pier every day to wait for the Nautilus to surface.

I am not a Jules Verne, nor are most of us. My daydreams will not inspire or entertain others. They do have the capacity to cause me misery, because I can't always sort out what is real from what I've just cooked up in my imagination.

Laying low for the Storm of 2007™

Ever heard a TV meteorologist talk about 'this minor winter storm'?

In any event, I left work about 3:30 and stopped by Homeland and picked up some groceries. The store was not especially crowded, and the shelves had not been picked clean.

Then I came home and did a little web surfing, made a long-distance edit to the web site at work, and ate a bit of dinner. I went to bed about 6:30. When it's this cold and this overcast, I really do just want to get under the covers and stay there.

I actually slept rather soundly.

Curiously enough...

I don't have a cell phone or an iPod.

Glad now I waited.

every picture tells a story

You've probably seen here or there or photo of an elderly person sitting on a park bench, surrounded by pigeons and squirrels he or she has been feeding.

I used to see pictures like that and think, 'That's someone who ended up old and alone, with no place in society. Since they couldn't 'hack it' in the 'real world,' they've been reduced to entertaining themselves by feeding animals in the park - the only friends they have left.'

That's what I used to think.

Now, the story those pictures tell me is more like, 'Here's someone who has discovered what it means to be in the present moment. This is a person who has, knowingly or unknowingly, come into harmony with the way, put aside their attachments and learned to live.'

Jacking in tonight from the Sauced! port

I'm eating a gigantic slice of pepperoni pizza and drinking a cup of Earl Gray.

Not a single person here I know right now.

I came here based on the recommendation of JohnX. We sat at the big table Thursday and had a long talk about Zen and the Tao.

Roots II

"I think I’ll never live here again, but I will come back now and then for these things and the people that have knowingly or unknowingly compelled me to do more."

Erika West, blogging on Karmic Ironies

Erika West, as you may know, is moving to Texas to pursue her doctorate. Her recent posts on leaving Oklahoma got me to thinking about my own comings and goings, which are as follows:

Oklahoma City
West Memphis, Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee
   (I saw Graceland when someone lived there.)
St. Louis
Shreveport
Oklahoma City
Tulsa
San Jose
Oklahoma City (okay, Edmond)
San Antonio
Oklahoma City

As you can see, there is a certain repetition there. I've probably mentioned this before, but I live just a few blocks from the garage apartment in which my parents lived when I was born. I'm less than a mile from the homes of my grandparents.

This is not exactly a promised land for artsy, intellectual or pseudointellectual (whichever I may be) leftists. But for some reason, I keep being drawn back to Oklahoma City. When I was in Texas, I had the financial means to live just about anywhere in the US I chose. Friends urged me to go to Austin or back to the bay area. I chose the comfort of familiar landmarks and surroundings over the adventure of a new city.

When I came back here this last time, both my parents and all my grandparents had passed on. There were no relatives to visit or rely upon (unless you count my ex). But there were the familiar and comfortable sights: the Gold Star building at OCU, the oft-renamed Ramsey Tower (I remember when I could see the Liberty Bank 'Weather Beacon' from my grandmother's front porch), the Gold Dome at 23rd & Classen, the Arrows to Atoms Tower at the fairgrounds. I also remember the smaller tower that preceded it, and being on 'Foreman Scotty's Circle 4 Ranch' when it was live from the OPUBCO Pavilion during the 1957 State Fair.

Not only is this neighborhood my 'bubble' - it's been my 'bubble' all my life, even when I was living 45 minutes south of San Francisco.

I kept coming back, and I hope this time it's to stay. I need be nowhere else.

The second day of 2007

I did mean the grandiosely-named "Bathrobe of Perfect Wisdom."

Thank you for the proofreading.

The first day of 2007

Tea in the morning at EE Starbuck's.

Randy, dzaster, Nurse Kathryn and Tanner in attendance. Tanner, Nurse Kathryn and I went to lunch at Las Mariachis. NK and I went to Spices of India, recommended by Jen, where I stocked up on several varieties of Hem Indian incense.

Home.

Read DT Suzuki for awhile.

Went to Barnes & Noble and Bed, Bath & Beyond. Saw a couple of things I liked, but didn't buy. I have too much stuff already. I used to really enjoy shopping. Now it's vaguely unpleasant.

I'd like to spend the rest of my life in pajama bottoms, t-shirts and the Bathroom of Perfect Wisdom. Clothes are a pain in the ass.

Went to Borders, bought two albums of classical guitar music by players of whom I'd never heard. My ear is not very discriminating, anyway.

In the evening, more reading: Suzuki and some Thich Nhat Hanh.

iTunes: Propeller 9, The Notwist

I feel vaguely dissatisfied. I don't want to sit here alone, but it won't hurt me to do so, and I've no place to go.

I need feedback. I don't mean comments here, although they're always welcome. I mean I need to say something to someone and have someone say something back to me. Intellectual/spiritual discourse.

Especially spiritual.

More dharma audio

San Francisco Zen Center