The last post of 2008

I feel as though I ought to say something profound for a final post of 2008, but I can't come up with anything.

I wrote a few sentences, deleted them, wrote some more, then deleted those, too.

Sorry, but I don't have anything for you. I've come to a dead standstill.

Home Improvement Update

The more closely I look at the walls in the master bedroom, the worse they appear.

The walls have been 'textured', a look I'm not crazy about in any event, and there are several places that have been previously patched. The patches are easy to spot because only a minimal effort was made to match the previously-applied texture.

I'm now wondering whether it's feasible to smooth the walls down with a belt sander before painting. That would take time and create a lot of dust, but I think these walls are always going to look ratty if I try to paint over what's there.

Ms. Home Rehab Person may have some insight into this.

New Year's Eve

Today is New Year's Eve, isn't it? I let it just slip up on me. No plans at all... I'll spend the evening at home.

New Year's Eve used to be a bigger day for me than Christmas. It carried more significance for me. Now, it's just another day.

Painting

I think I mentioned we're getting ready to paint the master bedroom. I started doing some spackling this evening, and became aware for the first time of what bad shape some parts of the walls are in. In a perfect world, I would probably just tear out the old walls and replace them with drywall. These have been patched, and worse, repeatedly textured over the years. It would be great to just start with a clean slate.

But that's a big project - and bigger, I think, than I'm willing to undertake.

Life vs Art

Time magazine asks: Are Romantic Movies Bad For You?

Like most guys, I guess, I never cared much for romance movies. But I remember one about this kind of chunky middle-aged guy in a minivan who meets this willowy, ethereal, gauzy Buddhist/hippie/gypsy kind of chick and they live happily ever after in a house full of cat shit.

Looking back on it, it may have created unrealistic expectations.

A dream I once had

A few years ago I had a thing for a woman I knew. I've mentioned her before.

She was willowy and ethereal, kind of a hippie/Buddhist/gypsy type. She wasn't as gauzy as I usually like, but she was still fairly gauzy.

I had a dream about her once. In this dream, we were sitting cross-legged on my dining room floor, facing each other. All the furniture was gone from the room. On my left were about two dozen candles of all shapes, sizes and heights, placed in an equally wide variety of holders. Between us on the floor was a translucent glass dome, like an inverted bowl, about four inches high and ten inches in diameter. It glowed with a cool white light.

I raised my right hand, and she raised her left hand. We placed our fingertips together, and suddenly the walls of the room just sort of fell away, and we were surrounded by a field of millions of stars - the whole galaxy stretched out around us. Neither of us spoke, but we both understood that the disappearance of the walls symbolized the disappearance of everything that was false and artificial, and that the stars represented the essential truth of existence.

Based on that - plus the fact that she once fell off a chair laughing at one of my stories - I decided I was in love with her. And maybe I was. But that went the way it usually went in my life.

I never told her about that dream. I'm still trying to pin down the essential truth of existence.

Morning storms

This weather would be welcome if I didn't have a big trench dug across the back yard.

Something else

Here's a post from a different blogging program. I'd like to find something that easier than blogging with iPhone Safari, which doesn't handle long posts well.

It is the first time you using the editor

I have downloaded an iPhone app for blogging. Upon Launching it for the first time, it presented me with the message:

It is the first time you using the editor, here is a tips for you.

We'll see how this works out.

Friday

When are you coming home, Ms. Home Rehab Person?

Blackout

Looks like the power was out at my house for awhile today while I was out. I assume the wind pulled down a line. Or maybe someone hit a utility pole with a car.

72!

It's supposed to reach 72 today. This will be a good outdoors day. Maybe I'll go for a walk.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone.

More cats (and dogs, too!)

This could be me.

Progress

I don't know if I blogged this earlier, but I am replacing my sewer. This was an unforeseen part of the new garage project. My old sewer line ran directly under the garage, and would not survive the pouring of the new, heavier-duty concrete pad. So we hired a plumber to move the line. I hope he'll be finished with it today.

The original line is 78-year-old terra cotta – I'm surprised it's lasted as long as it has.

An appreciation of going to bed

I like going to bed - I mean the actual process of going to bed. I like taking a load off my feet and legs. I like the way it feels when I stretch out. Doing that stretches muscles in my legs and back that don't stretch when I'm standing or walking. I like pulling the fuzzy red blanket over me.

I like knowing it's the end of my day, and I'm slowing down the pace after my hectic day of hanging out at the coffee shop and eating lunch. (I also had to buy bird seed and firewood today, so I was even busier than usual.)

So now I'm in bed with my iPhone, and the light from the bedside lamp which will soon be extinguished. Somebody's lute sonata is playing softly on iTunes. I may listen to Alan Watts for awhile, or I may just go to sleep.

Sometimes I feel...

...like a guy who's been released from jail, but is stuck there waiting for the paperwork to be processed so he can go home... not a prisoner anymore, but not yet a free man, either.

Dreaming about Smudge

I had a dream overnight in which Smudge reappeared on my doorstep. I was overjoyed at her return, of course. But even as I picked her up, her color seemed to change. Was it really Smudge? Was the cat really changing color, or was it the changing light as I brought her indoors?

She kept changing until she no longer even looked like a cat, but like some sort of furry bird.

And then I woke up.

Losing Beasley and Smudge in the space of a week after they'd been in my life for ten years certainly reminded me about impermanence. I still miss them both.

Saturday afternoon

I understand there are people who live in homes with no cats at all.

How can you help who you're attracted to?

This isn't as important a subject in my life now as it was ten or fifteen years ago, but just by coincidence I've had a couple of conversations touching on this subject in the past few days.

I think we all know someone who has repeatedly made bad choices in relationships - one partner after another who is arrogant, or irresponsible, or chemical-dependent, or just not very bright. And our friend dumps one bad choice only to take up with another who is no different.

But how can you help who you're attracted to?

And maybe we know someone who has repeatedly fallen for people who were, as I think the appropriate word is now, "unattainable." This is what we used to call "out of his/her league."

But how can you help who you're attracted to?

Or maybe the person was attainable, but had other problems that both made them more attractive and doomed the relationship to failure. For example, I knew a woman who married and divorced two consecutive crack dealers. I guess she thought she could change them. One ended up in prison and the other ended up dead.

But how could she help who she was attracted to?

For myself, I can say I usually met someone in whom I was really interested once every two or three years. I've written before about what kind of women attracted me - usually (but not always) the willowy, gauzy, quiet, ethereal, sort of semi-transparent hippie/gypsy/Buddhist type. But then there were other hurdles - maybe she was in a relationship, or maybe she just had no interest in me.

But how could I help who I was attracted to?

My friends used to tell me I was 'too picky.' Maybe so. Eventually, I started going out with women to whom I had no attraction whatsoever, and I didn't enjoy that at all. So I quit doing it.

Eventually I got old enough and fat enough and taoist enough and cat peed-on enough that the question wasn't all that relevant to my life anymore. But I still wonder sometimes...

How can you help who you're attracted to?

Birdz 'n' tha Hood

I found an app for my iPhone called Night Camera that includes, among other things, a timer for the iPhone's built-in camera. Even though the foggy, overcast weather was horrible for photos, especially from a low-res cell phone camera, I decided to see what I could do with the timer and photographing birds in the back yard.

If I get close enough to the feeders or back fence to get a good shot, the birds won't come near. So I set the iPhone up, turned on the timer to snap shots every ten seconds, then walked away and left it there awhile.

I had to Photoshop the hell out of these to make them legible. I'll try it again in the spring when the light's better.

What day is it?

I guess it will tell me when I post.

Grey is in some sort of cat overdrive this morning. I don't know what his issue is. He's galloping all over the house and yammering about some sort of cat thing.

I got out for awhile yesterday. Actually, I've been getting out most days, only with one person at a time. That may have made it seem like I had dropped out completely. Thanks to everyone who called, emailed or came by to check on my well-being.

It's Monday

I'll mention that I find it a little difficult to be alone at this time of year.

It was worse in years past.

The meditative thing to do, I think, is to acknowledge it, recognize it for what it is and let it go. In years past I would dwell on it at length, which accomplished nothing except to make it worse.

Insomnia update

I finally got back to sleep about 4:30 am. When I woke up a little bit ago, the house felt warm. I checked my screwy thermostat to see if it had cranked itself back up to 72, but it was still on 65. That felt really warm, though, so I turned it down to 58. I'm going to try to sleep some more.

Insomnia

I can't get to sleep. Been awake since about midnight.

I pull the blankets over me and I get hot. I push them off and I get cold.

Is it just me, or is it windier than it's been in years?

I can't remember a fall that's been as windy as this one. The porch chimes are ringing almost constantly - even the big heavy ones. I finally tied one down because I couldn't handle the noise anymore.

I had a café umbrella on the deck. The wind dragged it, weighted stand and all, out into the middle of the back yard last week and broke it. I glued it back together, only to find it even farther out in the yard this afternoon, and apparently broken beyond repair.

The window in my den, which is behind a storm window, is shaking back and forth as I write this.

This is not a joke

UPDATE: Okay, apparently this is a joke. I think. I'm not sure. More here.

I was hoping it was real.

Soul, spirit and other popular misconceptions

Ms. HRP and I had a discussion about the soul and spirit yesterday. This is a point at which I depart from typical Buddhist teaching. I don't believe in a soul in any traditional sense, nor do I believe in reincarnation. This is why my previous post about being a formless cloud was just wishful thinking. I don't believe there is anything in a human being, be it psyche, ego, soul, intellect, spirit or whatever that can or does exist outside the physical body.

Our basic state, as I've written before, is that of elements, chemicals and minerals deposited in the earth. A bizarre biochemical process which we call 'conception, gestation and birth' assembles us into a walking, talking, itching, farting, fucking, french fry-eating organism that rolls along for a number of years before finally shutting down and slowly returning to the state of individual elements, chemicals and compounds.

This is what the overwhelming majority of the evidence suggests, yet most people persist in believing something else. They find themselves and their lives to be so special that it simply couldn't be possible that it is all just going to end, finally and permanently, or they find their mortal existences to be so painful and miserable that they keep holding out hope for something better on 'the other side.'

My own belief is that there is no 'other side.' What I have right now is what I have, and it's enough.

One year ago...

...the electricity was out.

Other than that, nothing's changed.

Full moon

I read somewhere that tonight's full moon is the brightest in 17 years.

What a perfect opportunity to practice non-attachment.

A sack of bones

A recurring theme of Alan Watts' talks is the western perception of the self as a little man living in the skull, sitting in the driver's seat of a human body. I don't think of a little man operating my body like a crane, exactly, but I have lately begun to see my body as more of a weight or trap limiting my 'real self,' whatever that 'real self' may be.

I don't believe in a soul. I believe what we call the soul or spirit is, along with the intellect, just an electrochemical process going on in the brain. Viewed in the context of the whole universe, it's a tiny and inconsequential process.

Even so, it would be interesting to be able to free that process of its physical restraints and let it float free like some sort of wispy cloud. Some of us would have clouds that were white and fluffy. Others (like me, probably) would have dark, looming clouds that stayed close to the ground.

Or perhaps we would all be one big cloud.

In any event, we'd be free of the imposition of a physical body that constantly broke down on us, needed constant grooming and even surgical modification to conform to marketing-driven expectations, only to eventually quit working no matter how much we spent on it.

I'm buying too much crap.

I paid my bank card bills yesterday. I pay the full balance every month, and have paid zero interest this year.

But I was astonished at how much I had spent in November and early December. More than any payment period since my retirement, and actually the most in probably five years, when I put a new Mac on a credit card.

Some of this was unavoidable. I had some work done on the car, for example, and bought paint and tools for this home cleanup project. I got the iPhone. I didn't need an iPhone, specifically, but I needed a new cell phone and the iPhone was what I got. It's been worth what I spent.

I spent a lot on Christmas lights because I had none at all. (Even though I'm not a Christian, I don't see any harm in celebrating the holiday – especially if Ms. Home Rehab Person is stringing the lights.) I don't anticipate that I'll ever have to buy Christmas lights again.

But the lion's share of the expenses were things I could have done just as well without. I got a great deal on a Breezer Uptown 8 commuter bike that I absolutely did not need. I had three bikes already, and I need to get rid of two of those. I bought another pair of sneakers because they were black and even though I have probably a half-dozen pairs of sneakers already, I didn't have any that were black. I bought some more SmartWool socks at about $17 a pair because they're the most comfortable cold weather socks I've found... and last a lot longer than the six-pair-for-five dollars tube socks I used to wear exclusively.

And a bunch of it is little nickel-and-dime stuff.

The issue here is not so much the money (although money is an issue) as all the stuff that is piling up at my house. I need to get rid of things without acquiring more.

If you've been reading Ms. Home Rehab Person's blog, you know that we collected four 'ginormous' bags of old clothes for giveaway. And took what turned out to be 139 pounds of laundry to the bundle service on Western for laundering.

Yes, that number was 139 pounds. And that's a long way from being all of my clothes.

Ms. HRP, who is not a Buddhist or Taoist, points out that I have a whole lot more crap in my house than she has. I talk about non-attachment, but when it comes to material possessions, I have a shitload of stuff. It may not be expensive luxury stuff – I don't own a single suit anymore, and I'm still driving the eight-year-old minivan – but the quantity of stuff is either impressive or oppressive, depending upon how you look at it. And I see it as a little of both.

So in the course of this home rehab project, I'm going to get rid of shitloads of stuff. There's not much here I want to get rid of, but I can't go on living like this.

But beyond just tossing stuff out or giving it away or selling it at a garage sale, I've got to get to the root of whatever it is that makes me buy so much stuff. I was doing really well for awhile, but not so well lately.

I love this blanket

...along with my iPhone, of course.

Day's end

I finally got out of bed about 2:30 pm. I fed the birds, loaded some new CDs onto iTunes, went to Wendy's for some chili, followed the auto bailout vote in the House via the web, then crawled back under the big fuzzy blanket and listened to Alan Watts for an hour.

And that was my day.

My blanket

I might also mention that I'm wrapped up in a super-fuzzy king size blanket I bought at Target yesterday. Part of the reason I'm still in bed is simply addiction to the sensual pleasure of being under it. The offer of an orgy with two supermodels and a lesser blanket would not be enough to get me out of here.

I wish Beasley and Smudge were here. Smudge especially would love it.

I'd like the universe, thick crust, with pepperoni and extra cheese...

One of the dangers of staying camped out in one's own head may be that it reinforces the perception of dualism, ie, that the universe is divided up into 'me' and 'not me.'

Right now, from my vantage point huddled under the blankets as noon approaches, it's easy to think of myself as apart from that world outside my front door.

On the other hand, reducing my universe to just one room of my house makes it much easier to cope with. Even getting up to go to the next room would expand my horizons more than I want to think about right now.

One way of looking at non-duality is to say, "I am the universe - and so are you." I don't need to leave the house, or even my bed, because the whole universe is right here, and there's no place I could go that would be 'more' of the universe than where I am now.

I guess I could get Pizza Hut to deliver.

That's enough...

...for now. I'm going back to bed.

A minor victory

I did manage to get myself disconnected from political message boards. My interest level dropped off dramatically after the election. Spend enough time reading those, and one begins to suspect that too many people in this country are allowed to vote.

I don't think voting should be restricted by race, sex or property ownership, but neither can I endorse universal dipshit suffrage.

Use the force, Lute

I've developed an interest in baroque/renaissance lute music: Weiss, Kapsberger, Dowland and others. There's a musician named Paul O'Dette who has recorded hundreds of these pieces.

Here he is performing on baroque guitar in 2006.



(The speakers on this computer are screwed up right now, so I can't actually hear this. I'm hoping that even though it's guitar and not lute, it's still representative of what I've been listening to.)

Here's another musician: Robert Barto, who has recorded several albums of works by Silvius Leopold Weiss.

Alan Watts recordings

I've been spending my evenings the past week listening to audio recordings of the philosopher and lecturer Alan Watts. I've accumulated dozens of these free recordings over the past couple of years through the Apple iTunes Store, and I'm now finally getting caught up on them.

I'm not going into a lot of the details. You can learn more about Watts here or at the web site linked at right.

But I'll tell you it's an uncanny feeling to listen to Watts talking amiably in these lectures and realize he's been dead for 35 years. Hearing him in these recordings – many of which were originally done for public radio – is like listening to him as if he were on the air live right that instant.

Someone – I think it was Aldous Huxley – once described Watts as 'half monk. half race track operator.' It was a description Watts himself is said to have endorsed. There is a certain 'hey, lighten up' quality that comes through in his professorial speaking style that you don't hear from Christian preachers, nor from the ponderously sincere New Age gurus that dot the spiritual and intellectual landscape. I can't bear to listen to TV pundits blather – not even the ones whose positions I share. But listening to Watts is sheer pleasure.

It's a shame we don't have him with us today for our 900-channel universe.

Fact is...

...everything went to hell when I lost Beasley and Smudge.

By the way, I looked it up...

...and figments are, by definition, of the imagination. "Figment of the imagination" is redundant.

Sunday afternoon

At Panera with Nurse K. She's surfing, I'm blogging.

What did we do before wifi? Verbal communication, as I recall. We were practically cave people.

Saturday evening

I direct your attention to this blog post by Ms. Home Rehab Person.

If I could change the world

I think I mentioned that I got a Facebook account recently. There's a lot to recommend Facebook over MySpace, and a lot of my friends are on it, too.

But a lot of people I knew from the TV business are on there too, and I have reconnected with some of them. Of that group, there is a subset for whom absolutely nothing has changed in the ten years since I last saw them. It's as if I am picking up a conversation that was interrupted in 1998. It's kind of unnerving - sort of like those dreams I occasionally had where I discovered that I was still a TV reporter and my whole life the past ten years had been a figment of my imagination.

(An aside: is there any other kind of figment? A figment of reality? A figment of newton? Must investigate further...)

I would like to be able to just wave my hand and make the whole world wake up - by which I mean make them think the way I do. Wars would cease. Leaders of nations would serve the needs of the people instead of just shoving crazy ideas down their throats. Cat adoptions would skyrocket. People wouldn't camp out in front of Wal-Mart and trample people to get big screen TVs. James Dobson's head would explode. Spammers would quit sending me ads for Viagra. And TV journalists would rise from their desks, walk out the newsroom door, and never return.

But alas, I am but a simple man. My powers are limited.

It's Friday

I have nothing to report.

Rewind

I suppose all the things going on in my life seem rather trivial compared to most other folks' lives. It's all a matter of perspective, is all I can say, and from my perspective, things have gotten a little out of hand. I'm not living my life the way I want to live it.

There's a part of me - the greater part, I think - that wants to live a simple, plain, contemplative life. But there's also still the part of me drawn to the iPhone, the Hawaiian shirts, and other superfluous stuff.

Sometime last winter I started thinking less like a buddha, and more like a typical American consumer/drama junkie, and the drift has continued to the present.

I didn't realize how much I had changed until I started rereading Wen-Tzu the other day.

I was more balanced and more at peace a year ago, and I want to get back to that. I want to spend more time with the sages and masters and less time with my iPhone and shoe collection.

Redecorating note

It's amazing how much better a room smells when you get all the petrified cat shit out from under the furniture.

Home rehab

Ms. Home Rehab Person started work on my house Monday. Having given me back my yard, she is now undertaking to give me back my house.

This is the kind of work that makes my brain freeze up. I am quickly overwhelmed by it. I got on a cleaning binge once about four years ago and made remarkable progress, but I quickly fell back into old habits and the let the place slide again.

Ms. Home Rehab Person is more focused than I am, but I'm not much of a benchmark. I have trouble staying on task long enough to write a blog post.

Among other things on day one, she bagged up lots of old clothes and got them out of the house. She knew someone who would take them, which was more than I knew, and they're finally gone. The whole master bedroom was filled with old clothes. The bed was completely covered. It looked like the back room of a thrift store.

She told me she could get this whole project done in ten days, which I find highly unlikely. She then suggested the first of the year, which I think is more reasonable.

When this is done, I plan on spending most of my free time at home. I won't be out as much as I have been — I frequently left the house just to get away from it. It's time for me to retreat from the world and spend my remaining years in contemplation and reading. The so-called 'real world' was never mine. I could get along okay if I stayed in the shallow water, but I always had to avoid the surf. Now I'm ready to stretch out under a palm tree on the beach and let everyone else splash around in the water.

Have yourself a merry LED Christmas...

I bought a bunch of those LED Christmas lights the other day, but I haven't put them up yet. Some of my neighbors have them, though.

The good news is that you can string twenty or more sets together on a single outlet. At least, I guess that's good news. The bad news, at least from my point of view, is that the lights have a lot of blue in them so that they create a kind of cold, 'ice palace' look.

If you're here in town, go to Wilshire Boulevard and drive east from Penn toward Western (this is Nichols Hills). The Kuykendall chateau and a nearby home are done up in old-fashioned incandescent lights, which have a warm yellow cast with a bit of orange in them. Then the next homes down the street have the LED lights. The difference is striking, at least to me.

Black Friday

Everyone has heard by now about the Long Island Wal-Mart employee trampled to death during the Black Friday consumer surge. Here at home, the local paper had photos of shoppers charging through the front door of a small town Wal-Mart as the doors opened at 4:30 am, and a picture of tents set up outside a Best Buy, where shoppers spent the night in near-freezing temperatures to be first in line Friday morning.

How did America program people to be this desperate to go shopping? I remember in the early eighties when we reporters first began telling people – incorrectly, as it turned out – that the day after Thanksgiving was the busiest shopping day of the year. By the time that urban myth got straightened out, Black Friday had been elevated to some sort of national observance, far surpassing the first pitch of the baseball season and even many legal holidays.

I buy more stuff than I should, but even I can't fathom this overwrought worship of loss leaders and bait-and-switches.

I try to visualize how these kinds of stories play overseas, where we've tried to present ourselves as the world's moral leader. A person trampled to death by shoppers? A tent city of people desperate for a big-screen TV? This is the kind of stuff that makes the rest of the world think we're all just materialistic consumer zombies.

The big rock

with special guest dog Lucy, who is staying with me while Ms. Landscape Person attends a Thanksgiving family get-together.

Photo by Nurse K.

Another random note...

I saw a bird at the feeder Tuesday that looked like a cockatiel that I guess could have escaped from someone's house.

The red-headed woodpecker was back as well, wondering WTF that huge rock was doing in the back yard.

On second thought...

You know, this big rock may not have been the best idea I ever had.

It's kind of like having a 3,000 pound sofa in the middle of your living room. It's not very rearrangeable.

A couple of random notes

Big Rock

My big rock arrived today. (I have pictures, but I'm too lazy to fetch them off the camera.) It's a 3,000 pound boulder that I bought (for less than you might think) to use as a bench in the backyard. But once the delivery guy got into place with the forklift, I wasn't all that happy with it. I may move it to another spot in the yard. That will mean calling the forklift guy back, but I don't think I'm going to be satisfied with it where it is. A consultation with Ms. Landscape Person is in order.

Big Helmet

After years of riding with too-small bike helmets jammed onto my head, I finally found helmets that fit me: the Bell Triton and the Giro Atlas. I wear a size eight hat - 64 centimeters in circumference. ("You always did have a funny-shaped head," my dear stepmother told me on my most recent visit, "but I wusn't gonna say nuthin'.") The Triton can be adjusted up to 66cm and the Atlas to only 63. But both feel almost exactly the same to me.

Woodpeckers

There's a red-headed woodpecker at my bird feeder. I've never seen one except in photos.

Saturday

I have nothing to report.

But I am not alone:

Antisocial behavior

Someone suggested the other day that my iPhone is making me more antisocial. I go to the coffee shop, and instead of talking to other people, I sit and play iPhone games or surf the web.

The truth is I'm not much of a conversationalist and most of the time I prefer to just listen.

I also often prefer to be around an ad hoc social group without being a part of it.

My social life is much busier now than it has been in years past. At my last job, one of my coworkers was astonished to learn that I usually ate lunch alone. Three years later, it's normal for me to eat lunch with others.

I spent most of my adolescence and adult years alone. I had few friends. Most evenings I stayed home and read, and for a while, watched TV. My ingrained preference is to be antisocial. It still requires some effort for me to go out and be with other people.

Tuesday

They finished demolishing my garage today. Pictures to follow when I'm not blogging from my iPhone.

Also, my bathtub drain seems to have been leaking, so I can start dealing with that when other stuff is out of the way.

Ms. Landscape Person has agreed to also serve as Ms. Home Rehab Person, so I'll be looking forward to her input.

Heat

I finally turned the heat on this evening. It's supposed to get down to freezing tonight. I can always wrap myself up in blankets. During the 2002 power outage, I stayed here for 11 nights, with lows in the twenties, and just stayed under the blankets to keep warm.

But I thought the cats might like it a little warmer.

I also need to bring a bunch of potted plants in.

Thursday

I haven't been writing much lately, because frankly, I don't have much to write. Days go by. I wake up, go to the Cup, go to lunch. I come home and sit in the back yard awhile. Sometimes I go to the store and buy bird seed.

Feeding the birds reminds me of summers with my grandmother. I always looked forward to staying with her. She had a huge front yard, and jays, robins, sparrows and cardinals would come visit. Grackles were not common here then as they are now.

My grandmother once found a female cardinal with a broken wing. She brought the bird in and put it in a cage to protect it from dogs and cats. It lived as a pet for another two years.

My grandmother didn't feed the squirrels like I do. You can tell which squirrels in the neighborhood come to my back yard because they're all fat. I believe in leaving no squirrel behind.

---

We've had some tragedy in my neighborhood recently. I wrote previously about Josh, the handyman with the economics degree who took his own life a few weeks ago. Last Friday, we lost Jeremy. Those of you who live here in my town read the news about the young man who was shot dead in an apartment complex parking lot for however much money a pizza delivery man carries on him. That was Jeremy. Like Josh, he had previously worked at the coffee shop. Like Josh, he had a lot more going on in his life than the nature of his second job might lead you to believe.

Josh and Jeremy were both in their mid-twenties, and shared more or less the same circle of friends — a lot of folks for whom sudden loss is still a mostly unfamiliar experience.

Although I've never lost a friend to deliberate violence, I'm at the age where several of my friends have died suddenly and prematurely — heart attacks, leukemia, traffic accidents, drug overdoses. And I saw enough aftermath of violence as a reporter to know that there is a crazy/violent subculture out there, which some, like Jeremy, have been unfortunate enough to encounter first-hand. (Of course, there are other people who don't bump into it unknowingly, as Jeremy did, but seek it out — witness the Tulsa woman who traveled to south Louisiana to be murdered at her own Ku Klux Klan initiation.)

The older you get, the more aware you are of your own frailty and mortality, and that of your friends and loved ones. And when you hear that someone you know has died, of whatever cause, the less surprised you are. You already know what the sense of loss feels like; it's no longer new terrain. You recognize the stages of grief as they come, and maybe even learn to fast-forward through a few.

That's not wisdom... it's just part of the experience of getting older.

By the time she was my age, my grandmother — the one who adopted the injured cardinal — was reading the obituaries every day.

The new cat

I was browsing the city animal shelter web page the other day, and saw a cat on there who bore a striking resemblance to Mijimoto, one of my hang-around cats who disappeared a few months ago. On the off chance it was actually her, I drove to the shelter for a first-hand look.

As it turned out, the cat who may or may not have been Miji had already been adopted. But while I was there, I spotted another cat that I decided to get a closer look at.

Our shelter is set up with a series of 'living rooms' for the cats, complete with household furniture and accessories. There are three or four cats in each room, with plenty of room to walk around, sleep or whatever, and visitors can go into any room and see if they can make friends with the cats. So I did, and this cat and I hit it right off.

So I paid the fee and brought him home, and here he is.



The animal shelter had named him 'Max,' which didn't appeal to me. So I named him 'Roland.'

I took that pic with my iPhone, so it's not a Nikon-quality shot. Even so, I think you'll see he bears a passing resemblance to the immortal Beasley, seen below:



Up close, they don't look that much alike. The markings are almost identical but the physiognomy and body shape are different. Beasley had a more triangular head, and shorter neck and legs. His legs were so short, in fact, that he couldn't actually run. He had to sort of hop along like a rabbit.

Roland has a rounder face and longer legs.

I'm sure, though, that the similarity in appearance is what caught my attention in the shelter. And I know I violated all the 'pet grief rules' by bringing home a cat that so closely resembles Beas.

But here's the deal: Roland seems to actually like me, and to like people in general. I have other cats here, and they tolerate me to varying degrees, dependent largely on how hungry they are at the moment. Roland will hang out with me even when he's not hungry.

So I'm hoping Roland and I will have a long and happy relationship.

Dan-O

I neglected to mention that Dan-O dropped by last week to see my back yard project.

Friday night

I have nothing to report.

Election Day, part 2

Well... !

Election Day

Well, today is election day.

I'm voting for the socialist terrorist Muslim Kenyan guy with the fake birth certificate.

You'd think...

...that being where I am in my life, with nothing to do and not much to think about, that I would be able to sit and let my mind be still. There's almost no place my mind needs to 'be.' But I still find myself looking for ways to occupy my mind, even if it's just sitting at the Red Cup.

I'd like to be able to sit on the deck all day, or even half a day, free of thoughts and concepts. But I still can't do that.

Happiness

I have to keep reminding myself of this: there is nothing I can do that will make me happy.

The important word in that sentence is do. I can't do anything that will make me happy. I can't buy anything, can't go anywhere, can't meet anyone, can't accomplish anything that will make me happy.

Because it doesn't work that way. It either comes from within, free of external connections and influences, or it doesn't come at all.

I still find myself thinking from time to time, "Wouldn't it be nice if ________________?" But none of those things would make me happy.

Besides, you know how I hate it when I'm happy.

Sycamores

I have picked up some sycamore tree seed balls, or whatever they're called, and planted them in pots. I hope to get a couple of seedlings from them. A neighborhood about a half-mile west of me has maybe two dozen sycamores lining several streets, and they add a lot to its character.



There are only a few small trees on my block. I hope I can get two seedlings to plant along the street.

There's a lot of development going on in my town these days, but I don't think the skyscraper has been designed that can match the beauty of a tree.

Rereading Wen-Tzu

I am rereading the chinese Taoist philosopher Wen-Tzu for maybe the sixth time. As I wrote a couple of years ago, his book is for me what the Books of Proverbs and Psalms are for many Christians.

I wish there was an online version to which I could direct you. There has been only one English translation, that of the prolific translator of eastern texts, Thomas Cleary.

Deep thought

My life is pretty serene during the day. It's only when I go to sleep that everything goes to shit.

Dream

Just awoke from another dream about tornadoes. Dreamt I was awakened by the sound of one hitting the house. It was too late to do anything useful to take cover — I hid behind the bed while it tore at the outside of the house. It finally passed without tearing any opening in the walls or roof.

Afterward, I went outside. I don't know where I was, but it was not my neighborhood. There were lots of people milling about, trying to call out on their cell phones. Some could get out and others couldn't. I was in the latter group.

Then there was young woman in her front yard, seemingly oblivious to the damage. She was smiling and working out with a small pair of dumbbells. I wondered what she was doing... then I woke up.

Halloween

Ms Landscape Person built a whole front yard Halloween display, with lights and pumpkins and a crash-landed witch.

I spent $45.00 on candy and another $13 on a four-gallon galvanized washtub to hold it.

I have had three trick-or-treaters.

Oil change update

I guess I should mention that I had them change the oil anyway, and the car seems to be running fine.

Oil change

I just dropped my car off at the oil change place. The guy said the engine sounds so shot it's probably not worth changing the oil.

A footnote

Someone pulled up my Obama yard sign Saturday. I doubt it will change the outcome of the election.

Pondering fate

I ran into a former TV co-worker on Facebook this week. I had not seen or heard from him since about 2000. I was astonished to learn that sometime after leaving the business himself, he had been in an accident that left him a quadriplegic.

That got me to thinking about some of the other people I had known. In the years after I lost contact with them, one had been killed in a plane crash while returning from an assignment. Another, also while on assignment, had died of a heart attack I suspect was induced in part by job-related stress. A third, who had lost her job with my employer while recovering from a kidney transplant in about 1989, had died in Florida.

I would consider myself more deserving of karmic opprobrium than any of those other people, but I've had, for the most part, nothing but good fortune since escaping those awful years that began with the Waco siege and ended with leaving television.

I live rather comfortably in my urban sanctuary, retired at age fifty-five, small 'e' if not capital 'e' enlightened. I surround myself with incense and exotic far eastern music that take me as far away from that old reality as I can go without physically moving. I'm surrounded by helpful and compassionate friends. I come and go as I please. I feed the birds and squirrels that come to my back yard and befriend the neighborhood cats. I live in a part of the city that development patterns have isolated from the rest of the metro, so it's almost like I live in a small town. Other people's issues, needs and demands seldom intrude on my life.

When I consider what happened to others, who often left behind loved ones and children, my own occasional nightmares and other annoyances seem insignificant.

Travel

One of the things I've been asked about frequently since my retirement is whether I want to travel. People seem surprised when I say I don't. I've never been out of the US, but I've been all over the 48 contiguous states. I traveled hundreds of thousand of miles as a reporter, and that's enough travel for me.

There are some natural wonders I would like to see, if I could just teleport to them and skip going through the airport. I've never been to Yosemite or Yellowstone, for example, or Big Sur.

Manmade stuff doesn't interest me that much.

But if we're talking absolute fantasy travel, I'd like to have a starship — something that could get me to another galaxy in, say, three or four days. And without me having to get a tuneup or have the oil in the warp drive changed or whatever.

I think it would be interesting to at least fly past some other solar systems and see what's out there.

But the Mall of America? Could not care less.

Text messaging

I got a text messaging package with my iPhone... x number of text messages a month. I forget the number.

So, I've been experimenting with the text messaging feature in the phone. I don't know what to say, so I just text people, "I have nothing to report."

A lot of the people I text don't answer me. I don't know what's so special about that.

ants

Every so often I see ants in the yard. I don't know all the different kinds of ants, but some are small and black or brown, and others are red and larger.

When one of those small ants encounters one of the larger red ants, it must look huge to him. But from our larger human perspective, they're both so small we generally don't even notice them.

From a cosmic perspective, we're even smaller than those ants. We huff and puff about our very important tasks, and the cosmos takes no notice of us.

Somemwhere out in my back yard, a bunch of ants are talking: "Yeah, we've got a financing package in the pipeline for a mixed-use anthill that will be three-quarters of an inch high! That's going to really put this back yard on the map! We'll be in the big leagues for sure!"

Over in another part of the yard, a couple of ants are talking about relationships, and why they can't find The Right Ant.

The cosmos is no more aware or concerned about our comings and goings than we are of the ants'.




My thumbs are tired.

Doing nothing

You may have heard of Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen monk, prolific author and peace activist. Martin Luther King, Jr. once nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his work to bring peace and social justice in Vietnam.

Like the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh is a very busy, very active Buddhist.

I, on the other hand, am a sloth.

One of the things I looked forward to in retirement — actually the thing I looked forward to — was kicking back and doing a whole lot of nothing. I was pleased to read the writings of the taoist sages who talked about "wu wei," or non-doing. I really really like non-doing.

But Buddhism, perhaps more than taoism, is also about compassion. I do favors for friends, and in that regard I'm pretty generous. But beyond that, there's very little I do. I don't do any volunteer work. I give money to political candidates occasionally, but I don't canvass or make phone calls. I don't belong to any public service organizations.

It doesn't bother me much that I don't do these things, but it does bother me that I'm not bothered by it. I prefer just relaxing and escaping from drama and crisis when possible, which is now almost all the time.

Pop*modern is almost frenetically involved in the arts community, and I mean that as a compliment. So is Ms. Landscape Person, who tried to get me to accompany her to an art auction tomorrow — I declined.

Nurse K wants to go to Africa and work with orphans, and maybe rescue endangered gorillas.

I want breakfast, lunch, a nap and then dinner, plus some time in the back yard with the birds and squirrels.

(Incidentally, I am really shoveling out the bird seed these days. I started out filling the feeders twice a week; now it's almost every day.)

I don't know if I feel this way because I'm basically an introvert, or because I'm just selfish and superficial, or if I have special insight. Surely the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh have better insight than me, and they're not stuffing themselves at Jimmy's Egg then crashing on the futon for the rest of the day.

I figure if I live another five years — that is, five years of just hanging out in coffee shops and my back yard — I'll be able to happily shuffle off this mortal coil in 2013. Frankly, I could probably do it now. I don't hate my life, and I'm certainly not entertaining thoughts of doing away with myself, but I'm not so caught up in the process of existing that I want to desperately cling to it, no matter what.

Well, here's another train of thought that ran out of steam before it reached the station.

Whatever.

More about wu-wei here.

Thursday

I am stuck at home today, waiting for UPS.

A few brewskis

I posted earlier in the week about having had more to drink than I am comfortable with.

A couple of my friends encouraged this, based on the idea that I might be funnier, friendlier or more entertaining when I'm drunk.

As many of my drinking buddies from my television days could have told them, none of those things happen. I'm just as boring as I am sober, and maybe more so, since the 'fun gap' between me and everyone else widens when we've all been drinking.

I did have the occasional tendency to make an ass of myself, but not in any way that could be construed as being 'the life of the party.' I never lost a friend over things I said or did drunk, but I did strain a couple of friendships.

By the way, I make no apologies for being boring. I don't make being boring a goal, but I recognize that I can't have peace and stability in my life and still chase after drama.

iPhone post

This is the first post from my iPhone.

It's not all that easy, but maybe it will be easier when I've had more practice.

iPhone at last

The USB port by which my Motorola cell phone recharged developed a short or loose connection or something, and stopped recharging reliably. So I went to the Apple store and upgraded myself to the 16GB iPhone.

One thing I discovered early on is that the sound is much clearer than it was on my KRAZR, and I hope this will end the constant need to ask callers to repeat themselves.

I got the wi-fi to work with some success at one location, but not at all at my preferred hangout.

I think I will also be able to text more readily, although I am still uncomfortable with using 'text' as a verb.

Update

Well, I did it again. I read a political chat board.

Why do I keep doing this? It's some sort of attachment. Nothing of any value is said by either side. No minds are changed. No one is enlightened or informed. People — including me — just rant.

So I'm asking myself what I get out of this, and the answer is I don't know. If I could identify the payoff, it would help me to stop.

Saturday

I have nothing to report.

Normalcy

Well, the depression seems to have lifted, as it always does. Maybe the cloudy, rainy weather caused it or exacerbated it.

Anyway, I'm back to my old self.

I've been eating some fresh apples given to me by a friend today. I don't think I've eaten an apple in probably ten years. They're very good.

More bluejays have appeared in my back yard. Blue jays used to frequent my grandmother's yard, about a mile west of where I live, but that was when I was a child. I think I mentioned this previously, but I have rarely seen jays in my adult life.

I have three feeders in my back yard, and I'm having to refill them every other day. Most of the seed is being eaten by small sparrows or finches, but I have a cardinal, some doves and pigeons along with the jays and other miscellaneous birds.

Sense objects

I had the best strawberry shortcake today that I've had in years. Fresh strawberries, real whipped cream, and real shortcake (not the Twinkie-type cake you usually find in stores). It was at The Magnolia Room in the basement of the Cameron Building on Classen.

Tuesday

I'm a little depressed again. As usual, I'm not depressed about anything — I'm just depressed. But things look a little different from this perspective. I can't say that I'm looking at the dark side of things, but the stuff that ought to cheer me up doesn't do anything for me.

Most obviously, I should be happy that my candidate is leading in the polls. But it just leaves me flat. Obama's winning? Okay.

The stock market made a record gain? Okay.

Everything's okay. I can't think of a thing that could cheer me up.

One year ago today

Here's a blog post from one year ago today.

Nothing has changed.

Let's not do that again, shall we?

I got pretty seriously hammered Sunday night — the first time in eight or nine years. Fortunately, Nurse K drove me home. I was in bed by 9 pm, then up and hung over at 11:30. I drank three glasses of water and went back to bed, and woke up about a half hour ago feeling fine. I guess I could even ride my bicycle over to pick up my car, but I'm not going to.

Fortunately, I was with a small group of people, so not very many others had to experience my chardonnay-enhanced personality.

I don't much like sloppy drunks these days, and that includes myself when I'm in the state I was in Sunday night.

It was just an odd confluence of minor random circumstances that led to that, and I feel pretty sure of myself in saying that it will be another eight or nine years before it happens again.

I guess I can let go of this now

Wall Street has cratered and Americans are looking at their IRA and 401K statements with shock and awe. Still falling in the polls, John McCain is trying to change course from a week of 'incitement to violence' campaigning. GM and Chrysler are talking about a merger to save their asses. But one thing continues to nag at me.

It's that online test that says I think like a woman.

See also here.

If this is true, it explains a lot, but most of it isn't that relevant anymore. For example, it probably sheds some light on my relationship with my father. Although I had a fairly successful career as a reporter and a second brief career as an artist/copywriter, my dad would have preferred to see me become something more 'guy-like' — an auto mechanic or a firefighter, for example — even if it meant making less money. But dad's been dead for eight years, so that's not a relationship I can work on now.

My past relationships with women can also be seen in a new light. I see myself as a kind of holdover from the Phil Donahue/Alan Alda era, rather than a 'beer for my horses' type. Maybe I should have gotten a horse. And some beer. Women sometimes told me I was 'too nice,' and I didn't understand what they meant. Maybe this was it. But the key word in this paragraph is 'past.'

In the present, none of this has much relevance. There's only this moment, and in this moment, what difference does any of this make? I don't see how the 'original mind' can be either feminine or masculine.

Compassion, and the demonstration thereof

I've been presented with several opportunities over the past few weeks to demonstrate compassion. I feel compassion, and I think I have a pretty good awareness of other people's suffering, but when it comes to acting on that compassion, I don't think I've done as good a job.

I have a concern that I will just be sanctimonious or patronizing, and perhaps do more harm than good.

When my father was dying, eight years ago, some people who barely knew him showed up at his bedside. Perhaps their compassion was genuine, but my cynical side led me to suspect they were 'vultures' who constantly showed up at family tragedies to get an emotional 'fix' by offering empty platitudes to the next of kin.

I don't want to appear that way. More importantly, I don't want to be that way, and fool myself into believing my behavior is grounded in genuine compassion when in fact I'm just feeding on other people's pain. I don't think that's the case, but if I'm really fooling myself, how would I know?

There have been other times in my life when friends offered me advice or insight in dealing with my own pain. Their actions were well-intentioned, but their wisdom was misguided or in error. Their suggestions would have caused me a lot of trouble if I had acted on them.

My own life is, at the moment, free of suffering. I think that's due to happy circumstance more than any spiritual attainment, but I'm grateful for the opportunity to be free, regardless of its cause. I wish I had the wisdom to help others find the same rest.

Out in the back yard

...that's where I am this evening. I tried to get a fire going, but the wood wouldn't burn. It got rained on a couple of nights ago. It feels dry to the touch, but I guess it's still too damp to ignite.

Ms. Landscape Person brought some winter flowers for the yard. I guess she'll plant them tomorrow or Friday. She has completely changed the exterior of my home, and entirely for the better.

Facebook

Nina/Christina has announced her intention to shut down her myspace account and move solely to Facebook. I set up a Facebook account several months ago, promptly forgot I had it, and didn't remember it until a friend in the Army 'friended' me from Iraq.

Another guy whom I may not even know 'friended' me shortly afterward. He may be one of the many people I know only on a first-name basis from Sauced or the Red Cup. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and added him. Then Lark 'friended' me, although I think it was about a month before I got onto Facebook and added her.

A few days ago, a woman I worked with in television, whom I haven't seen in at least ten years, 'friended' me, brining my total Facebook friends to three.

So Monday evening, I rummaged around looking for people I knew on Facebook and found a few. Nina/Christina, of course, and pop*modern, aka Larry, and Dan Sparks and DeShan and Cristin and numerous others.

Facebook is certainly easier to look at than myspace. Most pages have only two small text ads, as opposed to the riot of banners and animations that compete for your attention on myspace. And others may disagree, but as a person with a modicum of design and aesthetic sense, I find it pleasing that Facebook doesn't allow users to DIY their home pages.

A word about Josh

I have avoided posting anything about Josh. For those of you not in my local circle of friends, Josh was a 26-year-old man who died an obviously untimely death last week. His funeral was today. He had worked at the Red Cup, along with his brother, and later had a handyman business. He had done repairs at my house and oversaw the painting I had done last fall.

He was greatly loved and had a large circle of friends who are deeply grieving his death.

I mention his passing now only because I don't want people to think I considered it somehow beneath notice in this mostly self-absorbed blog.

I have nothing else to say. I have personal thoughts about it based on my own beliefs as a Buddhist/Taoist, but they will remain personal.

I'm out of touch.

The number one movie at the box office this weekend was a movie I've never even heard of: "Beverly Hills Chihuahua."

When I'm stopped up, I sniffle

Allergy hell. But it's October — it will be over soon.

When I'm hungry, I eat, and when I'm tired, I sleep.

I posted that quote a few months back.

It pretty much summarizes my worldview, but it's not the complete quote, not is it the whole story.

The Japanese Zen master Bankei lived in the 17th century. One day another Zen master's students came to him and said, "Our master has a mantra that gives him the power to perform many great miracles. What miracles can you perform?"

"My miracle is that when I'm hungry I eat, and when I'm tired, I sleep," Bankei replied.

Bankei had no sense that the 'magic tricks' of other Zen teachers trumped his own everyday mind. He was content to do 'nothing' while other teachers performed 'miracles.' Their teachings are forgotten, but Bankei's are immortal.

I wonder how he kept his abs in shape with that regimen.

SNL on VP debate

Friday evening

There are times I am tempted to write things here that I probably should not write, and this is one of those times. I'm no expert, and no philosopher.













So let's just say I have nothing to report.

Sometimes...

Sometimes I'll be sitting doing nothing (my favorite pastime) and I'll suddenly be struck by how perfect a moment is. That picture of my feet is an example. It's just my feet, and it obviously didn't take a lot of physical effort to snap the picture, but I was taken with the moment: the color of the shoes against the red chair, the way the light and shadow played on the shoes — and it happened during a moment of quiet contentedness.

There are other times when I'm in the middle of what is really an innocuous, everyday situation and I find myself thinking, "Holy shit! What the fuck is this?!" I get that feeling in the mall sometimes — too much noise, too much advertising, too many things demanding my attention. I rarely go to a mall anymore. I never go to Quail Springs, which seems more overwhelming to me than Penn Square.

I listen to a lot of Asian music: Indian, Chinese and Japanese. Most of it is either traditional or classical. Some of the Indian stuff is a sort of jazz fusion — usually found in the record store 'world music' section. I've also gotten interested lately in some of the new age stuff done with Tibetan metal bowls, and I listen to some western classical guitar. But almost everything I hear on the radio now, whether rap, country or pop, sounds to me like grating, obnoxious puerile noise. "Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses?" Jesus god.

I was listening to NPR with a friend yesterday and there was a story about the Wall Street bailout: "Seven hundred BILLL-yun dollars!" the announcer exclaimed. And this was NPR. I commented to my friend that I had heard the phrase "Seven hundred BILLL-yun dollars!" about three DOZZ-EN times and it was okay with me if the newscasters just said "seven hundred billion dollars" without the additional histrionics — as if I won't realize it's a lot of money without that exaggerated first syllable. I would like my news, especially my NPR news, in a nice calm monotone, thank you.

Let me talk about this Tibetan sound bowl stuff some more. The best of this music (if "music" is the word for it - some of it is really just nearly-random sounds) really makes you feel as if you've landed in some calm, distant alien environment. It's not 'soothing,' in the sense that elevator music is supposed to be soothing, but it is calming. I don't know how to describe it, exactly, but I really like it. The down side is that the pieces that are not calming tend to be just the opposite: really annoying and irksome. But those are the minority, and any album is going to have pieces you like better than others.

The new senior pets

With the extraordinary attrition in the cat population this year (including the deaths of Spotty, Oogah Oogah, Prajna and the immortal Beasley — along with the disappearance of Smudge, and earlier in the year, Baxter and Mijimoto), I am now down to two cats.



Binky and Grey Poupon. Neither is especially friendly or personable, but these are the cats I've got.

From the back yard

A cardinal takes flight in a blur of wings.

---

A monarch butterfly up in the elm tree.

---

Making a pot of stew

Insiders will get my reference to 'making a pot of stew' in the 'I seem to be a chick' post.

For those not in the know, the last time I made a pot of stew was about six years ago.

And it's still in the refrigerator.

I'm not exactly sure what to do with it now. I'm afraid to take it out.

Campaign contributions

I gave some money to Andrew Rice and Barack Obama today.

I think the Rice contribution is, unfortunately, futile, but I felt I should do something, anyway.

Obama is, of course, a different matter.

More on the Girly-Man test

I don't know what to make of this "60% femininity" thing.

It reminds me of being tagged with the deadly 'nice guy' label earlier in my life.

The test is a version of the Bem Sex Role Inventory test, created by psychologist Sandra Bem. Here's a bit of a Wikipedia article covering the subject:

In 1971, she created the Bem Sex Role Inventory to measure how well you fit into your traditional gender role by characterizing your personality as masculine, feminine, androgynous, or undifferentiated. She believed that through gender-schematic processing, a person spontaneously sorts attributes and behaviors into masculine and feminine categories. Therefore, an individual processes information and regulate their behavior based on whatever definitions of femininity and masculinity their culture provides.

The whole article is here. Scroll down about a third of the way for the Bem reference.

According to a web site that sells the 'professional version' of this test:

The Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) provides independent assessments of masculinity and femininity in terms of the respondent’s self-reported possession of socially desirable, stereotypically masculine and feminine personality characteristics. This can also be seen as a measurement of the extent to which respondents spontaneously sort self-relevant information into distinct masculine and feminine categories. The self administering 60-item questionnaire measures masculinity, femininity, androgyny, and undifferentiated, using the Masculinity and Femininity scales.

...whatever that means. Here's that site.

If I understand what the Wikipedia article is saying, Bem believes men and women base their behavior on what they think social expectations are for their gender. Women act the way they think women are supposed to act, and men act the way they think they're supposed to act. And the test measures how 'tuned in' a person is to those social expectations.

Does that sound right to you?

Well, I'm a Buddhist, so it doesn't matter. I'm going to go watch ESPN for awhile.

Statistically speaking, I seem to be a chick

I found this test on the Flib! blog, and here are my results:

Your result for The Bem Sex Role Inventory Test...

Feminine

You scored 43% masculinity and 60% femininity!

And there I am, making a pot of stew.

Take the test yourself.

Meanwhile, I'm going to go start a fight in a bar to get my stats up.

Circa 2004

Where are you now?

Ten years after

Sometime this past month marked the tenth anniversary of my divorce from the TV news business.

That's long enough that I can stop thinking of myself as 'that guy who used to be on TV,' although I still hear that once in awhile.

I was having lunch with a friend the other day. She saw me from time to time in her office when I was a reporter, but we didn't actually become acquainted until about four years later.

"You're nothing like what you were then," she told me.

"That was just a character I was playing," I said, "but playing the part was a full-time job."

I ran into a former co-worker and his wife the other night. "Do you miss it?" she asked me. I told her no, unless having constant nightmares about it can be said to be missing it in some perverse way.

In fact, I rarely bump into people from that period of my life. The number of co-workers and/or colleagues I've talked to since leaving television is probably fewer than ten — about one a year.

I get 99% of my news from the internet these days, and less than 1% — probably less than .1% — from television. I know Linda Cavanaugh and los bros. Ogle are still around, but beyond that I can't even tell you who's on the news now.

One of the more fortunate things that happened to me was that I got a pretty clean break from it. I didn't fall into that weird limbo of car and hearing aid commercials that some people wandered into. It was pretty much a clean and quick transition from cardboard-haired news weasel to slovenly and lethargic commercial artist/slacker.

Smudge

Taken about five years ago.

Saturday afternoon

I miss my cats.

Friday morning

Went to bed feeling fine, woke up twenty minutes ago with my head starting to clog up.

Other than that, I have nothing to report.

Wasn't the economy supposed to have collapsed by now?

Non-attachment

Lazy Buddhist left a comment on non-attachment on one of my 'Smudge is gone' posts:

Ah geez. You're a better man than I at the whole non-attachment thing. My cats (one of whom is a dead ringer for your smudge) are an excellent practice for in terms of patience, attachment, etc. But, on the rare occasion that Alaska has escaped (mine are all indooors), I completely lost my shit.

That got me to thinking about the non-attachment thing. I grew up in a family where there was, as I've mentioned before, a lot of drinking. In addition to that, we moved from city-to-city four times in my childhood. After my parents split, I moved from my mom's house to my dad's, then to my grandmother's.

So there were a lot of profound changes in my life. I wonder if that doesn't predispose me to non-attachment.

The Buddha grew up almost literally in an ivory tower. From birth until the day he fled home to become a holy man, we are told, he never left the grounds of the palace where he was born. This was a man - a prince and heir to the throne, in fact - used to a comfortable, predictable, stable life.

Compare that to, for example, a 'military brat' whose parents were required to change locations frequently. Or someone whose family went from wealth to hard times in our region's boom/bust oil economy.

Some people who grow up in chaotic families crave chaos their whole lives - so much so that they create it themselves if circumstances don't provide it. Others, like me, crave just the opposite: quiet, solitude, consistency.

But I think it's probably easier to be free from attachment if you grew up in an environment where experience taught that attachment is futile. And in that way I may have an advantage over even the Buddha himself.

Allergy hell

Well, more like allergy heck right now. But it's still keeping me up.

Wednesday evening

It is Wednesday, isn't it?

Lots of crickets out here tonight.

Wifi and wireless mouse

A couple of weird things began happening at my house this week. First, my iTunes/AirTunes wireless streaming audio began breaking up. The other thing that happened was that my wireless mouse began acting crazy.

Eventually I figured out that the mouse and the AirTunes share the same spectrum. The mouse was causing the wifi to break up and the wifi was interfering with the mouse.

I can move the Wifi over to an entirely different spectrum, but then my old PowerBook won't be able to communicate with my network. The other solution is to quit using my beloved Logitech wireless mouse and start using a hard-wired mouse, and that's what I've done. I dug an eight-year-old Microsoft hard-wire mouse out of a drawer and plugged it into my computer. I don't have audio breakup anymore, but the mouse is missing a lot of the features my Logitech mouse had. Plus it's clunky to hold and use. I'm looking online for a suitable hard-wire replacement but I haven't found anything yet.

Worse than my place

Mmmmmmm... Whataburger!

More pics from the nastiest apartment ever (so they say).

Current events

When I was a child, my grandmother — my father's mother — talked often about the Great Depression. Like a lot of people who lived through it, she held an irrational fear that it would happen again, and soon, and she was constantly on guard against its approach.

She's gone now, but I recall her words as we talk about this trillion-dollar bailout for the finance sector.

The Secretary of the Treasury has proposed we make him a sort of viceroy of the finance sector — sort of like L. Paul Bremer in Iraq, but with more money and undisputed authority.

A plan many find more sensible has come from Senator Chris Dodd. It attaches more strings to the bailout than the Treasury Secretary's plan.

I tend to look at this from three perspectives: first, my general outrage at the way Washington, and for the most part the Republicans, have managed this country since the Reagan era; second, from my personal perspective as an early retiree who has watched his IRA and mutual fund shrink by more than a fourth during the past year; and third, from my perspective as whatever-it-is-I-am spiritually, watching the best-laid plans of movers, shakers and high rollers explode in their faces. And ours.

I don't pay as much attention to politics as I used to, largely because of cynicism. Lobbyists run the show, especially during our current administration, and few people try to pretend otherwise anymore. The voters may get to steer a little bit, but it's like trying to move an ocean liner by pushing on it from the deck of a 20-foot sailboat while the special interests are up in the cabin wining and dining the captain, XO and first mate. And living where I do, I know my vote is usually going to be overwhelmed by the ballots of those whose main concerns will always be using government to force their religious beliefs on others and stopping insurgent incursions into the territory of their own ignorance.

Looking at my shrinking savings, I have to say that it's not so much that those accounts have shrunk as it is that the illusion has vanished and the balances reflect reality instead of the pretend-growth that resulted from viewing thousands of uncollectible mortgages as having value. So it isn't that I've actually lost money, it's that the money wasn't there in the first place. Although if I'd moved those funds into cash, I would have gotten to keep some of that pretend money. I think I'm still okay financially, but I wonder how much worse things will get. I worry that this 'bailout' may be just a raid on the taxpayers and that when it's over, only the banking executives will feel any more secure.

And lastly, I may be given the opportunity to practice non-attachment to financial security. I can tell you it's a lot easier to think about spirituality when you don't have the reality of having to work to pay bills. Fortunately, my needs are more modest than some folks' needs – food on the table, a roof over my head and a place to sit quietly are about it for me.

Also, as a Buddhist I'm supposed to feel compassion for the financial wizards who engineered this catastrophe, but again, I'm having trouble with it.

Smudge

Smudge, as I've written, was with me almost as long as Beasley – about ten years. Beasley had moods and occasional outbursts of temper, especially as he got older, but Smudge was the same all the time. She was okay with Beasley but pretty grumpy with other cats, and other cats learned to keep a safe distance to avoid being swatted.

When I was home, she was always close by. She usually was at the end of the bed when I slept, even if it was just a short afternoon nap.

She, Beasley and Prajna would frequently jump in my lap when I was at the computer.

Now, in the space of less than ninety days, all three are gone.

I don't understand what would make a cat who had been close by for ten years suddenly walk away in the middle of the afternoon and never come back.

Another exercise in non-attachment

Every day there are people suffering worse setbacks than losing their two favorite cats. Some of those people probably live in my neighborhood. I could have much worse problems myself, and I do remind myself to be grateful that my life is so calm and unruffled.

Everything is impermanent, as I've written here a dozen times. All any of us actually has is the exact moment in which we live. Everything else - memories of the past and expectations of the future - are just tiny electrical impulses zipping around in our heads. Even the concept of 'we' - or 'I' - is something of an illusion, as is the concept of a pet or a loved one being some sort of distinct separate entity.

The planets move around the stars, the galaxies spin and sail through the night.

The wheel turns.

No sleep

In addition to everything else, I am having the worst allergy attack tonight I've had all year. I have not been to sleep at all yet. My head feels like it's full of wet cement. I haven't watched the weather, but it feels like some sort of low-pressure front moved in.

I'll bet no one's going to see me around Monday. I probably won't be out of bed until 11 am.

The wheel turns

Earlier in the week, I mentioned my white cat Smudge, whom I got in Texas back in 1999 to keep Beasley company. Of the many cats who have come through this house since, Beasley was the only one whom Smudge would allow anywhere near her. Although they looked nothing alike, I always thought of Smudge and Beasley as being a sort of matched set, although it would be more correct to say their personalities complemented each other than to say they were alike.

Yesterday afternoon, Smudge and I were in the back yard. I fell asleep, and while I was snoozing, she took off. Gone. Headed for the hills, I guess.

I don't know if she picked up on some sort of Beasley death vibe or if it was just coincidence. But my instinct tells me she won't be back. She's just bugged out.

She's too old to take care of herself - I hope someone else takes her in.

It may sound crazy to say two cats were all that kept me going these past 9 - 10 years, but that's the state of things, and now they both appear to be gone — in the space of a week.

I'm not sure where that leaves me.

And now, as promised, a Special Comment

Friday night

As much as I talk about going off to live in the mountains or out in the desert, I don't know if I'd ever be able to do it. There was a time, ten years ago or so, when I could spend three or four days without human contact except maybe a minimal conversation with a convenience store clerk. Now I find it difficult to make it through a single morning without a trip to the coffee shop to chat with friends and acquaintances.

Even so, my stamina for this is limited. I went with my usual Friday dinner group tonight, but while they all went on to an art show or some time at the Red Cup, I came back home to my back yard, my fireplace and my solitude. I enjoy the company of others, but I can't handle as much of it as others can.

Ms. Landscape Person describes a conversation she and I had — today? yesterday? — about relationships. I always feel like I've let myself down when I get into these discussions, because for me, talking wistfully about love and relationships is as pointless as talking wistfully about why the earth can't be shaped like a butternut squash instead of a sphere (yes, I know it's not a perfect sphere, but whatever — you know what I mean).

I'm not going to denigrate anyone else for however much time and energy they put into pondering relationships, but personally, I've taken it off my list of things to obsess about, and I'm always disappointed in myself when I find I've gone back over that same old territory yet again.

But the point I was trying to make in the conversation she describes is the point about the non-existence of self. If there is no self, who is it that's lonely or horny or whatever? If there is no other, who is the object of attraction?

I wrote something about this in the spring of 2007, and here it is.

I kind of cringe when I think about all the millions of my own CPU cycles I've used up pondering this subject over the years - only to finally conclude 'the hell with it, I'll go watch squirrels in the back yard.'

But that's what I've done. And I think I'm about as happy as anyone else.

Thursday evening

I wonder if I'll ever get bored with sitting out here.

Watch this cat

The Ninja Cat - Watch more free videos

More 'fun-loving'ness

I worked for a couple of years for a 'fun-loving' boss. She came aboard as a replacement for her predecessor. The way she would interview prospective new hires was to take them to a local bar. If they drank as much as she did, they got the job.

By the end of the second year, about a fourth of the office staff was 'fun-loving,' and the rest of us were warned we needed to take up the slack when they were too hung over (or sometimes, too drunk at 9 am) to work, and that the subject of rising alcoholism on the staff was off-limits.

Again, all this 'fun loving' couldn't go on without a bunch of other people available to carry the weight for them - and then be criticized for not being 'fun-loving' enough themselves.

Compassion

Compassion is one of the cornerstones of Buddhism. But I have to say that I'm short on compassion for people with drinking problems. And the reason is clear to me: alcoholism was a key element of my upbringing, with me being the 'bad guy' because I could never do enough to accommodate or enable my parents' drinking.

Every encounter I have with someone who's drunk reminds me of that. Every encounter with someone who's drunk reminds me that somewhere there's another person who's being victimized by the 'fun-loving' person I see. Maybe it's a spouse. Maybe it's a child. Maybe it's a parent. Maybe it's a friend or coworker. But somewhere, someone else is taking up the slack while the party animal 'relaxes' or 'has some fun.' I have more compassion for those people than the alcoholic.

I have friends who are in the program. I dated a woman who was in the program and she was one of the most perceptive and enlightened people I've known. If I were dating now, I think I would rather date someone seriously working the program than someone who'd never been alcoholic, because it seems to me that AA opens people's eyes to more than just their own alcohol-related stuff.

But someone who's still drunk all the time? I have tried to get used to it, but drunks - even friendly, jovial drunks - just creep me out.

About the garage

I'm going to spend a pretty hefty chunk of change on a new garage. Apart from the original purchase of the house, it's the single most expensive thing I've ever bought.

My current garage is two cars wide and about three/fourths of a car deep. In other words, when I drive my car all the way into it, the back end is still out in the driveway. My garage was built for the Model A.

The roof leaks, and ants or termites have eaten deeply into at least one of the joists. The building has begun to lean - only a couple of degrees off plumb right now, but that will get worse as time goes by. Doors are already difficult to open, and the one window has fallen out of its sill.

The current garage has no insulation and no electricity. The concrete pad is cracked with one side sloping off level. That's probably why the building has started to lean.

My new garage will have a peaked roof instead of a flat one, a skylight and bigger windows. It will have electricity and perhaps plumbing. It will be ten feet deeper, so that I can fit my car into it and still have room for a work area. And in the corner that faces the back yard, I'm going to have large windows. I plan to put a wood-burning stove in that corner. On rainy and cold days, I'll be able to park a chair in that corner and watch the yard. I only wish Beasley were here to sit with me.

The work that's been done in my back yard has doubled my usable space. My yard, which four months ago was overgrown with weeds and underbrush, is now my preferred place to be when weather permits. The largest single unusable space on my property is now the garage, and I hope this upgrade gives me that space back as well.

I anticipate spending the rest of my life in this house, so I think it's appropriate to make it as livable and usable as possible.