Hey

When I started this, I thought I would be making a lot weird, surreal but profound posts in the wee hours of the morning.

Instead, I'm logging in early in the evening to describe what I eat. And I'm behind on that again. Sorry.

But I haven't had much to write about, and when I do have something, it is usually job-related, which means I'm not going to discuss it, or it's something that might embarass another person.

In a previous career, I let my job take over my life. I tend to think of that period as a previous life, rather than a job. I have learned in large part not to think about work when I'm not at work. I don't read my office email at home anymore. I don't check the website from home. I went through the holidays without thinking about my job more than maybe twice.

I picked up another book Monday evening. It's called Thoughts Without a Thinker by Mark Epstein, MD, and it looks promising. I'm also still working on the book about the Great Fire of London.

Whew... made it.

It's the day after Christmas, and here I am.

Did anyone really enjoy Christmas this year?

What I'm reading: By Permission of Heaven – The True Story of the Great Fire of London, a narrative history of the great London fire of 1666 by Adrian Tinniswood.

Christmas Day 2005

Went to see "King Kong" and "Syriana." That kept me occupied most of the day.

Both are worth seeing. Trying to decide now whether to eat at one of the Asian places that are open along 23rd or nuke something here.

Christmas Eve, 2005

There are a couple of places I could be tonight, but I am home alone. This is the time of year when I should always be alone. There's no fooling around on Christmas or Christmas Eve. No pretending I fit in. No fooling God, who always seemed during my religious days to find me rather more contemptible than he found the average Christian, and who knew better than anyone that I didn't belong anywhere.

As a holiday, Christmas doesn't mean much to me now. It was on life support already, given that Jesus wasn't born in December and the holiday was already totally consumerist-driven. Then the 'plot to ban Christmas' knuckleheads surfaced and finished off what was left.

But it's a good time to reflect on how fragile my connection to the world is. I often feel like a wraith, clinging to the substance of reality. If I relax my grip, I'll disappear, and people will look around and then at each other, and say, "Did something just happen?" And they will have already forgotten I was ever here.

051224 Essential Events

Breakfast: Oatmeal and half a bagel, Red Cup
Lunch: Pork chops at La Mariachis -- a meal damaged somewhat by some asshat who came to our table and said we had ruined his lunch by laughing.
Dinner: Number 1, biggie-sized, and Frosty, Wendy's. I left some fries in the bag.

051223 Essential Events

Okay, let's get caught up:

Breakfast: Granola and coffee, Red Cup
Lunch: Mexican vegetable soup, Red Cup (man, this is good)
Dinner: to be announced

051222 Essential Events

Same as below

051221 Essential Events

Breakfast: something from 7-11
Lunch: I don't know.
Dinner: I don't know. Some crap. Some more crap.

051220 Essential Events

Breakfast: something with empty calories from 7-Eleven. I don't remember what. The bag is probably still in my car.
Lunch: Bag of chips and a bag of animal crackers. Cici's.
Dinner: Grilled chicken over rice vermicelli, Lido.
After dinner snack: KFC.

051219 Essential Events

Breakfast: Pecan Sandies, I think. And coffee. 7-Eleven
Lunch: Mexicali Vegetable soup and strawberry cake, Red Cup. Jen had lunch with me.
Dinner: Something from a drive through. Chili, maybe. I don't remember.

051218 Essential Events

The eighteenth... what day was that?

Sunday... let's see.

Breakfast: Probably a sausage biscuit, but I don't remember.
Lunch: Beef Chalupas. Chelino's
Dinner: Fish from LJS's.

There may have some snack substances, too. I don't remember.

Less Net

A few days ago, it was pointed out to me that I was among the top three Internet users in my department, which consists of thirty or so people spread across three buildings. I was not the top user, but I was up there.

It stands to reason, of course, that my use would be high because I am the webmaster, and even the surfing I do on our own site as a direct part of my work adds to my total.

Even so, I decided to see what I could do to lower my statistics. I canceled all my RSS feeds. I quit checking news sites in the morning when I arrived at work. I eliminated slashdot and macsurfer from my browsing, even though they pertain peripherally to my work, as well as news.com, and several other web development, Mac and software-related sites. And I cut all the general news sites such as cnn.com and msnbc.com.

I also quit doing tabbed browsing. The monitoring software turns on the meter for every site in a tab, whether I'm looking at it or not. No more leaving five tabs open all day while I work on something else.

It will be January before I know what impact all that has. I suspect that 70 per cent of my web hits are unavoidable visits to the site I work on, so my usage numbers will remain high.

But what I wanted to report now is that I don't miss all that surfing as much as I thought I would. I was afraid I would feel cut off from the outside world without access to all the web sites, but I don't.

051217 Essential Events

Breakfast: Two sausage biscuits and a Diet Coke, McD's
Mid-morning: Burger and Diet Coke, Braum's
Lunch: Salad and vegetable beef soup with iced tea, Souper!Salad
Mid afternoon snack: Strawberry shortcake sundae, Braum's
Dinner: Tacos and Diet Coke, Taco Bueno

051216 Essential Events

Breakfast: Pecan Sandies and Coke Zero, UI think -- 7-Eleven
Lunch: Don't remember. Did I even have lunch?
Dinner: KFC

The DaVinci Crap

I was in Borders last night, and I picked up "The DaVinci Code." I am not a big reader of fiction. The last fiction I read was Neal Stepehnson's semi-historical 'Cryptonomicon,' and that was four years ago. (Well, I also browsed the "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," but let's not go there. Oh, wait. We're already there. Forever, apparently.)

Based on all the hoopla this book has generated, I expected something along the lines of a John LeCarre novel, but set against the backdrop of Vatican intrigue, lost gospels and the quest for the Holy Grail. What I'm reading is more like a slapdash knockoff of Tom Clancy. It's pretty dreary to pick up a best-selling novel, read a couple of chapters, and think, 'Shit, I could have written better than this.'

A lot has been written about this book's "Mr. & Mrs. Jesus Christ" angle. But after you've swallowed the idea that the grand master of a millennia-old secret society turns his most precious secret over to a near-stranger, and that a cryptographer-cop concocts, on the spur of the moment, an incredibly elaborate scheme to help a suspected murderer escape one of her own colleagues... well, you're not going to find anything in a Dead Sea Scroll that's weirder than that.

There sure is a lot of driving around in this book. People drive around and talk about the Holy Grail and stuff. They're in Paris, and they make sure to drive past all the landmarks. Every one gets a mention.

You already know about DaVinci's hidden messages in 'The Last Supper.' Did you know Walt Disney hid messages in 'The Little Mermaid'? Even though he'd been about twenty years when it was made? Pretty astonishing stuff.

I'm halfway through. I'll finish tonight or tomorrow.

I have to go back to work now.

The guy in the Santa suit

I just waved at a guy in Santa suit, and I'm wondering why. He was in a very nice-looking suit, with a very full albeit artificial beard, sitting in front of an immensely seedy thrift store.

The guy in the car behind me -- another middle-aged dude who ought to have outgrown it -- waved, too. I saw him in my rearview mirror.

I normally have no problem ignoring people in mascot costumes. I don't see Donald Duck or Uncle Sam or Ronald McDonald; I see a college student or some other poor schmuck trying to make a few bucks by waving at passersby while wearing a goofy, uncomfortable suit.

(Have you ever seen the 'Human Pizza Slice' mascot? It belongs to some pizza chain, and it's a testament to how effective the mascot is that I can't remember who uses it. But WTF is up with that, anyway? Do they think people will drive by and suddenly think, "Wow! Suddenly I have this craving for velour pizza!" and pull in on the spot?)

But my reaction to this Santa was different. I waved at him like he was a real Santa. He waved back. Obviously I wasn't waving at the real guy -- given the neighborhood, he was probably sitting down because he was too drunk to stand up.

So what did I wave at? The suit? The memory of Christmases past? Some romanticized notion from my own sentiments?

I don't know.

But now I have this craving for velour pizza.

051215 Essential Events

Breakfast: some kind of Power Bar health thing from 7-Eleven, plus a Coke Zero

Lunch: by noon, it was clear the Power Bar had left me with a frightening case of Nutrition Overload. I had a Big Mac and chocolate shake to cleanse my system of vitamins and minerals.

Dinner: having reestablished the yin (sugar) and yang (grease) in my body, it was safe to have KFC, with a Wendy's chili chaser.

Red Cup Hiatus

I think it's time for another Red Cup hiatus. I need some time to myself. Society is always a drain on me, having been a loner most of my life.

051214 Essential Events

Breakfast: Starwberry Pop-Tarts (because I need fruit) and a diet A&W, 7-Eleven
Lunch: Jalapeno bacon cheeseburger, CiCi's
Dinner TBA


Well, I pigged out: two big bowls of Campbell's chicken noodle and a turkey pot pie.

051213 Essential Events

Breakfast: Keebler Pecan Sandies and coffee, 7-Eleven
Lunch: Big ass baked spud with chili, CiCi's
Dinner: Roast Beef sandwich, fries and Diet Pepsi, Arby's

With possible snack to follow

Update: more microwave slacker macaroni and cheese, with lots of pepper

I voted today

... for the 911 Cell charge.

051212 Essential Events

Breakfast: Chips Ahoy! & coffee, 7-Eleven
Lunch: Keebler Club Crackers and cheese, Cici's, followed by Austin animal crackers
Dinner: Chili and Diet Coke from Wendy's
Mid-evening snack: KFC and Diet Pepsi

Another dream

Another freakin' TV news dream.

I'm too sleepy to recite the details. It was fairly realistic -- a live shot was screwed up. I didn't know what was going on because I was just dreaming, tried to BS my way through it anyway (there's a metaphor for my career and my life if ever there was one), and the whole thing crashed.

My hair looked awful, too. My beloved Sebastian hairspray wasn't there because I was just dreaming, and I had to use a little half-a-bottle of White Rain someone had left in the live truck.

I haven't touched a goddamn bottle of hairspray since 1998 and I hope never to again.

There was a reporter from a competing station doing a live shot. He was younger than me, better looking than me, more personable than me and his hair was perfect. I didn't see his live shot, but I guess it was perfect too.


Back to bed.

What I'm reading

I had posted a couple of quotes from books I've been reading. I thought I would post more, but it's been inconvenient to do so.

But currently, I'm still working my way through On Love and Loneliness by J. Krishnamurti.

This is one of a new collection of books based on his however-many years of talks and writings. The content is chosen by topic, and is presented in non-chronological order. I don't think I can summarize it. I may be missing the point by saying that his views on non-attachment are like those of Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism.

I've also started Insight Meditation by Joseph Goldstein.

I do not meditate very much, and less lately than before. I have been more interested in practicing mindfulness throughout the day, and I feel I've been fairly successful in building it into my life.

I still overthink things. I still dwell on things long after the point where there is any value in dwelling on them. I have still not reached a state of contentment with a few areas of my life, and am struggling with trying to avoid a lot of manipulative or controlling behavior to change them to my satisfaction.

Of course, the controlling and manipulative behavior doesn't accomplish anything, except to make situations murkier and more stressful than they were before I decided to 'fix' them.

I've gotten off my original topic, so I'll stop now.

051211 Essential Events

Breakfast: Oatmeal, Red Cup
Lunch: Angel Hair pasta with meatballs, Sophabella's. This will be a one-time-only event.
Dinner: Fish & Chips, Long John Silver's. They screwed up my order just like Sophabella's did, but at least I didn't wait a half hour for it.

051210 Essential Events

Breakfast: Pancakes, Red Cup
Lunch: Turkey Pot Pie, home
Dinner: Munchies, Red Cup Party

I forgot to mention the dog!

I have a new dog. Haley is a yellow labrador retriever (and maybe something else) a friend of a friend found wandering in her neighborhood. She contacted the owners through the vet tag. They were moving away and didn't want to keep her. So the word went out, and now she's at my place, where once the immortal Buddy Lee roamed.

The cats are pissed, but coping.

Sunday aftermath

It is now the next day, and I am pleased to report that I had no sinus aftereffects from the wine at all.

I have alluded in previous posts to how boring my life is. My life is boring, but maybe some perspective is in order.

Boring is a relative term. I call it boring because I realize most other people consider it boring. But it's this way in large part because I chose to make it this way. I grew up in a home where there was a lot of drama, a lot of soap opera-style plot development. When I had the chance to chart my own course, and eventually an understanding of how to chart it, I steered away from drama.

I have no moral vantage point from which to tell other people how to behave. I have no special life skills to share. I'm as screwed up as anyone out there. But I chose a path for myself that I thought was best for me. I don't look forward to some of the consequences of that path, but all in all, I still think I did the right thing.

Party night

I went to the Red Cup Christmas bash tonight, and drank wine for the first time in somewhere between eight and ten years.

Wine wreaks havoc with my sinuses, and the last time I had it, I woke up the next morning feeling like someone had poured Quik-Rete up my nose while I was asleep.

It looked like a good time was had by all.

Zaskerdoe

Her name was Zaskerdoe. I think that was her first name - she went by 'Z' or 'Doe.' I never knew her last name.

I had met her briefly several years ago, and I recalled that it was some sort of seminar or class somewhere. She had sat in the back, and there were a couple of other people who sat with her. She had short red hair, narrow black glasses, and kind of frumpy black clothes. It was the kind of look that is fashionable now, but wasn't then. She was ahead of the curve. The other two people were kind of like her, and they seemed to have the sense that they were all in on a joke the rest of us weren't aware of.

But she was attractive, and she seemed very bright. I never saw her again after that.

Somehow I got curious about what had become of her, so I Googled her. How many people could there be named Zaskerdoe, after all? Sure enough, it led me to a newspaper article. She was teaching at a small school for exceptional children somewhere in Kentucky. It was a very poor region, and she had pretty much created this school all by herself as an opportunity for bright kids who were trapped in the region's poverty.

There was a picture of her. She was older, and her clothes were those appropriate for a teacher or headmistress of a school -- not the frumpy all-black look. Then suddnely, I was there, standing in the corridor of this tiny school created out of a mobile home, and we were looking at each other.

Then suddenly, I wasn't there. I was standing at a Formica countertop, trying to write her a note. I had teabags, and the teabags had small black tags on them. I was trying to write a note to Z with an opaque white marker on the teabag tag. The paper was sort of bumpy, and it created interesting patterns in my letterstrokes. But then one stroke would be so distorted as to be unreadable, so I'd grab another teabag and start over. I did that twice.

Then I decided I actually wanted some tea. I looked up, and I was standing back in the newsroom. There was a coffee maker with hot water, but it was at the other end of the room. The main anchor, the news director and a studio camera were parked between me and the hot water. They were getting ready to interrupt programming with a news bulletin. It wasn't that important a story -- just a minor development in a story that had acctually happened a long time ago. But it was story the station had covered extensively at the time, 'owning' it as they say in the business, and they were doing the break-in to maintain that 'ownership.'

I could squeeze past them and get to the coffee machine, but I knew how it would look... like I was more interested in the hot water than I was the news break-in. I was more interested in the hot water, but it was important not to let that show.

Then I woke up.

I got out of bed, went to the computer, and Googled 'Zaskerdoe.'

I got 0 hits.

I wish she had been real.

051209 Essential events

Breakfast: Oreos and Diet A&W, 7-Eleven
Lunch: missed it
Dinner: Veg and noodle bake, Red Cup

051208 Essential events

Breakfast: Pecan Sandies and coffee, 7-Eleven
Lunch: I don't remember -- it was two days ago
Dinner: KFC

051207 Essential Events

Breakfast: Two sausage muffins and a Diet Coke, McD's
Lunch: A bowl of chili and a Diet Coke, Wendy's
Mid-afternoon: Two bowls of Campbell's Instant Chicken Noodle Soup and a Diet Dr. Pepper

Anticipating a turkey pot pie later

It's 16 and snowing out. I don't want to go anywhere.

---

Update: I've opted instead for Stouffer's Macaroni and Cheese, which is microwaving on high as I speak.

You know you've hit the skids when you're nuking frozen mac and cheese because you're too depressed to fix one of the mix-in-a-box things.

Shit, it's cold!

18 degrees as I write this. I can't take cold weather like I used to.

Have I mentioned I'm depressed?

Have I?

No?

Okay, well, I'm depressed.

It runs in my family. My dad had it, his father probably had it.

I took Zoloft for awhile. It helped me know what it's like to not be depressed. I was in my forties before I discovered that. But between insurance and pharmacies, I had trouble keeping a steady supply. Henry Kissinger couldn't have negotiated that settlement.

So now I just accept that I am going to have spells of depression, and I'm in one now. Have been since Friday.

I know I'm not the cheeriest person under normal circumstances, but this is even worse. I apologize for not acting, looking and being like everyone else. I really tried for a long time, but I couldn't keep it up.

Sometimes, though, when I feel depressed, it's like settling into an old easy chair that isn't especially comfortable, but is at least familiar and reassuring. When I'm depressed, I know the terrain on which I'm walking, and I feel kind of safe here because it's my terrain, and no one else can take it from me.

I live in the constant fear that someone will find a way to take my home, my job and everything else. After all, I'm supposed to be camped out under an overpass somewhere with all the other people who aren't exactly like society at large. I'm too tall, too pseudo-intellectual, too messy, too overweight, too goofy-looking, too eccentric, too unattractive.

But even if they take every physical thing from me, they can't take depression. That's mine, assholes, and you can't have it.

I wonder if that's why so many street people are mentally ill. It's the one thing they have that no one resents them having, no one thinks they don't deserve and that no one will try to take from them. So, that's where they take refuge. Maybe it feels to them like the safest place they can be.

I hate humans right now. Which is okay, because the feeling is mostly mutual.

Hey... you know how many cats I got in here?

A shitload. So to speak.

With the big arctic blast coming, I've rounded up as many neighborhood cats as I can. I don't know where some of these cats actually belong, and I don't trust their owners to get them inside. Because if their owners are taking care of them, why are they always over here mooching off of me?

So there are eight cats camped out in the house, probably through Friday morning. And I'm trying to round up a ninth.

This ought to be sweet.

Welcome to Casa de la Caca del Gatos.

Like the place wasn't a mess already.

Too much crap! Too much crap!

I am pretty far down on the personal possessions scale, yet I feel as though I am buried in crap. Last year I threw away or gave away probably a third of what I owned, but I still feel overwhelmed by that which remains. I think most people who know me would agree I am overwhelmed by it all. It is more than I can manage. My house and my car are cluttered and dirty.

Have you seen the JibJab cartoon about "Big Box Mart"? Sure, it's a shot at Wal*Mart and other big box retailers, but the cartoon is also an indictment of our materialist, consumer culture. When the guy sings, "Now my house is full of crap -- it used to be empty," I can totally identify with that.

I buy, therefore I am.

I came, I saw, I purchased.

Behold the product.

The weight of my crap is more of a burden on me than anything else in my life.

I don't do relationships well. And among the several reasons for that, the shin-deep tide of crap, ranging from computer parts to laundry to Wendy's bags, is probably at the top of the list.

I did have my turkey pot pie. I guess I should throw the box away, but now I can't find it.

051206 Essential Events

Breakfast: Chocolate Moon-Pie and coffee, 7-Eleven
Lunch: Keebler Cheese and Crackers, Cici's
Dinner: Giant Roast Beef Sandwich, Diet Pepsi and Cherry Turnover, Arby's

With a possibility for a Marie Callender Turkey Pot Pie later this evening.

I need an Aunt Bee.

051205 Essential Events

Breakfast: Coffee and Chips Ahoy, 7-Eleven
Lunch: Chicken sandwich, sandwich shop next to Lido
Dinner: KFC
Evening snack: Don Pablo's corn chips and Mike's homemade salsa

Good times, bad times

Looking back, I see that this blog is still mostly a lot of griping and whining about my life.

The reality is I don't have a lot of good times, or at least not times I perceive to be 'good.'

But things are as they are. I don't know what would make them better. I am as happy as I think I'll ever be, and grateful that things have turned out as well as they have.

Another nightmare from the TV news gulag

Back in 1984-85, I worked with, and briefly for, a news director who was as evil and devoid of personal ethics as any human I have ever known. She fabricated anonymous sources who added dramatic details to stories. She lied to her staff about even trivial things, often to pit the employees against each other. She once told a job candidate she wouldn't hire him because he was unable to interpret a 'negative psychic dream' she'd had about him.

The staff called her "the orange rat."

She just turned up in a dream I had.

In the dream, she has somehow reappeared in my life, and I have been assigned to cover two stories for her, even though I am no longer a reporter. One hasn't panned out at all, and the other is sort of turning out, but isn't going to be a barn-burner. It seemed to involve a newspaper violating an obscure tenet of its own code of ethics. I'm wondering how I got shanghaied into doing this stuff, because I'm not a reporter any more.

I decide I'm going to sneak out of the building and go to the grocery store to get an ice cream sandwich. I tiptoe down the hall, feeling my way in the dark so I won't have to turn on a light that might draw her attention. The building is unfamiliar, so I'm using my hands to search for the wall, and later a handrail as I make my way down the steps.

Then I'm outside, and it looks like I'm going to make my getaway. I know I'm doing the wrong thing. I should stay and keep working on the stories, even though they're bogus and aren't going to produce anything. But I'm a web designer, dammit, not a reporter. It's not my problem anymore.

It's night, and I'm walking through a park. The building is behind me. I've gotten away clean.

Suddenly, a big flood light comes on behind me. I look over my shoulder, and there's my news director from twenty years ago, looking out into the night from the back door of the building.

I've put enough space between myself and the building that it's possible she can't see me in the dark, but I can't be sure. She walks out to her car and gets in, and I realize she's coming to look for me.

There are trees and big shrubs in the park. I pick one to hide behind, then change my mind and choose another. I see her car coming up the street, headlights on. I position myself so that a tree and big shrub is between her and me. I see that there's someone else walking in the park up ahead of me. Maybe she'll mistake that person for me, I think, and I can break off in a different direction while she's following the wrong person.

There is a voice, like that of a radio announcer, describing what's happening, and mentions something about her once owming a Mazda dealership. This comes as a suprise to me. I even wonder why it's an element of the dream.

She travels past me, and it looks like I'm safe.

But her car suddenly turns into a Vespa or a bicycle or something. She turns right off the street onto the grass, wheels around, and rolls to a stop right in front of me. She doesn't say anything. She just stares at me.

"Oh fuck," I say out loud, and I force myself to wake up.

---

I have nightmares about TV news all the time. It was like a 25-year stay in a prison camp with impeccably-dressed inmates. This is the first dream I've had involving this person, whom I have not seen, heard from or spoken to since 1985.

But...

I don't know.








And it's okay that I don't know.

051204 Essential Events

Breakfast: Granola at the Red Cup.
Mid-morning snack: Plain bagel with jelly at the Red Cup
Lunch: KFC
Mid-afternoon snack: Taco Bueno, one of life's most surprising rewards... luxury everyone can afford... Taco Bueno.

I don't know who wrote that. A 'luxury' taco? Who did they think they were kidding?

"Hey, listen, we got this great deal on a jingle. It was originally written for the Nissan Sentra, but they're not gonna use it, and I think we can make it fit."

Dinner: Wendy's

Not exactly 'Bah! Humbug!', but still...

I do not especially observe Christmas. I don't have any objection to those who want to observe Christmas as long as they leave me alone.

Christmas was an off-and-on happy occasion in my family. Some years it was okay, and some years it was not so okay.

Christmas music gives me the creeps. I can deal with Springsteen's "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town," and other stuff in that vein, but that's about it.

And the creepiest music of all is the stuff that I recall from my childhood: this or that over-the-hill big band vocalist backed by the Robert Shaw Chorale, anything by Burl Ives and various stinky 'hep cat' renditions of "Jingle Bells" -- "Oh, how wild it is to swing in that crazy one-horse sleigh... yeah!!"

"Greensleeves" and "Silent Night" make me suicidal. I asked my dad a few years before he died if he had any idea why "Silent Night" would have that affect on me. The color drained from his face. He said that maybe something had happened to me in my childhood, perhaps, that might have possibly maybe affected me subconsciously, perhaps possibly. In other words, some godawful something occurred during one of my parents' drunken yuletide binges while "Silent Night" was on the record player or TV set, which I have blocked from all but my deepest subconscious memory. Dad knew what it was, but he wasn't about to tell me.

Anyway, Christmas music pretty much bums me out.

Which brings me to the present. I don't do a lot of Christmas shopping, since I have no family for which to buy stuff. But I still have to do my regular soap-toothpaste-and-toilet-paper shopping, and I hate listening to crappy 50s/60s era Christmas music in stores. I mean I hate it.

Today I was in a store playing that stuff and it made me mauseated... I mean literally queasy. It's not the first time in the past few years I've had that physical reaction.

I don't know what to do about it. I can't completely shut myself off until after New Year's Day. But I would certainly like to.

I don't know

I don't know.

And it's okay to not know.

It's okay to say, "I don't know"... especially to yourself

This is a follow up to what I posted the other day about not knowing.

Let's suppose -- just hypothetically, of course -- that I run into a certain person two or three times a week. And on about half those occasions, we'll hypothetically state, she's as friendly as one might expect a person to be to an acquaintance she doesn't know all too well.

On the other half of those occasions, she looks at me like I was a child molester and says nothing.

What's going on here?

1. She's got a thing for me, but she's struggling with inner conflicts.


2. Some days she likes the way I'm dressed, but other days she doesn't.


3. She has borderline personality disorder.


4. She's having a bad day, or a lot of them.


5. Someone has told her something terrible about me, and she can't decide if it's true.


6. I don't know.

In the past, typically, I would have spent hours... days... weeks! Cycling through 1-5. I'd ask friends, leave long rambling posts on web sites and ruminate on it as I drove to work. 'What the hell is she thinking? Am I dressing wrong? Should I dress differently? What could she have heard about me? Was it true? Did the person who told her think it was true, whatever it was, or was that person just being malicious? Is she weird? Am I weird?'

But the correct answer is, "I don't know." Not, "I don't know and I'll never find out." Not, "I don't know but she probably..." Not, "I don't know but I'll ask her friend..."

Just, "I don't know."

And -- this is really big -- it's okay to not know.

I am learning to intercept these long internal analyses early on, say to myself, "I don't know," and move on. Specifically, to be in the moment: here's what's happening right now. The sky is blue, I'm at a stop light, whatever.

What's happening right now is enough.

051203 Essential Events

Breakfast: Oatmeal, plain bagel at Red Cup
Lunch: Grilled rib-eye at Chili's
Dinner: Veggie pizza at Red Cup

051202 Essential Events

I forgot.

Burger, I think, from Cici's at my desk.
Diiner at the RC.

051201 Essential Events

Lunch: Cici's downstairs, BLT, ate at desk
Dinner: Red Cup, veggie casserole with rice

"Like an old set from the Carol Burnett Show"

Well, that says it better than I could.

But seriously, Mr. President

Maybe I should write something about the President's speech yesterday.

Back in Reagan's era, Republicans understood better than Democrats the importance of visuals surrounding the party and President.

Today, they sort of get the general gist of it, but it really breaks down in execution.

The first time the President went in front of a captive audience of military personnel and did his 'Terror! Terror!" speech, it made him seem very Commander In Chief-y and on top of things.

The sceond time worked pretty well, too.

But by the time he'd gotten aound to the umpteenth iteration, press and public alike were pretty much yawning.

But then came the series of photo op snafus on the Gulf Coast, in which we learned the stuff of which Mr. Bush is actually made .

So now the President is back to the one setting with which he feels comfortable: standing in front of a group of military personnel (or in this case, cadets) who can be ordered to applaud him and while he recites the "stay the course" mantra. (While we continue to wonder what 'the course' is.)

The familiar 'theme backdrop' has returned, too, although I'm not sure what to make of the drawn-on rivets. The President looks like he's hosting 'Factory Floor Jeopardy.'

Hey, Mr. Flathead!

You want a piece of me?

Bush discusses 'Victory Plan' for Iraq

051130 Today's Important Events

Lunch: Cici's downstairs, burger and fries. Ate at my desk.

Dinner: KFC.

051129 Today's important events

Lunch: Red Cup. First collard greens I've eaten since junior high school.

Dinner: Thai Moon. New Thai restaurant in my neighborhood. I am so glad to see a new restaurant close by.

How the %^$*& hard is it to stand in line?!

What is it with people who, instead of standing in line at a cash register, station themselves slightly off to one side of the line while they decide what cigarettes they want or what they're going to order for lunch? Then, when they've decided, they barge into the line as if they were there all along.

Silence

A Taoist author I read recently suggested that all of us could benefit from silence. His suggestion was that we should each strive to spend one three-hour block a week not speaking.

That's a snap for me. I did not speak this evening, nor will I speak tomorrow evening or the evening after. This schedule is subject to change if a cat shits on the floor or something, but I shall likely observe silence each evening as I have done for years.

I never considered it a spiritual exercise, although in retrospect, I can see where I have benefitted from it.

I have friends who are out socializing literally every night of the week. I don't know how they do it. It would exhaust me.

Thursday and Friday and Saturday are usually Red Cup Coffeehouse evenings, but Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are usually spent alone at home. I come home from work, close the front door behind me, and light some incense. I have an old Mac that does nothing but play iTunes 24/7. The playlist is heavy on traditional Asian music -- lute, shakuhachi, sitar and others. There's also some Narada and Windham Hill guitar stuff, one Peter Gabriel cut and some Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist chants.

I have a lot of floor lamps, but they all have 20 or 40 watt bulbs, so there's a general sort of diffuse dim light.

The resulting atmosphere is one of quiet and introspection.

I have two sofas - one in the living room I never use and an old futon against one wall in the dining room. I'll stretch out on the futon with a book and read until it's time to go to bed. Sometimes I'll just sleep there.

Wait a minute...

I didn't mean for this to be an online catalog of my neuroses.

So here's what I'm actually, you know, doing.

At the moment, I am at the Red Cup, and a bowl of red beans and rice has just arrived as I type, to be followed by Brian the Dessert God's cherry pie.

More details later tonight.

---

Dinner was at Earl's. Ribs, baked beans, okra and a Corona.

Who is Joe Brasco?

I really don't like talking about my previous career. I sort of fumbled my way through it for 25 years until my skills and qualifications no longer met the industry's changing needs, and got out. Or was thrown out. That's been about eight years ago, and I still have occasional dreams about it.

I dreamt overnight that I was back in my old job, returning to work after the four-day Thanksgiving weekend. The place was being completely remodeled, right down to the sheet rock on the walls being replaced.

There were a bunch of strangers wandering around. Some were clearly remodeling people, but others seemed like they might be new coworkers who had arrived during the holiday break –– I couldn't tell for sure.

I sat down at my desk, which seemed to be in some sort of large wardrobe closet, and began working on updating the web site. Here's an anachronism, because updating the web site is what I do now, not what I did then.

Behind me, I heard the news director talking to someone at another desk. "I asked you last week to fix that text block on the water page," she said. "You've got the background and the text hover color both set to salmon, and when someone rolls their mouse over it, the text disappears. Can you please fix that today?"

She walked off, and another coworker walked up. The coworker responsible for the salmon-colored text –– who, by the way, was someone I actually worked with in my previous career, but not in web design, said, "She bitched me out for this. I was supposed to fix it, but since Carp is here, he ought to take the blame, not me."

I smiled, because I realized he hadn't seen me at my desk, and didn't know I could hear him.

Then my boss appeared at my desk. She had a young, sandy-haired guy with him. "Joe here can't get e-mail. Do you know what's wrong with it?"

"Well, I just got back from the weekend about five minutes ago. If he's new, he probably doesn't have an account set up yet. I'll get with IT on that. What's his name?"

"Joe Brasco," my boss replied. "Remember that name," she said, walking off with the new guy in tow. "It's going to mean job security someday."

And then I woke up.

And I laid there in bed for a few minutes, trying to figure out who was playing the part of the news director in the dream. It was a woman, but there was no face or voice attached to her –– just the general sense of a woman. It wasn't the woman who had actually been my final boss in my previous career. I laid there in bed, suddenly astonished that I couldn't remember who the hell my boss is now. Who is the news director now, I asked myself. Why can't I remember? God, I'm getting old.

And then, maybe ten seconds later, it dawned on me: I couldn't remember the news director because I had not worked in that place for eight years. I wasn't there, didn't have to be there, didn't have to know who the news director was, didn't have to worry about Joe Brasco's e-mail.

And I went back to sleep.

Just now, I Googled 'Joe Brasco.' I found 170 hits, none of which looked like something that would have been buried in the back of my subconscious. I don't know who Joe Brasco is. Maybe I jsut made up the name on the fly.

Hi, the fine stranger

I did the online dating thing for awhile, and actually had one brief relationship come from it.

I promised myself when I started posting personals ads that I would not obsess about wording, phrasing and the like. Easier said than done, it turned out.

One of my personals went as follows:

Someone said existence is like a river: we see where it begins and where it ends, but in between are a thousand currents and eddies no one can predict.
I had a life filled with drama and excitement for many years. Now I've decided to take the gentle current and let it lead me where it will.
I'm not in "heavy relationship" mode right now, but I've spent too much time alone lately. I'm looking for someone who would like to go to a movie once in awhile, go to dinner and just talk, whatever.
The intellectual side is very important to me. I'm looking for someone who is smart, knowledgeable, politically and socially left of center. A certain amount of eccentricity is cool. An artistic bent is very cool. Dittoheadism is not cool.
Big influences: H.D. Thoreau, Alan Watts, Chuang Tzu, Jack Kornfield and Lama Surya Das.
I'm a commercial artist, web designer and copywriter by profession.
Nothing is more important than being stable and serene, but I can always eat -- what are you in the mood for?

I could have shortened that to...

Hi. An evening with me is about as interesting as watching paint dry. But I can always eat -- what are you in the mood for?

...without losing any of the essential meaning. But I got carried away.

Even so, I got responses.

Greetings, my name is Olya. to me of 28 years. I live in city Kazan...

Hello, My name is Svetlana, me of 36 years. I liked your profile on a site...

Hi, the fine stranger. I have found your profile on...

Okay, that's not entirely fair. I did have some legitimate correspondence and even the one relationship come from online dating services.

I sometimes wish there was someone else in my life. (Or maybe I wish there was someone else in my life sometimes, if you can appreciate the difference.) But I just don't know how to do it. Dating seems to consist –– at least for people my age –– of two people using conventional marketing and packaging techniques to influence their opinions of each other, then finding out the truth, then breaking up. Or marrying, buying a bunch of stuff, then finding out the truth and breaking up.

If there is a marketing strategy that can position me as sexy and exciting and interesting without requiring the assistance of Industrial Light & Magic, I don't know what it is.

To which any number of my friends would reply, "Just be yourself!"

I am myself. That's the problem.

What's the deal with this wind?

It is really windy this afternoon. The air is full of dust. A tree blew over in the street around the corner from my house.

The facts vs 'the facts'

I have a couple of friends whose views of events seem deeply distorted by their own perceptions. I'm not talking about world events reported through the media; I mean the events in their own lives, and life as it happens around them and to them. By the time the details are filtered through their own biases, presuppositions and issues, their version of the facts seems to be significantly at odds with what the rest of us would call reality. This distortion is significant enough that it impairs their ability to function in society.

(And no, I'm not talking about you. Why are you so paranoid?)

We all do this to some extent, don't we? In fact, what we call 'reality' is just a general consensus among us all based upon our various imperfect views of our surroundings.

So, I have to ask myself: "How good is my grasp on reality? How severe is my distortion of events around me? And if I have it wrong, how can I find out?"

This gets back to what I said the other day about what we actually know versus what we think we know. Part of what I did in therapy for two years was compare my perceptions to generally accepted views of reality and see for the first time where they were different –– so different in a few places that other people wouldn't even recognize the 'reality' I saw.

Now I'm studying Eastern belief systems where the most fundamental views of reality are widely divergent from those of our culture.

And I want to know where my views of reality are so far off the mark that they affect my ability to lead a happy, contented life. Is this discoverable?

The other cat person

I am sort of the cat person on my block. I didn't start out that way. It began three years ago when someone else's cat came into my house on a spring morning when the front door was open and had kittens in my back bedroom.

I already had two adult cats of my own, but suddenly I had seven. And the mother cat, who seems to be remarkably fecund, always returns to my place when she is with litter, which is about three times a year. She's gone right now, which is normal for winter, but she'll be back in the spring.

Meanwhile, most of her offspring live around my house. I feed them, keep water out for them, and try with limited success to find them homes.

There is another cat person on my block. She lives across the street and three doors down. She seems to be even more of a recluse than I am. I have never talked to her in the five years I've lived here, and I've never seen her talk to anyone else. I know she leaves food out for the cats just as I do, and I sometimes see the cats commuting back and forth between our houses.

I enjoy seeing the cats together. Cats behave differently among themselves than they do with people. I like watching them play. I'm probably just projecting all my personal family issues onto them, but I like thinking of them as a family with some sort of familial bonding going on amongst them.

I wonder if the woman across the street who seems to be even more of a recluse than I am enjoys watching the cats the way I do. I wonder if she has family issues she projects onto them.

I guess I could go over and talk to her, since we obviously have something in common. Or she could come over and talk to me. But we're both antisocial –– who will make the first move?

What I'm reading:

"It is good to recognize that the expectations of others, the standards they expect us to meet, are really our own projections. We judge ourselves by our standards, project them out onto other people, then believe that they think those things about us."

Cheri Huber, The Depression Book

I went back to bed, and had a dream in which two women I know, one a fairly close friend and the other just an acquaintance, abruptly told me they wanted me out of their lives.

I wonder what that was about, and whether it will come true.

What we know about what we don't know

If we look back at all the stuff we think we know –– all the knowledge we've accumulated over the years –– how much of it is stuff we know for a fact, and how much is just assumptions we've made that have taken on the appearance of facts over the years?

I am coming to the conclusion that most of what I thought I knew isn't knowledge. It's assumptions, conclusions, prejudices and other misinformation disguised as the real thing. As often as not, probably, I put the disguise on it myself.

And a lot of what I know, though true, has no value. The amount of trivia in my brain probably outweighs the useful information by far.

I remember my parents, and even moreso my grandparents (three of whom were teachers), encouraging to 'use my brain.' They always felt I was not applying myself. But in spite of not applying myself, I have absorbed a treasure trove of dubious information, and my retention of it has become an unfortunate source of pride for me. Intelligence was always my strongest attribute, and I tried without much success to use it to offset my shortcomings in other areas.

I thought for a long time that if there were any one attribute I could have, in fact, it would be intelligence. Intelligence is what sets us apart from other animals, right? And yet there are people smarter than me who labor in poverty and obscurity, and functionally illiterate professional athletes making literally a thousand times my salary.

And then there's our President, who is a whole 'nother story.

That's in part a symptom of a culture that has come to lionize ignorance, and since 2000, plain old stupidity, but part of it is also because intelligence is frankly overrated by those who are intelligent. I am persuaded now that there is nothing inherently more valuable in intellect compared to, for example, the ability to easily throw an accurate 90-yard pass.

I should have ignored my grandparents and focused on being an outlaw biker or something.

---

Most of the cats are in this morning, including the neighbors' cats left out in the cold, and they are restless. It's still 33 degrees outside, with a high today around 55.

---

I did wake up at the usual predawn hour, but I didn't want to get out of bed.

Thanksgiving day, 2005

My friend thought Charleston's would be open today. It wasn't. So we both got in my car and drove up and down the restaurant corridor north of the airport. Nothing was open except Denny's, so we decided on that as our 'safety' restaurant, and kept looking for our 'reach' restaurant.

There is a locally-owned place here called Eddy's. It's well north of the franchise/chain restaurant district, and has been in business since long before the others arrived. It has been open since 1967, in fact, but I had never eaten there. There were cars in the parking lot today, so we pulled in.

The Thanksgiving Day special was a traditional turkey and dressing meal, and it was perfect.

How did I go 38 years without ever eating at Eddy's?

I left my copy of 'The Tao of Pooh' with my friend, came home and took the traditional Thanksgiving nap.

What I'm reading:

"For example, one is afraid of loneliness, afraid of the ache, the pain of loneliness. Surely, that fear exists because one has never really looked at loneliness, one has never been in complete communion with it. The moment one is completely open to the fact of loneliness, one can understand what it is; but one has an idea, an opinion about it, based on previous knowledge, and it is this idea, opinion, this previous knowledge about the fact, that creates fear."

J. Krishnamurti, On Love and Loneliness

Thanksgiving morning, 2005

Today is my 52nd Thanksgiving Day in this world.

I typically spend the holiday season alone, since I have no family. Today, I'm having Thanksgiving lunch at a restaurant with a friend whose family lives out-of-state.

I skip the television parades and sports events altogether. They don't interest me.

My health is good, and that's the thing for which I am most thankful this year. I know many people my age, it seems, struggling with health issues worse than my own.

I am employed, and after 25 years in a career that had me working most weekends and many nights, I am now able to enjoy a saner work schedule that allows me some contact with humans other than coworkers.

I have become interested in Taoism over the past year, and I feel fortunate to be able to able to say I'm mostly into the groove of that. We live in such a materialistic, competitive culture –– I feel relieved to discover a belief system that so closely matches the values I had even before I discovered it.

I could talk about all the things I don't like, and there plenty of them. But I have the other 364 days for that, so today I'll let them pass.

Slept through

Well, like I said, I don't wake up at 3:40 every morning.

Actually, I was waking up just about every hour during the night. I'm trying to remember the dreams I had.

I wish I could sleep better.

The second post

Sometimes, I'll wake up at 3:40 with my brain kind of running in overdrive. In the past, I've written down a lot of what I was thinking and emailed it to a friend. Later in the day, I look at it again, and sometimes think the material that seemed so profound and edgy when I was half-awake doesn't look as good after the sun has come up.

But I shall press on nonetheless.

---

Future posts will appear in the wee hours –– not necessarily at exactly 3:40 a.m., but sometime between 3 and 4 a.m., Central time.

Being a web designer by profession, my first task here was to fiddle with the cascading style sheets in the template. I am not done yet. More changes will probably appear in the future.

There are some CSS elements here that I don't regularly use. I'm used to having Dreamweaver remember the details for me. Posting here without the value of a heavy-duty wysiwyg editor will help refresh my my CSS and HTML skills.

I used to enjoy doing creative stuff with web design when it was a hobby. Now I spend my whole day hovering over a web site, and when I come home, I am more than ready to place my work in the hands of a commercial system that spares me some of the back-end stuff.

---

I went to bed early tonight. I've been turning in pretty early since Daylight Saving Time ended. It's only midnight now, but I think I was asleep by 8:30.

Dinner this evening was at La Mariachi, a new Mexican restaurant recommended by Caroline and, I think, Randy. Or maybe it was someone else. In any event the food was good. I overate, which contributed to my slothfulness when I got home.

---

I definitely need more exercise. Even my doctor says so. It's hard to get motivated, though. Am I depressed? I wonder. I've dealt with depression all my life –– even doing the holed-up-for-a-year thing twice. But I don't feel depressed. Not at the moment, anyway. Believe me, you'll know when I'm feeling depressed.

The first post

When I was a teenager, I briefly had a paper route. I was not any good at it, hated every second of it and tanked after less than a year.

But getting up every morning to deliver papers permanently altered my internal clock. Forty years later, I still wake up almost every morning around 3:40 a.m.