But nothing came of it.

Of course, there are a lot of golf courses in the Dominican Republic, too.

...but I never heard of anyone taking Viagra for a golf trip.

My day job

When I'm at work, here is part of what I do:



I shot the preceding photo Friday during the taping of a commercial for our Household Hazardous Waste Collection Facility. You'll be seeing the commercials starting in July. I needed to use this photo for some print ads that will support the television spots.

The next picture, annotated with comments, shows the modifications I made to make it printable.


And here's a draft of the final ad, which may or may not see the light of day in this form.


I drew those buckets and bottles in the background since we didn't have any photographed.

By the way... the Hazardous Waste Collection Facility is not at my house.

The house still looks clean.

I was kind of afriad that at midnight, the house would turn into a big cluttered pumpkin again.

This is wonderful.

Kat reminds me of Mother Teresa. Or maybe Jonas Salk. Or Dr. Phil.

iTunes: Vandana Trayee, Ravi Shankar

A quick trip to the store...

and when I returned, I opened the front door and was again greeted by a clean, and more importantly, serene living room and dining room.

I don't want to overstate this, but holy shit, this is a remarkable improvement.

I've lived with clutter most of my adult life, but it's been only recently that I've begun to equate clutter with a busy, spinning, whirling, unordered mind. It's a lot harder to maintain serenity and mindfulness surrounded by piles of crap than in it is in an environment that reflects calm and order.

iTunes: Midare, Yamato Ensemble

Wen-Tzu

Tonight I'm reading Understanding the Mysteries by Wen-Tzu (trans. by Thos. Cleary) for the third time. My Ajahn Chah book has disappeared; I'll learn its whereabouts from K tomorrow.

Wen-Tzu is as important for me as Proverbs is for Christians. It actually is, in large part, a book of Taoist proverbs.

I should read some of this every day, just to keep my attitude right.

iTunes: Aconquija, John Williams

The Miracle Worker

Holy cow.

It's like magic.

iTunes: Evening Mist, Riley Lee

Om mani padme hum.

Time to get myself back on track.

I've been 'way off my meditation and everything else for about six weeks. Things have gotten a little out of control. The house is a mess, laundry is piled up, yard work needs to be done.

My own mental and emotional state, while not terrible or miserable, has been a little off balance.

Kat with K is coming over to nudge my house back toward respectability and it's time I did the same for myself.

I need exercise, I need self-discipline. I need non-attachment from all the stuff that's distracted me.

Om mani padme hum.

A little twilight cat barfing

No reason why these can't have a serene pastoral setting.

Wow...

I can whip these out in no time.



RJ, as soon as I've sold my first cat barf art... I'm buying you dinner.


That's a promise.

I mean, seriously...

...this is a cinch.

I've seen so many cats barf I can draw them from memory.

I'm on to something here

Part of the reason I never pursued a career as an artist is because I didn't know what to draw.

Little cottages nestled in the mountains? Sad children with huge eyes?

It was so obvious. How could I have not realized before now?























mcarp, Painter of Cat Barf

Friday AM

Day two of manual toothbrush use. I'm reminded of Thoreau's experiences at Walden pond. I'm getting back to the essential forces of nature.

Today I must go to Target and replenish my basic household supplies.

Begone, dried cat vomit!

iTunes:Reflection, Ravi Shankar

Thursday PM

I'm sitting at the Red Cup instead of doing my pre-cleaning cleaning.

You know what that means.

Mine isn't bent like that

More doodling. But I got the stylus a little bent. Maybe I should work on it more. But I have to stop somewhere.

Bleak times ahead

First of all, the Hobson's choice: face the dreary and exhausting task of going up to Target this evening to buy a new electric toothbrush, or face the dreary and exhausting task of brushing with a manual toothbrush tonight and tomorrow morning?

Do I even have a manual toothbrush?

Then there's the 'pre-cleaning' thing. Kat is coming over Saturday (and Sunday, if Saturday doesn't drive her over the edge) to start cleaning, and I need to do some 'pre-cleaning' cleaning to prep. But I don't know where to start.

If you were cleaning my house, which would you least like to deal with?

Dried cat vomit.
Wet cat vomit.
Dirty socks.
Dirty underwear.
Anything with mildew.
An old divorce decree and other legal documents the cat peed on.
Litter boxes.

I should get one of those online polling programs so we can tabulate votes.

iTunes: Raga Bhairavi, Ali Akbar Khan

More of my day

Bored? Me?!

Here's a drawing of the cradle that holds my cordless mouse. Drew it in Corel Painter this morning while waiting for a phone call.

Revolt of the machines

The switch on my electric toothbrush has quit working. It won't turn off.

iTunes: Tango, John Williams

and why is my iTunes suddenly playing John Williams all the time?

Something is up, I tell you, and I don't like it. Today is the summer solstice. Coincidence? Perhaps.

But I'd stay away from that Dremel Moto-Tool today, if I were you.

1:50-something a.m.

Awake. Brain running in about 2nd gear. That is all.

iTunes: Julia Florida (barcarola), John Williams, followed by Moonlight on the Mountain, Richard Warner

Monday PM

Came home, planned to go back out, fell asleep instead.

Happy birthday, anyway.


iTunes: Sevilla, John "Geetar" Williams, followed by Kojo-No-Tsuki, Yo-Yo "Strawberry Cello" Ma

Monday AM

Good news. Slept pretty well, and managed to sit for about 20 minutes this morning. Maybe I can get stuff off my desk at work and come home and sit longer this afternoon.

iTunes: Pasaje "Aragueno", John Williams

Also:

I want to mention how grateful I am for each and every friend I have, both those I've met and those I haven't.

This means you, patrizia, dzaster, John, RJ, soartstar, JohnX, catie, jules, bratwood, kgf, nina, divinea and anyone I've forgotten to name. I know there are many more. I really need that aspirin, I think.

iTunes: Dhun Man Pasand, Ravi Shankar

When is that didgeridoomania coming on?

The new desk & other matters

Whoa. This thing looks a lot bigger in here than it did in the store. I really don't know what to do with this. It's in the living room right now.

I think I did something to my back dragging it in. Just that little twinge I sometimes get when I lift something I shouldn't. I hurt it pretty badly about ten years ago -- running a weed-eater, of all things -- and I've had intermittent trouble with it ever since.

When I lived in San Antonio, my entire living space was the living room and dining area of a one-bedroom apartment. The bedroom was full of crap I brought with me. That apartment was really nice. Lots of windows, trees all over the property, not at all like most modern apartment complexes. Beasley, Smudge and I were quite content in that living room and dining area. Beasley was a full-time indoor cat back then, as Smudge still is, and we all got along great.

Now I'm in a space three times that size, and I feel worse off in many ways. I have a back bedroom, again filled with crap, which I can't bring myself to enter. The laundry room -- which is a walled-in sleeping porch -- is so nasty I can't stand to be in it. I'll go out the front door and around to the back to avoid going through that nasty little laundry room.

There's an interesting article in the current Buddhadharma magazine questioning whether Western Buddhists have 'gone soft' on renunciation. As I mentioned here before, although probably in different words, renunciation shouldn't be a chore or a sacrifice, but a joy. I certainly didn't feel I was sacrificing when I emptied those twenty or however many trash bins of junk. (Was that just last year? How did the place get so full again?) Getting rid of that stuff -- renouncing it, in essence -- was liberating and exhilarating. As was giving up the 'suit life' when I ended one of my previous careers. I need to renounce more stuff and get my material life back to where it was in 2000-2001.

Hit Borders and B&N today -- yes, more material stuff to renounce.

Two CD's: Three ragas by Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and Didgeridoomania II by David Corter.

Plus a book on the teachings of Ajahn Chah -- the 'glass is already broken' guy I mentioned a few weeks back.

So, iTunes is back on, I have a bigass desk in my living room, two sticks of Nag Champa are burning, and even as I write this, my back is starting to bother me. I'm going to take some aspirin and try to sleep.

iTunes: Tibetan Sound Bowls, Karunesh

Clutter. Minivan. Me.

From a 1:08 a.m. Flibbertigibbet! (and Molly) post:

We determined that a person’s home is a reflection of their inward life and their car a reflection of their ego.

I have been thinking about this same thing for a few years now, especially as regards my home.

My ego? My self-esteem has gone from poor to average to, if there's no self, irrelevant. Besides, I'm kind of shaped like my minivan these days, so I don't have much of a foundation for vanity.

But my home? Absolutely reflects my struggle for inner calm, and my inability to find it. The house has been fastiduously clean for maybe ten days in the past five years. Most of the rest of the time, it has absolutely looked like hell.

A friend once theorized that I surround my self with clutter and crap to keep other people away, and I think there might be something to that.

But I hate the way I live. I want that Zen-like minimalism.

Maybe that's why I spend so much time away from home. But mentally, emotionally, I take the clutter and mess with me. And it has more effect on me when I'm around other people that when I'm alone.

Whoops...

I meant to say, of course, almost inconceivably got completely wack on cheap rum, etc.

Damn. Came within a hair's breadth of having a bestseller and blew it.

In the parallel universe...

In the parallel universe, soartstar and I met in our twenties, fell in love, got married and had three kids: Austin Sean, Brittany Morgan, and Bucky.

All three were National Merit Scholars. Austin Sean was national president of the Ripon Society, and went on to be an accountant with Arthur Andersen. Brittany Morgan loved theater and was in the national touring companies of "Cats" and "The Phantom," and had a small recurring role on two WB network situation comedies. Bucky became an analyst with the National Security Agency, where he oversaw domestic wiretapping operations.

But we were never prouder of them than when they came home for the holidays one December, got completely wack on cheap rum, diet pills and jelly beans, then shot up the Thomas Kinkade store at the mall.

I have sinned

I bought, totally on impulse, a student desk at an antique store this afternoon. It's in the minivan now (and would never fit in a Chrysler Sebring, by the way), waiting for me to work up the energy to haul it into the house.

It was not expensive, nor is it especially well-crafted. The drawer is held together with wood screws rather than dovetails. You'd normally expect to find that on a piece of furniture that had been inexpertly repaired, but this appears to be original construction.

It fits the rest of the house's decor, though, and it has bookshelves built into it, which is what first caught my attention.

But... good lord, I totally do not need any more furniture. I need to get rid of stuff I've got now.

Dzaster

email sent.

Even More Almost Inconceivably

Two people who I personally know to be better writers than Dan Brown have weighed in more or less in his defense. I have no more to say on that subject.

Meanwhile, a woman I've never met lost a puppy I've seen only in pictures to what sounds like parvo virus, and I'm kinda bummed out about it. I love dogs and cats.

RIP, Sonny.

The Dan Brown Code: Almost Inconceivably, But Not Quite

A couple of months ago, I posted here about reading The Da Vinci Code and how disappointed I was with the travelogue plot and, more significantly, the abysmal writing.

Almost everyone with whom I've talked about it since then really liked DaVinci, but I stuck by my guns, and now, I'm finding others who share my distaste for Dan Brown's TV-news-intern writing style.

"Renowned author Dan Brown staggered through his formulaic opening sentence."

"Almost inconceivably, the gun into which she was now staring was clutched in the pale hand of an enormous albino with long white hair."

On iTunes

Nothing, lately. I turned it off in the hope the silence would help me sleep. It hasn't, and it seems to make the cats more restless.

I would give anything right now for about six consecutive hours of sleep, which I've had once in the past month.

Flibbertigibbet!

I've added a link to Nina's 'Flibbertigibbet!' blog. Nina started blogging on myspace, where I found her -- through what turned out to be a case of mistaken identity -- in someone else's friends list. (I was actually supposed to be looking for someone else, who I later met.)

Nina shares my interest in Alan Watts' writings, including the somewhat obscure "The Wisdom of Uncertainty."

Does this body make me look fat?

I look like hell. I've got to get some e... ex... ex...



I gotta start doing some stuff.

Tuesday PM

Left work about 5:45, went to Galileo. Sat inside, drank a Rolling Rock (a salute to the late Bob Schadel was in order, given the beverage of choice), ate a steak, then took another RR out to the street. Saw a couple of people I kinda sorta know.

At the table next to me, two young women were like, "okay, so, y'know? I mean, like totally. So then I go, like, okay, y'know? Okay."

That went on for, well, quite awhile.

Now I'm home. Three sticks of Nag Champa are burning, which will either mellow me out or give me a headache.

iTunes: Vedic Chanting, Ravi Shankar

Tuesday morning

Bah.

iTunes: Divine Ecstacy, Riley Lee

11:09 PM

Trying to sleep. I think I ate too much BBQ. Had the peach 'crisp,' too.

Incense is burning, but I can't persuade myself I am in ancient China. I keep telling myself they had laundry piles and cats coughing up hairballs in ancient China, too, but it's not working. I'm still at my house and it's 2006.

Detach. Detach. Detach.

Of course, I have a rather uninformed view of ancient China. I actually don't know anything about it, but I like to imagine sages my age sitting around discussing the Tao and griping and b.s.-ing, while younger people do all the work and wait on us hand and foot.

In other words, I imagine ancient China being a lot like the Red Cup, which it probably was, except Kurt has never cut off a customer's foot for misbehaving. Imagine the Red Cup with customers riding up on oxen, and there you have it.

iTunes: Voice of the Moon, Anoushka Shankar, followed by Ohshu Sashi, Yonemura Reisho

Humans! Humans! Tara protect me from reality.

Hey, I know I could do that 700 sq. ft. apartment. I just have to get rid of more crap. Once Kat (with a K) gets here, crap's gonna go flying out the door. Well, except for the stuff I really need.

Shave my head, paint myself blue.

I'm going back to bed now.

Made it through Monday

Did my eight hours, went to Iron Starr and had dinner alone in the second booth from the back then came home. Too worn out to do anything, not tired enough to sleep, although I tried.

Gonna light some incense and pretend I'm on a mountaintop in ancient China.

iTunes: The First Erho Concerto, Zhu Shiao Sheng

I need some new music, too.

I've decided my pipe dream house should have a big stained glass Tao symbol in the living room window.

I need to sleep for about 32 consecutive hours.

Rough night

Hardly slept at all. Couldn't stop thinking, and when I was able to sleep, I dreamt. Five different dreams I remember, and woke up after each one.

There's too much going on in my brain... I wish I had a switch to turn it off.

iTunes: Profound Elixir, Riley Lee

Sunday PM

Almost time for bed. I burnt some clove incense, did a little housekeeping this evening.

Usually, by the time I'm ready for bed, my state of mind is that I am ready to spend the rest of my life in relative solitude. I feel mentally exhausted by the day's events. This is more noticeable now than even just a year ago. The day just wears me out, mentally and emotionally.

Even today, which was a breakfast at Red Cup/lunch at Galileo/sleep/blog day, has left me feeling worn out. Right now, I dread the idea of going back to work tomorrow. I'll be okay with it in the morning, but tonight the thought depresses me.

My pipe dream is to buy a nice airplane bungalow over in the Paseo neighborhood, close to the arts district itself... spend some money rehabilitating it, and create a simple, low-impact low-crap living space -- something very quiet, very Tao/Zen, very simple and low-maintenance. I was sitting is soartstar's office the other day and realized that an apartment the size of that office and gallery would meet all my needs, even though it's a third the size of my small house. Of course, the cats would need some space, too.

But perhaps I could reduce my living space in the bungalow to the bedroom and den (which is pretty much my situation here), use the upstairs room for a studio, and maybe turn the living and dining rooms into some sort of commons where people could just come and sit and talk or meditate or whatever.In the right neighborhood, I'd be within cycling distance of the Red Cup and the Paseo, and I'd be pretty happy with that.

A pipe dream.

iTunes: The Lament, Zhou You & Ensemble, followed by Echo of the Sacred, Riley Lee

None dare call it conspiracy

What the hell has our democracy come to, by the way, when a minivan –– the sane, sensible, Al Gore of motor vehicles –– can lose a vote to a Chrysler Sebring convertible? Did Katherine Harris oversee the vote?

Nevertheless, I shall practice non-attachment.

iTunes: Raga Madhu-Kauns, Ravi Shankar

Random notes

Partly cloudy and 97 outside. Too hot for me to even move. Cats are lying motionless on the front porch.

After breakfast at the RC and lunch at Galileo, I dropped about $60 on incense at Craig's then went to the post office and put my tax returns in the mail, then came home and slept.

I have committed to hire Kat (with a K) to do some housecleaning.

She has no idea.

I seem to be psychologically incapable of housecleaning. I can do it in time slices of five or seven minutes, but rarely longer. Even though I am seldom at home to create mess, the mess seems to always outrun my ability to clean. Of course, I could be cleaning right now, instead of blogging. Blogging is more fun, and so is everything else. Including root canals.

iTunes: Usha, Debashish Bhattacharya

I need a ball point pen

Would you bring me a ball point pen?

Thanks.

iTunes: nothing

Thursday PM

I asked MCARP to tell me some good Buddhist stuff about letting go of material things and today he posts about his sense of loss over an old Volvo. Perverse s.o.b.

That's from John Long's blogblah! entry about the accident that claimed his Miata covertible Wednesday evening.

And yes, his accident got me to reminiscing about the Volvo.

I could say something about the impermanence of material things, and for that matter the impermanence of our own selves; about the Buddhist notion that there is no "I", and therefore no "I" to mourn the loss of a car, or a dream or an ambition or a lifestyle; all that stuff about how, when you look at objects at the subatomic level, you can't tell where one object ends and the next begins, and so there is, actually, no wrecked Miata or abandoned Volvo, no mcarp and no John Long, just atoms in the universe, and particles within the atoms, all one thing and yet nothing at all.

I could write about all that, and I will later. But right now, I want to focus on one concept:






































Minivans.

You've wrecked your sports car and you're ready for a change. So when that insurance check arrives, why not treat yourself to a roomy, practical yet comfortable minivan like my Plymouth Voyager? They have more cargo room than most SUV's, get much better gas mileage and have lower insurance premiums. You're sitting up higher –– a lot higher than in a Miata, so you get a better view of what's going on around you. Great leg room, lots of shoulder room, and if you take out all the back seats, you can fill the thing with a ton of crap.

Did you know I keep my extra cat food in mine? I buy two 40-lb bags at PetsMart and just leave one in the van until I need it. Sometimes if I leave a window open wide enough, a cat will get in there and tear the bag open, but that doesn't happen often. You could carry enough Science Diet to feed Sinatra for three months. Or buy more and feed the rest of the Cat Pack when they start hanging around the patio. And of course, if you're ever trapped in a snow drift during a blizzard or something, it does have a crunchy ocean fish taste and texture.

And since you're in a minivan, you can stretch out and snooze, staying warm –– maybe with your grateful significant other –– under your laundry and leftover Whataburger wrappers until help arrives. Although I have to tell you honestly, none of my dates have ever really 'gotten' the safety aspects of laundry and fast food wrappers.

We're all glad you're up and blogging, John.


iTunes: Kogetsu Cho, Tozan Nakao

I cried over a 1979 Volvo

I'm not sure why people get so attached to their cars. They're just machines, after all, no different than a blender or lawn mower. But I cried like a little kid when I finally gave up my 17-year-old Volvo to the salvage yard.

The car had 140,000 miles, which is not much by Volvo standards, but I had not taken very good care of it and it had been wrecked twice. It hadn't been drivable for months (months, hell... years) and had been ticketed for an inoperable vehicle code violation when my estranged wife finally persuaded me to part with it –– it was parked in her driveway, after all. I couldn't bear to be there when the wrecker came. I don't remember where I was. I remember I cried when I came back and the driveway was empty. It still pains me to think about it now.

The Volvo was the first new car I had ever owned. I bought it at Fretwell's in 1979. It was a yellow ochre 244 DL –– the boxy forerunner and lookalike of the sedan later known only as the DL.

I had just gotten a promotion at work. The word 'yuppie' was still two years in the future, but I was one, and the Volvo was the first token of my new upwardly-mobile status.

I got fired from that job less than six months later, and I never held a position that high in an organization again. Nor did I want to. That was a miserable experience, and it soured me on a management career for the next twenty years.

But I hung on to the car. If it no longer represented who I was, I suppose it represented what I had briefly been. I kept it through my two years in Tulsa. I drove it to my brief home in San Jose, California, hauling a trailer that it could barely pull over the Santa Rosa pass in New Mexico. (I was at 10 mph and slowing when I crested, wondering if I would have to detour hundreds of miles south to find a grade I could climb.) A month later, when I left California broke, unemployed and dejected, the Volvo got me back home.

I had the Volvo when I married, and it was parked dead in the driveway when we separated.

I'd had the car through four jobs, three cities, two states and one marriage. And I knew as I stood there looking at the empty driveway, tears streaming down my face, that I was mourning not only the loss of my car, but the loss of all those things I'd hoped for back in '79, all the plans I had, all the stuff that didn't happen and wasn't going to happen.

A few days later, I was describing the whole thing to my therapist, and I told him, "You know, I didn't cry when my marriage broke up, but I cried over that damn car." And then I burst into tears again.

But it was just a car. I guess it's in a salvage yard somewhere. I saved the grill, and it's here in the house somewhere. I like to think the car's spirit and soul still reside in that grill, but that's just my frankly sad way of continuing to cling to the past.

I don't want to think about it anymore tonight.

But it's interesting how attached we get to our cars.

iTunes: Homage to Baba Alauddin, Ravi Shankar

Sometimes I wonder...

...if I've said anything worthwhile –– not just here, but anywhere in my whole life.

I've only recently been an adherent to the maxim, 'Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.' Unfortunately for me, I have forgotten that adage in recent times when it was crucial for me to remember it.

I can look back now on a whole lifetime of imparted 'wisdom' and realize that often, people, though saying nothing, were marvelling at what a fool I was.

Again I think of Han-Shan, alone in the hills, keeping his own counsel.

What can I say that is of any value? What can I say that is of any use to anyone?

If the old Zen master can tell his hopeful student, "I know nothing. I have nothing to tell you," how much easier should it be for me, who knows far less than the Zen master, to stay quiet and keep my supposed 'wisdom' to myself?

iTunes: Morning Moon, Kitu Mitsumishi & Toshiko Yonekawa

2:01 a.m.

Huh. I'm up early.

When you in a bag, you gotta bug out.

Help, Mr. Wizard! Get me outta here!

Okay, Prot. I'm going to count backwards from five. And when I reach one, you will awaken feeling relaxed and refreshed.

iTunes: Dastgah Segah, Faramarz Payvar & Ensemble

Dream

I dreamt I was looking at a painting. The painting was called "The Fisherman" and it looked something like this...



...except that the dark area had more detail and the fisherman himself, when you got close to the canvas, was a meticulously outlined silhouette.

I went back to sleep and dreamt small plant seedlings were growing out of the pores on the back of my right hand.

iTunes: Romanza, John Williams (the classical guitar John Williams)

Sunday afternoon

Tried to do some housecleaning today, and actually accomplished a little. Spent too much time again this morning at the home away from home, but at least everything was closed this evening so I was more or less forced to spend some quiet time alone.

My meditation practice has gone completely to hell, and I have been 'way seriously too caught up in affairs and issues about which I ought not to concern myself. Plus my social life continues to be too busy for a hermit/recluse/dull lump such as myself.

I have a brake light burnt out, which is not suprising since the minivan is at 57,000 miles.

on iTunes: Prabha, Debashish Bhattacharya

At last

After many false starts, oddities and anomalies I have finished my project of networking the Paseo Artists' Association. Not a huge deal, really... just a WRT54G and some cable... but it took a while to get working.

I am still on contact overload.

I have a CRT on my home computer that is dying by inches and must needs be replaced.

iTunes: Rain on Jogashima Island, Kitu Mitusmishi and Toshiko Yonekawa.

7 Habits of Highly Don't-Give-a-Shit People

1. Don't give a shit enough to come up with six more habits.






iTunes: Raga Jogeshwari, Ravi Shankar