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.