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