Hey, look! I'm a quiet maverick!

I took one of those online personality tests just now. I'm an INTP.

The Thinker

You are analytical and logical - and on a quest to learn everything you can. Smart and complex, you always love a new intellectual challenge. Your biggest pet peeve is people who slow you down with trivial chit chat. A quiet maverick, you tend to ignore rules and authority whenever you feel like it. You would make an excellent mathematician, programmer, or professor.

What's Your Personality Type?

I had a much more complete version of this test done about eight years ago by a certified Bristol-Myers instructor (or is it Briggs & Stratton? I can never remember). I think it produced the same result. I remember she said I was more 'P' that anyone she'd ever tested.

INTPs generally have the following traits:

• Love theory and abstract ideas


• Truth Seekers - they want to understand things by analyzing underlying principles and structures


• Value knowledge and competence above all else


• Have very high standards for performance, which they apply to themselves


• Independent and original, possibly eccentric


• Work best alone, and value autonomy


• Have no desire to lead or follow


• Dislike mundane detail


• Not particularly interested in the practical application of their work


• Creative and insightful


• Future-oriented


• Usually brilliant and ingenius


• Trust their own insights and opinions above others


• Live primarily inside their own minds, and may appear to be detached and uninvolved with other people


• Burst into tears at apparently random points in movies


• Drive a minivan crammed with shit


• Sleep with a cat they named after their therapist

Find out more here.

I took some other test like this once where I turned out to be in the smallest of the classifications. It accounts for something like 5% of the population.

Doodle boy update

The new version of Corel Painter -- version 10 -- is out. I don't find this as significant an update as the 8 to 9 version, for whatever it's worth.

This is a teacup at the Red Cup.

They were wondering at Starbuck's what holiday it was

Note to JohnX: when the Red Cup is closed, as it often is on holidays, we cross the 63rd street frontier and go to the Evil Empire Starbuck's in Nichols Hills Plaza. Kathryn, Rena, Tall Ed, dzaster, Ned, the Gary, Dave and I were all there this morning when unforeseen circumstances delayed the Red Cup's opening.

You're always welcome to join us.

Addendum

Jacking in from the Red-Cup-is-open-again port...

The Jane Monheit version of "The Waters of March" was the first version of it I ever heard. It was on an Internet radio station. That's been maybe four years ago.

I had never heard the song before, and started Googling it. I found out, of course, it was by Jobim, of whom I was dimly aware as the composer of "The Girl From Ipanema."

I've heard a few other versions of it since then, but the Jane Monheit version is the only one that moves me to tears every time I hear it. In fact, I don't listen to it very often because it's so emotionally overwhelming for me.

And I have no idea why.

Years ago, I saw the movie 'Contact' in the theater. This is the science fiction 'chick flick,' based on a novel by Carl Sagan, about a woman (Jodie Foster) chosen to make the first face-to-face contact with an alien race. To go meet the aliens, she has to travel in some sort of giant teleportation device built from blueprints the aliens have sent us.

The movie is mostly blah, but there's a scene where she's been strapped into the ten-story-tall teleporter and the mission control chief tells her, 'you're good to go.' They fire the thing up, and it starts shaking and rocking around and they're not sure if it's going to work, or not work, or blow up, or what.

Jodie Foster is bouncing around in the cockpit chair, saying to herself, "I'm good to go... I'm good to go... I'm good to go..."

For years afterward, I would start to cry whenever I thought of that scene.

"I'm good to go... I'm good to go... I'm good to go..."

Again, I don't know why.

One day, something made me think of it while I was in Lowe's Home Center. I was standing there in the aisle looking for grommets with tears streaming down my face.

My therapist told me, "Something's trying to get out."

I don't cry over 'I'm good to go' anymore. Maybe I'll get over "The Waters of March" as well.

What it is

Jane Monheit



The lyrics, in case you can't follow:


A stick, a stone
It's the end of the road
It's the rest of a stump
It's a little alone.
It's a sliver of glass
It is life, it's the sun
It is night, it is death
It's a trap, it's a gun.

The oak when it blooms,
A fox in the brush
A knot in the wood
The song of a thrush
The wood of the wind
The cliff, a fall
A scratch, a lump
It is nothing at all.
It's the wind blowing free
It's the end of the slope
It's a beam, it's a void
It's a hunch, it's a hope

And the riverbank talks
Of the waters of March;
It's the end of all strain
It's the joy in your heart.

The foot, the ground
The flesh and the bone
The beat of the road
A slingshot stone
A fish, a flash
A silvery glow.
A fight, a bet
The range of a bow.
The bed of the well,
The end of the line,
The dismay in the face.
It's a loss, it's a find.
A spear, a spike
A point, a nail,
A drip, a drop
The end of the tale.
A truckload of bricks
In the soft morning light,
It's the shot of the gun
In the dead of the night.
A mile, a must
A thrust, a bump
It's a girl, it's a rhyme
It's a cold, it's the mumps.
The plan of the house.
The body in bed.
And the car that got stuck
In the mud, it's the mud.
A float, a drift
A flight, a wing
A hawk, a quail
The promise of spring

And the riverbank talks
Of the waters of March
It's the promise of life
It's the joy in your heart.

A snake, a stick
It is John, it is Joe
It's a thorn in your hand
Or a cut on your toe,
A point, a grain
A bee, a bite
A blink, a buzzard
A sudden stroke of night.
A pin, a needle
A sting, a pain
A snail, a wasp
A riddle, a stain.

A pass in the moutains
A horse and a mule,
In the distance the shelves
Grow three shadows of blue.

And the riverbank talks
Of the waters of March
It's the promise of life
In your heart, in your heart.

A stick, a stone,
The end of the load,
The rest of the stump,
A lonesome road.
A sliver of glass,
A life, the sun,
A night, the death,
The end of the run.
And the riverbank talks
Of the waters of March,
It's the end of all strain,
It's the joy in your heart.
It's the joy in your heart.
It's the joy in your heart.
It's the joy in your heart.

Words and music by: Antonio Carlos Jobim

From the Wikipedia entry:

In Jobim's English version, "it" is a stick, a stone, a sliver of glass, a scratch, a cliff, a knot in the wood, the wind blowing free, a fish, a pin, a buzzard, the end of the road, and many other things. All these details swirling around the central metaphor of "the waters of March" can give the impression of the passing of daily life and its continual, inevitable progression towards death, just as the rains of March mark the end of summer and the beginning of the colder season [in the southern hemisphere]. However, Jobim's English lyrics also speak of the water being "the promise of life / ... the joy in your heart," which allows for other, more life-affirming interpretations.

---

"Take the world lightly, and your spirit will not be burdened. Consider everything minor, and your mind will not be confused. Regard death and life as equal, and your heart will not be afraid."

–– The Taoist Book of Leadership and Strategy,
2nd century BCE,
translation by Thomas Cleary

---

I guess I can stop being maudlin now.

But not as trippy as this

Dream

I went to bed and had a dream... I don't remember all the details, except that in the dream, I was in bed just as I actually was, except that there was a woman in bed beside me (this is how I knew it was a dream).

The woman was someone I know, but not someone any of you would know.

In the dream, I know I'm dreaming, and I'm trying to wake up, but I can't.

"Wake... me... up," I say to her, and I'm saying this out loud in my sleep, and even realize I'm saying it out loud.

"Wake... me... up. Please... wake... me... up."

Now I'm starting to get frustrated, because, dammit, I know I'm right on the verge of waking up, and I seem to be stuck there.

"I... need you... to... wake... me... up."

This went on for 15 or 20 seconds, I guess. Finally one of the cats came up from the foot of the bed and woke me up.

This is the second dream in a week where I've been right on the brink of waking up and talking out loud in my sleep.

Pretty trippy.

You know you're getting old when...

...you sprain your back sneezing.

Ow.

Another Saturday night...

and I'm home with a cold... which is inhibiting the performance of my duties as Ambassador of the Universe to the greater Red Cup metropolitan area. I'm going to find a book I haven't read yet, if I have one, and crash on the futon, coughing and sneezing and trying to stay warm.

When was the last time...

...you ran your fingers over the bark of a tree?

...got grass stains on the knees of your pants?

...stopped and watched a squirrel watching you, and waited for him to make the next move?

...fell asleep on your front porch?

God, Galactus and the Universe

The photos that have come back from the Hubble telescope have had a fairly profound impact on me.

I'm a little conflicted about this. On the one hand, expending all the time, money and energy to see stuff billions of light years away (or billions and billions of light years away, if you remember Carl Sagan's Cosmos) seems sort of pointless and silly.

On the other hand, well, holy shit:



Some of those bright spots are galaxies, as you'll see if you click on the thumbnail for the larger version of the picture.

Astronomers will make one thing of this, and I will make another.

Even though someone could probably tell us what the field of view is in that picture, it's a number so large we can't conceive of it, even as we're looking at it right there in front of us.

An experienced world traveler might have some concept of the size of the earth, but for the rest of us it's just a number from the World Almanac: 24,900 miles. We can't even actually conceive of that, let alone the view in that Hubble picture. (And personally, my sense of scale tends to lapse into the fabulous anywhere beyond Danforth Road.)

Imagine that picture projected onto the side of a 20-story building. Now, it's pretty damn big by our earthly standards, yet still not even a thumbnail representation of the real thing. But look at that twenty-story picture, where the earth, were it to be shown, would be maybe the size of a marble.

How big would your concept of God be in that picture? As I thought about it, I decided that my concept of God –– and I'm talking about the traditional Judeo-Christian Sistine Chapel God –– would probably be about 20 feet tall compared to a marble-sized earth.

(Galactus would top out, by comparison, at about three feet.)

And yet God –– as my limited imagination pictures him –– would still be dwarfed by the scale of that picture.

We are led to believe that whatever force created that huge cloud, billions of miles across, and made those galaxies spinning like 4th of July sparklers through the sky is profoundly concerned about gay Teletubbies, the Dixie Chicks, and concealed carry.

Well, you decide what you want to believe about that.

But here's the deal: that picture is a picture of you. You are all that. And all that is you. It's all one thing. At the subatomic level, you can't even tell where the traditional concept of 'you' ends and the traditional concept of 'everything else' begins.

You are all your friends and enemies. You are George W. Bush. You're me. You're an apple. You're Beasley the cat.

All one thing.

The universe.

Beasley the cat.

All one thing

An apple, a quasar, Beasley the cat: all one thing.

You are in the universe, a portal to everything else in the universe... and you are the universe. And so am I. And so is an apple, a quasar and Beasley the cat.

The universe.

Another time slice

I went to Borders this evening, bought nothing, and emerged at twilight. There in front of me was the NW Expressway, and beyond it the hospital, the fitness center, Warwick West Apartments and Union Plaza –– the black glass tower with the brick-red corners.

Looking out over all that I felt something almost the opposite of what I felt Friday night –– a sense of bleakness, remoteness, aloneness, pointlessness. I still feel the same way now, although getting back to the comfort of my little house helps some. Again, there's probably some memory, some prejudice or preference or aversion that evoked or guided that response, but it doesn't help to know that.

Life feels bleak tonight. Nothing has changed in my life since Friday; only my attitude is different.

One of the things I wanted from a relationship –– when I was still pursuing relationships –– was a woman who could help me through these dark moods. Maybe that's why I developed my affinity for the goddess Tara.

But I understand now that it generally doesn't work that way. Significant others are not therapists.

Even so, I find myself wishing sometimes that there was someone here who could ease that sense of dreariness so I didn't have to carry the burden of it all by myself.

Wishing does not make it so. This sense of despair is mine, and no one else's.

Winning by not playing

Blogblah! has a post here that you should read, if you haven't already, before continuing with this one.

The details are different in some particulars, but generally speaking, his story is my story. I've haven't questioned a lot of other men about this, but I've talked about it to enough others to know that he and I are far from alone.

One thought in his post suggests a response. It's a point on which he and I differ:

"I know several people who don’t date at all and don’t want to. They have their imaginary self, imagined love and their memories. That’s it. They never have the rush of a new relationship and a new sex partner nor the high of feeling confident and fulfilled, but they never suffer the fiery hell of a relationship in flux and shambles, leading to a pit of burning lost love excrement up to one’s nose. They “win” by not playing.

"In my opinion, they have put life on hold and in my opinion this is a fate worse than death. It’s also the option I believe I am most likely to choose."

That describes how I live pretty accurately, but not my attitude about it. When John says we "'win' by not playing," he makes the assumption that there is a 'win' and a 'lose' to these choices. I had that same belief at one point. In fact, it was that belief as much as anything else that kept driving me to bang my head against the brick wall of trying to get a whole series of 'Miss Wonderfuls' into my life.

Because of the kind of woman to which I was attracted (cute but not beautiful, extremely intelligent, borderline personality), these 'relationships' inevitably ended with her yanking the rug out from under me and standing there laughing or offering mock sympathy -- as often as not, arm in arm with the ne'er-do-well 'bad boy' heir to the Fahrquahr Humate Company fortune -- while I again sat on my bruised ass on the floor trying to figure out why repeating the same actions had once more led to the same results.

But I kept doing it, and for a long time I assumed I kept doing it only because I was lonely and/or horny.

My view was also tainted by the 'if at first you don't succeed, try, try again' maxim, whose point of diminishing returns I had passed by about 1980.

After getting into therapy about ten years ago, I had a couple of relationships that were not based on the need to 'rescue' a cute, bright psychotic. Those relationships were all brief and in every case I was the one who ended it.

I was bored by them, and I was faced with the discovery that having a crazy person wreck my life by exploiting my gullibility and naiveté at least offered some emotional payoff, while being nagged about my clothes or my car or my pets was just a drag. It was at that point I pretty much gave up the relationship hunt.

Eventually, I came to face and accept another unpleasant fact: I had viewed the pursuit of all those cute, bright, crazy women as a win/lose situation, and also to a certain degree a competitive situation in which I was losing by not 'getting' the same women other guys were 'getting'.

I considered myself a socially enlightened guy and not someone who 'objectified' women. But that's what I was doing –– not in the same way that Larry Flynt does it, but objectifying them nonetheless.

Nowadays, I don't think of it so much as win/lose anymore. Sometimes I slip back into that mode out of habit or depression, but it happens rarely.

Instead, I follow the zen and taoist belief in viewing things as they are and only as they are, and not viewing them in comparison to other events or other things, or through the distorting filters of prejudices, preferences and memories.

I am alone, and that is neither good nor bad. It is neither the right way to be nor the wrong way to be. It is simply a way of being.

This is actually at variance with the Buddha's own teaching, which was that romantic love was a grasping, controlling, attaching emotion that was as bad as jealousy or anger or anything else.

We glorify that kind of love in our culture, in my opinion, for the same reason we glorify driving around in big circles at high speeds, invading other countries or watching guys line up and then suddenly jump up and run into each while someone tries to sneak a ball past them. We just love crazy, pointless, adrenaline-producing stimuli.

My life is far from being 'on hold.' It's true that I'm more-or-less drifting with no goals, but I'm aware of that and fine with it. My life is actually busier now than it's ever been. I have more friends today –– including John Long –– than I had cumulatively from 1980 to 2003. So for me, at least, this is not a fate worse than death.

A time slice

I did part of the Paseo gallery walk tonight. On the way back up the hill from JRB, I was right outside Blue Moon and was suddenly struck by the way everything was in that moment: the cold, the lights on the street, the people walking by, patches of snow on the ground.

In that moment –– just that time slice of only a few seconds –– my life was exactly what I wanted it to be. There was nothing special happening, but I had a moment of perfect satisfaction.

I could go back to that same spot tomorrow night at the same time, and it would feel different and probably not as satisfying –– the same river twice, and all that.

I've had many moments like that over the past 20 years or so, but I wish I had more.

I wish I felt like that all the time.

Mmmmm... it's a great feeling!

So, after the previous post, I went to bed and stared at the ceiling... thinking about that woman in the Pearl Drops Tooth Polish Ad.

As I remember her she was blonde, very Scandinavian looking, with huge, perfect teeth (naturally) and she was wearing a light-colored turtleneck. And she did this thing where she licked the front of her front teeth with her tongue to show how polished they felt.

I thought about that for maybe an hour. Turns out I'm not the only person who remembers it. Here's someone else.

Anyway, I finally fell asleep. And then I had a dream in which I'm in the back seat of a car, with my dad driving and my stepmother in the front passenger seat, and I'm trying to explain to them my obsession with Pearl Drops woman.

Then I woke up.

And what about The Rifleman? I was on my way to the Red Cup for lunch, and instead of perceiving the suchness of the 31st and Military Avenue intersection, I was thinking about The Rifleman.

First thing in the show, dude's walking down Main Street, right? And all of a sudden he just cracks off about five rounds from his rifle... his Rifleman rifle... right down the middle of the street.

Then he just keeps on walking like nothing happened!

Hey, Chuck! What was that, man? Did you just kill someone, or were you just chipmunkin' around?

And Chuck would look up at the camera and be like all, "Don't fuck with me, man. I'm the fuckin' Rifleman."



Yeah... that's what I'm talkin' about.

So, you see, as I try to perceive things as they are, free of attachments, prejudices and other distortions, I've got all this... stuff... floating around in my brain, getting in the way. Household alcoholism stuff. TV stuff. Movie stuff. Algebra class stuff. Failed relationship stuff. Ex-wife stuff. Tons of stuff. Compared to my brain, my minivan looks like an operating theater.

The thinkier I become, the wronger I get

...and that's why I don't want to think at all. I'm worn out with thinking. I don't trust thinking –– not my thinking, anyway. I don't want to think, and I really don't want to think about what I'm thinking.

I'm back to wanting to do the Cold Mountain lifetsyle: near-total isolation, nothing to understand, nothing to sort out, just direct experience of a simple life as it happens.

I've been thinking (Dammit! There it is again!) about this notion of experiencing life without doing the concurrent internal running commentary. It sounds like it can be incredibly liberating. And while a hut at Walden Pond isn't absolutely necessary to master it, it seems like it would be a significant aid.

The one thing worse than a woman who tries to change my clothes, my car and my habits is a woman who doesn't try to change me at all. Because then when blind panic sets in, I don't have a valid excuse for fleeing into the night.

But I do it anyway. I don't know about L4, but my heart is in lockdown mode because it, like my brain, is a helium balloon dancing on the end of a string, ready to float off into fantasy and unreality the moment I loosen my grip on it.

I don't trust my thinking. Nor do I trust my feeling, for that matter. There's nothing I can trust. It's all tainted with judgments and prejudices and childhood traumas and self-justification and self-disdain. Tainted with flawed data from Hollywood movies and Pearl Drops Tooth Polish ads from the seventies. Tainted with pop music sentimentality.

I want to move to the country, eliminate all the conflicting input, and get grounded in reality.

And I'm going to do that as soon as we win the lottery.

More cheerful stuff

The reference to Noah in the overnight post got me to thinking about that whole story.

I've forgotten why God decided to flood the earth, but I suppose it was because of gay marriage or the Dixie Chicks or people not sacrificing enough goats or some other thing.

Usually when you see a picture of Noah and the ark, he's an old dude with a big woolly beard, and the ark's a big boat with a couple of giraffes sticking their heads out the portholes and maybe some monkeys scampering about on the rigging.

And that's the flood story.

But think about the pictures we saw from hurricane Katrina. People on their rooftops, screaming for rescue that sometimes didn't come. Bloated bodies floating down streets. Block after block of homes and stores ruined.

Now imagine those same scenes multiplied a million-fold or so, and there's your great flood.

Ahem

The '3:24 a.m.' post, is, I suppose, a good example of falling off the 'don't know mind' wagon.

Not that I would try to sway your opinion or anything...

but here is C|NET's take on Windows Vista Ultimate:

"The bottom line: Windows Vista is essentially warmed-over Windows XP."

3:24 am

And I'm bored and depressed.

Depressed, I think, because even though I think I begin to understand how things really are –– how the machinery of the cosmos really works –– part of me would still prefer it to be another way.

In other words, I'm depressed because my fantasies aren't reality.

Nina has broken up with L4 –– his heart, she writes, is in 'lockdown mode.' Blogblah! speculates that 'maybe someday' he'll have a relationship that will be good. Erika West, at 27, has decided she'll never be in a relationship again.

I wish I had some optimism to offer here. But all my empirical data tell me Erika has probably hit the nail on the head.

I decided a few years ago relationships weren't for me. I've tried a couple of times since then, but halfheartedly, because I already know I'm no good at it. I don't like calling it 'celibacy' because for me, the connotation is that I've had some sort of pious vision, when in fact I've just gotten tired of being always on the defensive, always tiptoeing on eggshells, always wondering when I would commit the social, cultural or consumerist fuckup that, while innocuous-seeming to me, was the deal-breaker for her.

For me, relationships were always like paddleball... you know, that wooden paddle with the rubber ball attached by an elastic string. You can play it, but no matter how good you get at it, you know that eventually you're going to miss. You keep swatting it, and eventually you break your own record, but you know the miss is coming, and now it's not an idle diversion, you've got to... keep... swatting it... even... though... you... know... at some point... you have to... aw, shit.

And then she'll be with her friends at girls' night out dishing about what a clueless loser you are, and you'll be at home with the cats and a bag of Doritos –– and thanking the gods you didn't give up your lumpy white minivan for an SUV or a sports sedan like she wanted you to, or get rid of the cats like she wanted you to.

Because even if you had done those things, she still would have met the ne'er-do-well 'bad boy' heir to the Fahrquahr Humate Corporation fortune and dumped your ass, anyway.

Being a charismatic leader, the Buddha probably had women approaching him rather frequently. But history tells us that after his enlightenment, he gave up relationships and sex completely. And in so doing, he gave up a major contributing factor in overall human misery and craziness.

"Be fruitful and multiply," God told Noah and the other flood survivors. Buy some SUV's. Get breast implants and hair transplants. Have your eyeliner tatttoed on. Buy Harley Davidsons. Get some misdemeanor convictions. Lie to each other frequently.

Above all, spend money and create drama.

Here's some more of that so-called 'intelligent design': reproduction is necessary for the survival of the species, yet it is the most painful, unpleasant, crazy-making aspect of being alive.

That's why I'm all for human cloning.

Hope that cheered everyone up. Y'all sound kind of bummed out.

Check out those pictures of Saturn.

Saturn photos

NASA conducted a contest to let users choose their favorite photographs of Saturn and its moons taken by the Cassini explorer.



Yeah... that's a photograph.


More results here.

The thing in itself is not a titmouse

I was watching birds eating sunflower seeds on the front lawn this afternoon.

I found myself trying to identify them. I didn't even make a conscious decision to do that - it just happened out of habit. First I was in the moment, then suddenly I was half in the moment and half in some bird-watching book my schoolteacher grandparents gave me when I was eight.

So instead of just seeing and experiencing the birds, I was trying to name them all. Was that a sparrow? A finch? A wren? A Fahrquahr's Ruby-crested Titmouse?

(There's actually no such thing as a Fahrquahr's Ruby-crested Titmouse. I just made that up because I like saying 'titmouse.'

Titmouse. Titmouse. Titmouse.)

This brings me back to the question: what is it?

If I say it's a sparrow, does that mean it is a sparrow? Or does that just mean I have a name for the thing that I don't what it is?

If I say it's the wind, or the sun, or life, or love or Angelina Jolie... what is it?

Do you get I'm saying? What is it?

I don't know, and as always, it's OK to not know.

But don't think that just because you have a name for the thing in itself, you know what it is.

(Titmouse.)

Ace of Clubs

I'm gonna effin' sue you, David Blaine!



If you haven't already seen it, watch now.

Another permanent link

About three years ago, I was at the IAO Not-So-Silent Night auction when I spotted a sculpture back in the alcove. It was a plumb bob (at least I *think* it was a plumb bob) hanging from a short chain, which in turn was attached to a piece of metal extending up from a chunk of concrete. The metal had been bent at a right angle so that it resembled a gallows, with the plumb bob hanging from the end.

Pieces of rebar extending from the concrete had been bent at angles all around the plumb bob.

At least that's the way I remember it. I immediately identified with it, because it was pretty much me... dangling helplessly from a chain, with a cage of rebar to keep away all the things that might cause me pain. (I was in the midst of having my heart ripped out at the time, so I was a little depressed.)

The sculpture was created by Larry Pickering, to whom I was introduced that evening by a mutual friend.

I run into Larry all the time these days, either at the Cup or Galileo, often with a sketch pad in his hand.

Added to the links menu at right is pop*modern, his relatively new blog. I didn't know until just now that he designed the sign outside Rococo.

I already know what the State of the Union is, thank you...

...so no, I didn't watch.

I came home this evening after dinner and decided to take a nap. I had a dream, and in the dream, I was lying on my bed, but in a room that wasn't my room. There was this odd itching sensation around my right ankle. I looked down, and saw that the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote were having some kind of fistfight while clinging to my right ankle. I tried to shake them off, but they wouldn't let go. Then I woke up.

--

Then I went to a party. Happy Birthday, Kat.

So what if I did know a 'wise person'?

What would I get from that relationship? Would I be wiser? Kinder? More responsible? Would I be able or willing to change my life in even a small way because a wise person told me to?

I already know I'm overweight. What have I done about it?

I already know my car and my house are a mess. What have I done about it?

Would a wise person give me some secret mantra to chant that would make me healthier? More self-disciplined? Harder-working?

Maybe the teacher hasn't appeared because the student isn't quite ready. I haven't used or followed all the wisdom already at my disposal. Why should I seek more?

---

Apropos of nothing else, I had a dream Saturday night in which I was lecturing a bunch of executives at a TV station about why television sucked and why they didn't do anything about it. I asked them which they would prefer to be: a Tiffany's, a Target or a Wal-Mart. I reminded them that William Paley had grown rich and successful with top-rated programs and still was able to have a news division that was highly-regarded and well-respected. I made fun of their consultant-driven programming.

I found during this persuasive talk that it became progressively more difficult to speak. I wanted to talk, but my mouth didn't seem to want to move.

I woke up at the end of it. The cats were climbing all over me because I had been giving my harangue out loud in my sleep, and they thought I was talking to them.

It's been eight damn years. I don't watch TV. I don't hang out with friends from my TV days. But it's like having some low-grade infection or something.

Wisdom

Blogblah! raised the question over dinner Friday night: "What is wisdom?"

First, let me say how grateful I am to have someone even raise a question like that.

If you know me and suspect that's sarcsam, it isn't.

And given my propensity to overthink things, it should be no surprise that I am still pondering the question:

What is wisdom?

In the context in which the word came up Friday night, my Mac dictionary says

the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment

Being wise doesn't mean being infallible. We should accept that even our wisest men and women will sometimes be wrong.

I have in my mind a concept of what a wise person should be like. Wise people are always serene. They rarely speak, but when they do speak, their words are always carefully considered and usually heeded. But that's just my concept, and it's more informed by characters in fiction, I'm afraid, than anyone I've known in reality. Remember the old woman who lived in the Nebraska cornfield in 'The Stand'? She was wise.

But what about real life? Where are the wise people in our world? I'm having a hard time thinking of any as I sit here.

One might also assume that a wise person leads an exemplary life. We would disagree, though, on what constitutes an exemplary life. The life of the Dalai Lama? Of Warren Buffett? Keith Richards? Okay, not Keith Richards. How about Jimmy Carter?

Buddhists sometimes refer to someone who has 'crazy wisdom.' At one time, this meant the person understood the dharma and followed the precepts, but lived an otherwise eccentric lifestyle. But in contemporary times, 'crazy wisdom' seems to have become sort of a euphemism for 'fucked up.' Roshi thinks he's risen above the precepts, transcended the dharma, and now he can do any damn thing that pops into his head and it's okay. Is that wisdom? Not to me. The defintion says, 'good judgment.'

Again, I am reluctant to get involved in organized belief systems, and that's part of the reason why.

But your mileage may vary.

There are also some Buddhist and Taoist proverbs to the general effect that a person who considers himself wise almost certainly isn't.

That's one I don't have to worry about. My ego would like me to be seen as a wise man, but the overwhelming evidence to the contrary prevents me from falling into that error.

This is going to be another of those posts that rambles on for awhile and then just peters out.

Sorry.

Still awake.

Reading some Alan Watts in the hope it will calm me down some. It's helping a little, but not much.

"Alan Watts is not Zen!" some zen master once exclaimed.

Maybe not. I don't care. Still works for me.

Crap.

I am trying to turn my brain off so I can go to sleep.

Can't do it.

As JohnX reminds us

This is a good time to feed the birds. Throw some crumbs or seed out on the ice. Take a bird to lunch.

The Lone Buddhist

After a couple of years of studying Buddhism, and embracing the tenets of Mahayana Buddhism (along with some Taoism), I have yet to get involved in a sangha.

The three gems of Buddhism are the Buddha (or Buddha nature, in some variations), the dharma (roughly –– and I mean very roughly –– equivalent to a gospel or a dogma) and the sangha, or congregation.

In the early seventies, as I've mentioned before, I was a devout 'born-again' Christian for about four years. I was totally caught up in a doctrine that today seems to me nonsensical and basically heretical.

I went to church all the time: Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, sometimes Friday night, Bill Gothard Institute, Navigators classes, plus various Bible studies and other activities. I was surrounded ten to twelve hours a week by people who were being indoctrinated the same way I was.

If you haven't been there, let me tell you it's easy to be persuaded of the goofiest notions on earth if you're surrounded by people who think the same thing. I don't care how smart you are, or how good your critical thinking skills are. One of David Koresh's followers was a Harvard law graduate. Peer pressure leads you to accept without question. If you're lucky, something comes along to jolt you out of your intellectual lethargy (thank you, Hal Lindsey, for what I'm sure you would consider unintended consequences of Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth).

Part of the reason I've avoided 'joining up' with a Buddhist community is because I don't want to find myself tripping down the same mindless path that led me to fundamentalism in the seventies.

What I believe about Buddhism is really what I believe. It's not something I talked myself into because I wanted to be accepted by a social group, or because a Sunday school teacher was leaning on me about it.

It would be great to know more people who share my beliefs, or who are struggling with the same questions I have. But I don't want to end up being more worried about fitting in than about learning the truth, and I know that I have had a weakness in that direction in the past. I don't want to be lured into force-feeding myself a bunch of crap so I won't be ostracized by other people who have force-fed themselves the same crap.

Is it spring yet?

Just checking.

No?

Okay. I'll try again later.

I really really really want out of the house

I'm not going to go anywhere. It's too miserable out. But I'm restless tonight.

Now, as I was saying

The post I made earlier about seeing reality unadulterated by personal filters was itself adulterated. It couldn't help but be.

Even our efforts to see past or around our filters are bound to be contaminated by these filters. In my case, that's a wall of glass 54 years thick, tinted not only by all the things that happened in my life, but

• all the things I think happened, but maybe didn't;


• all the conclusions I've drawn from the real experiences, plus all the conclusions I've drawn from things I think happened, but didn't;


• plus all the assumptions I've made based on the conclusions I've drawn.

Finding the truth in there is like trying to find a particular pair of socks somewhere in that huge and ever-present pile of laundry in my bathroom.

But I'm pretty sure I never even imagined inviting anyone to move to the Ozarks. Other than that, that anonymous comment seemed entirely plausible.

I won! I won!

WINNING NOTIFICATION
PEE SOFTWARE INC.
SWEEPSTAKES DIVISION.
4 NEW ELLAND PARK
WARSAW,POLAND.

Dear Winner,

Congratulations!

With utmost joy, we are pleased to inform you of the result of the Pee Software Inc. promo draws held on the 12th January 2007 which drew a cash prize of $500,000.00.

Your e-mail address attached to Ticket/Code number 0087411652337 with claim/reference number 085093785/06 drew these lucky numbers 007-49746-041-764-64-2091, which consequently won in the 1st category. You have been approved to receive a cash prize of $500,000.00 (Five hundred thousand USD).

Be advised that due to incessant mix up in cash prize transfer to previous winners, we advise that you keep your winning information confidential until your claim has been processed and released to you. This security measure is crucial; its a measure put in place to avoid double claims, transfer and unwarranted abuse of this program by other participants.

––

Well, Pee Software is pretty commendable for giving out all this money, but I'm holding out for the big prize from Shit Software.

Oh, what can it mean to a daydream believer?

I have a daydreaming problem - one which I only recently noticed.

There are people, of course, who are utterly unable to separate fantasy from reality – to the point they can't function in the day-to-day world. I'm talking about something less dramatic than that.

My problem is (I think) that I tend to start with a real occurrence, or phenomenon, or even person, develop speculative assumptions or even fantasies, then forget where lies the demarcation between reality and fantasy.

An example of this would be a woman I knew about ten years ago who I thought was very interested in me. We spent a lot of time just hanging around together, and I began to speculate about what a relationship with her would be like. Not just sex, but how we would live, what we would do with our free time, where we'd go on vacation.

I never reached the point that I actually thought we were in a relationship – I'm not that easily self-deluded. But the line separating reality from my fantasy was off in the gray mist somewhere, beyond my range of vision.

So when I actually suggested a relationship, and she looked at me like I had just dropped stark naked from out of a tree, I was jolted back into a rather unpleasant reality from which I had taken something of a vacation.

Now, part of this may have been – probably was, frankly – that she deliberately encouraged it. She wasn't interested in me, but she was interested in me being interested in her. She enjoyed the attention.

But I've come to realize that an equal or larger part was that I got confused about where our friendship actually stood, and came to conclude that we were much closer than we really were. Even now I can't tell you where the line between reality and daydream really was. I just know that some of what was going on between us was happening only in my imagination, and I lost track of what had really happened versus what I just imagined had happened or wanted to have happen.

I don't think I'm unusual in this respect.

Buddhist teaching covers a lot of ground about seeing things as they are, and not seeing them through the distorting filters of desires, attachments, fears, suspicions, prejudices and the like.

Daydreaming is, it seems to me, about seeing things totally not as they are, but giving full sway to all the distorting filters.

Sometimes the results are beneficial. Jules Verne could daydream about Captain Nemo and his mysterious submarine and even invent the periscope in the process. But that didn't lead to him walking down to the pier every day to wait for the Nautilus to surface.

I am not a Jules Verne, nor are most of us. My daydreams will not inspire or entertain others. They do have the capacity to cause me misery, because I can't always sort out what is real from what I've just cooked up in my imagination.

Laying low for the Storm of 2007™

Ever heard a TV meteorologist talk about 'this minor winter storm'?

In any event, I left work about 3:30 and stopped by Homeland and picked up some groceries. The store was not especially crowded, and the shelves had not been picked clean.

Then I came home and did a little web surfing, made a long-distance edit to the web site at work, and ate a bit of dinner. I went to bed about 6:30. When it's this cold and this overcast, I really do just want to get under the covers and stay there.

I actually slept rather soundly.

Curiously enough...

I don't have a cell phone or an iPod.

Glad now I waited.

every picture tells a story

You've probably seen here or there or photo of an elderly person sitting on a park bench, surrounded by pigeons and squirrels he or she has been feeding.

I used to see pictures like that and think, 'That's someone who ended up old and alone, with no place in society. Since they couldn't 'hack it' in the 'real world,' they've been reduced to entertaining themselves by feeding animals in the park - the only friends they have left.'

That's what I used to think.

Now, the story those pictures tell me is more like, 'Here's someone who has discovered what it means to be in the present moment. This is a person who has, knowingly or unknowingly, come into harmony with the way, put aside their attachments and learned to live.'

Jacking in tonight from the Sauced! port

I'm eating a gigantic slice of pepperoni pizza and drinking a cup of Earl Gray.

Not a single person here I know right now.

I came here based on the recommendation of JohnX. We sat at the big table Thursday and had a long talk about Zen and the Tao.

Roots II

"I think I’ll never live here again, but I will come back now and then for these things and the people that have knowingly or unknowingly compelled me to do more."

Erika West, blogging on Karmic Ironies

Erika West, as you may know, is moving to Texas to pursue her doctorate. Her recent posts on leaving Oklahoma got me to thinking about my own comings and goings, which are as follows:

Oklahoma City
West Memphis, Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee
   (I saw Graceland when someone lived there.)
St. Louis
Shreveport
Oklahoma City
Tulsa
San Jose
Oklahoma City (okay, Edmond)
San Antonio
Oklahoma City

As you can see, there is a certain repetition there. I've probably mentioned this before, but I live just a few blocks from the garage apartment in which my parents lived when I was born. I'm less than a mile from the homes of my grandparents.

This is not exactly a promised land for artsy, intellectual or pseudointellectual (whichever I may be) leftists. But for some reason, I keep being drawn back to Oklahoma City. When I was in Texas, I had the financial means to live just about anywhere in the US I chose. Friends urged me to go to Austin or back to the bay area. I chose the comfort of familiar landmarks and surroundings over the adventure of a new city.

When I came back here this last time, both my parents and all my grandparents had passed on. There were no relatives to visit or rely upon (unless you count my ex). But there were the familiar and comfortable sights: the Gold Star building at OCU, the oft-renamed Ramsey Tower (I remember when I could see the Liberty Bank 'Weather Beacon' from my grandmother's front porch), the Gold Dome at 23rd & Classen, the Arrows to Atoms Tower at the fairgrounds. I also remember the smaller tower that preceded it, and being on 'Foreman Scotty's Circle 4 Ranch' when it was live from the OPUBCO Pavilion during the 1957 State Fair.

Not only is this neighborhood my 'bubble' - it's been my 'bubble' all my life, even when I was living 45 minutes south of San Francisco.

I kept coming back, and I hope this time it's to stay. I need be nowhere else.

The second day of 2007

I did mean the grandiosely-named "Bathrobe of Perfect Wisdom."

Thank you for the proofreading.

The first day of 2007

Tea in the morning at EE Starbuck's.

Randy, dzaster, Nurse Kathryn and Tanner in attendance. Tanner, Nurse Kathryn and I went to lunch at Las Mariachis. NK and I went to Spices of India, recommended by Jen, where I stocked up on several varieties of Hem Indian incense.

Home.

Read DT Suzuki for awhile.

Went to Barnes & Noble and Bed, Bath & Beyond. Saw a couple of things I liked, but didn't buy. I have too much stuff already. I used to really enjoy shopping. Now it's vaguely unpleasant.

I'd like to spend the rest of my life in pajama bottoms, t-shirts and the Bathroom of Perfect Wisdom. Clothes are a pain in the ass.

Went to Borders, bought two albums of classical guitar music by players of whom I'd never heard. My ear is not very discriminating, anyway.

In the evening, more reading: Suzuki and some Thich Nhat Hanh.

iTunes: Propeller 9, The Notwist

I feel vaguely dissatisfied. I don't want to sit here alone, but it won't hurt me to do so, and I've no place to go.

I need feedback. I don't mean comments here, although they're always welcome. I mean I need to say something to someone and have someone say something back to me. Intellectual/spiritual discourse.

Especially spiritual.

More dharma audio

San Francisco Zen Center

D.T. Suzuki's New Year's Rockin' Eve

I've decided to spend New Year's Eve at home with a collection of writings by D.T. Suzuki.

Hope you have a safe and happy New Year's Eve!

No man knoweth the day or the hour

But even so, 1 in 4 Americans believe Jesus will return in 2007.

More thoughts on being older than dirt

I would like to say that at this stage in my life I have at least a smattering of transcendental wisdom. But I'm still basically a dumbass. I'm not sure I know anything.

I would like to tell you that I'm a trove of wisdom – a sort of zen Mary Worth who can unravel life's knotty problems. But that's just ego whispering in my ear. I actually don't know jack. But then again, I'm not sure there's any jack to know.

When I bought my space age miracle foam Tibetan meditation cushion, they sent me a complementary coffee cup which says on the side: 'Wake Up!'

'Wake Up!' as in fill up with caffeine, and 'Wake Up!' as in satori experience.

Am I awake, or merely aware in my sleep that there is such a thing as being awake?

If I was awake, I suspect, I wouldn't posting questions to myself here. I wouldn't even be blogging. I'd be sitting under a tree on my weekends, wearing a beatific smile and watching birds fly. Or I would be chopping wood and carrying water. Instead, I sort of spin my wheels right here – in part, frankly, as an alternative doing all the mundane stuff I should be doing, like cleaning out my car and doing laundry.

More dharma audio

http://www.dharmaradio.org/

http://www.suttareadings.net/

http://www.dharmastream.org/dharmatalks.html

http://www.dharmafield.org/

http://www.buddhanet.net/audio-talks.htm

http://www.kwanumzen.com/talks/index.html

Old old old old old old old old

I am 54 today.

I did nothing to celebrate or observe. I received some cards and one gift.

In medieval China, I've read, a man was expected to 'retire' from daily life when he reached a certain age and devote his intellectual energies to grokking the Tao.

('Grok,' by the way, is in the dictionary that came with my Mac.)

I don't know what that 'certain age' is, but I feel like I must be getting close to it. But I can't afford to retire from daily life unless we win the lottery tonight.

I see that many things once important to me are not so important now – I've mentioned that before. Some of this is because of my own efforts to break the wheel of samsara in my life. But it's also because, as I've gotten older, I've added experience and perspective in deciding what is important and what isn't.

Always looking my best in case I bump into Ms. Perfection? Not so important.

Naps? Important.

Personal branding? So not important.

Making sure the cats get fed? Important.

Thick full hair and blindingly white teeth? No so important.

Regularity? Important. Or at least desirable. Pleasant. 'Fun' would be too strong a word – especially with my feeble low-flush toilet.

Went to the RC tonight, and the place was packed. Mostly with people I didn't know. A family reunion, maybe. I came back home and turned 54 with the Internet.

The greatest 'Nancy' panel ever

Overheard Christmas Day

... three customers talking at the EE Starbuck's.

Person 1: "The thing about Rome is it's so... historic!"

Person 2: "Yes."

Person 1: "Every time you turn a corner, there's history."

Person 2: "Yes."

Person 1: "It's everywhere. I love that city."

Person 2: "I've been to every major city except Florence, and I love Rome."

Person 1: "I've been there ten times in the past ten years."

Person 3: "I've been there thirty times in the past twenty years."

I just had a dream...

...that I was driving my old 1973 red Ford Pinto, a car I haven't had since 1979.

In the dream, there is something wrong with the transmission, and I'm trying to limp it home. It's not clear where I am, but I have to drive up a long but gradual grade, turn left, then drive up another long, even more gradual grade. I'm trying to do this without stopping because I'm afraid if I stop I won't be able to start again.

I make the right turn successfully, grinding along in first gear, and am headed up the second hill, when suddenly, up ahead of me, a big car comes barreling through from a side street on the left. It's a big 70s model station wagon, like an Oldsmobile or Buick. The driver makes a wide left turn and badly sideswipes another big 70s model car parked on the side of the street. He hits the parked car hard... almost hard enough that it's more like a collision than a sideswipe.

The station wagon pulls away then stops. The driver leans out the window to see how bad the damage is. (My dreams even have continuity errors: from that angle, there's no way he could see the car he'd just hit. He would've had to have looked out the passenger side window.)

The guy is in his late thirties or early forties, has black tousled hair, a kind of a wild-eyed goofy grin, and his face is covered with green greasepaint except around his eyes and mouth.

He pulls his head back into his car and drives off. I follow him and try to write down his tag number. I got the first three letters down - it was H something something - but then I woke up.

Christmas Day 2006

Had dinner tonight at the Grand Village Chinese Restaurant on NW 23.

I've had far more Christmas dinners alone in my life than with other people, and being with big crowds of people at Christmas sort of overwhelms me.

But at the same time, this is the time of year where I find myself wondering why I could never have and enjoy a normal life. By 'normal' I mean, of course, that probably mythical life of married-to-a-loving-wife-two-kids-SUV-in-the-driveway bliss.

---

Earlier today, I cleaned out my fridge. Well, I started the task, anyway. I need to get an ice chest for temporary storage then really get in and clean the thing. In any event, I dropped an almost-full quart of chicken pho that had been there since, oh, October. It sprayed clear across the kitchen, giving me even more to clean up. Fortunately, the noodles were more like rice vermicelli, so they stayed in a couple of big pungent clumps.

---

Roger Lienke sings a fairly subversive version of the 'The First Noel' which includes lyrics he wrote himself about Jesus coming for the meek and the insecure.

When I was a born-again Christian in the early seventies (which I still am, I guess, if you subscribe to the once saved, always saved theory), I learned from sermons that God loves everyone.

But what I saw in practice was that God loved beautiful people more than ordinary-looking people, and rich people more than poor people.

And he loved OU and Dallas Cowboys football players more than anyone -- even more than football players from OSU or Houston or Kansas City. They used to bring OU players to our church to give us their testimony. I wondered why I should be more impressed with a football player than, say, a scientist or a historian.

Christianity as practiced there was simply Jesus slapped on a box of prefab biases, prejudices and preferences, like Colonel Sanders on a bucket of chicken. Every so often some preacher or evangelist would start off a sermon by warning us he wasn't there to preach a 'soft, easy' gospel, but rather a 'strong, challenging, Bible-based' gospel. This inevitably meant the same assortment of biases, prejudices and preferences, but with the Republican Party platform tacked on as well.

I don't miss any of it. Fundamentalists should be ashamed of the stuff they promulgate, but 'shame' is not found in their dictionary.

So, happy birthday, baby Jesus. I hope you come back soon and kick these people's asses.

Breakfast

Breakfast this morning at the Evil Empire Starbuck's. Two slices of banana nut bread, a cup of hot chocolate and a cup of green tea.

Saw dzaster briefly, and also chatted with Misanthrope Tom (aka Evil Tom), whom I had not seen, by his reckoning, in five months.

No other RC expatriates showed up.

Tried the 'that's me' meditation briefly, and was unable to persuade myself that there was any bond whatsoever between me and the regular EE Starbuck's habitués.

More dharma podcasts

audiodharma.org

If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.

So says a Zen aphorism.

I had a statue of the Buddha in my den. It was about ten inches tall, hollow, made of some sort of thick plastic. I found it in the great repository of Buddhist culture and art, Target.

A couple of weeks ago, one of the cats knocked the Buddha off on the floor. The impact broke its head off and the pieces have been lying there ever since.

I've been pondering it, as if the cat left me some sort of koan to figure out. I still don't have anything to say about it, except that it happened.

But one thing did occur to me, and of course I may be all wrong about this: almost everything that happens can be taken as some sort of koan.

On an otherwise perfectly clear day, a single small cloud drifts through the sky, temporarily darkening the sun. What is it?

You're in line at 7-Eleven, and the guy ahead of you buys a liter of Mountain Dew and a tin of chewing tobacco, and heads out the door. What is it?

A stray dog wanders up on your porch and sniffs around before moving on. What is it?

Life is inexplicable. Any system that tries to explain it or make sense of it will always be at best imperfect and at worst a total failure.

---

I've had a lot of strange dreams over the past week. I mean to post the contents, but I usually drift back to sleep and forget them.

This afternoon, I took a nap and had this dream:

A chicken and a duck are walking across a street. A pickup truck appears, bearing down on them. 'Surely he'll slow down or go around them,' I think, but he doesn't. He runs right over them without slowing down, killing them both, and drives on.

Then little chicks and ducklings start to pop out of the dead birds' feathers and run off to the curb. I wonder how long they can survive without their mothers.

Then I woke up.

---

I've been trying to decide whether to glue the Buddha back together again or keep it just the way it is. What do you think?

---

I have this sense that it's time for something to happen for me. Some sort of next step. I don't know what it is. I'm sure it will be evident when the time is right.

Something to try

In his book "The Miracle of Mindfulness," zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh
recommends some meditation exercises. In one of them, the meditator
sits in a public or semiprivate location. He watches other people, but
as he does so, he makes the effort to see each person, man or woman,
every race, as himself: "That's me."

The point of this meditation is to instill or reinforce the notion of
non-duality... ie, that we are not separate beings but a single unified
entity.

"That's me."

"That's me."

"That's me."

You are that person, whoever it is, just as that person is you. In fact, you can do this with any living thing: your dog, your cat, the mice hiding in your cabinets. All one thing.

I've tried this, and I can tell you it gave me a very strong sensation that was both positive and yet mildly discomforting.

Try it with a stranger, with someone you like, and with someone you dislike. They're all you, and you're all of them.









I hope I don't decide to invade Iran.

Cute animals; great-looking web site

I'm posting a link here to a cute animals page on the Buzzfeed web site.

But while you're looking at the animals, notice what a clean, great-looking site this is. There's lots of white space, really effective use of different fonts and type sizes. I wish I could say I designed this. I may steal some of these ideas for my own work.

Toyota vs Detroit

"We had the foresight to start hybrid development earlier than other companies. This year we will sell more hybrids than Cadillac will sell cars."

- Jim Press, CEO President of Toyota USA North America

The WaPo story here.

The House of Jen

I have written briefly in the past about Jen, who first got me interested in Buddhism a few years ago.

I went by her house tonight to drop off a book.

There is a certain sense I get when I'm at Jen's house, one which I wasn't able to identify until tonight. It's a sense of serenity and tranquility. There's not much overtly spiritual about her decor, but it's almost as if I were in some sort of sanctuary or chapel.

In fact, Jen's decor is bohemian. Her living room contains a low table placed against a wall, a metal-frame futon that folds up into a double-size chaise lounge, two massive Adirondack porch chairs and an antique buffet. The main illumination comes from a string of miniature Christmas lights that hang around the sills of the two windows year-round. Pieces of art – some her own and some by others – hang everywhere.

I know Jen has read a little about feng shui, but I think it's more her natural instincts that have prompted her to arrange this eclectic mix of furnishings into a room that just absorbs me into a sense of peace.

I think that one of the impediments I face in meditation is that my house is such a rat's nest that it's difficult to feel at peace. Just as Jen's house conveys calm and stillness, my house conveys chaos and confusion.

To which he replied:

No, mindfulness is not thought control, and I didn't mean to leave that impression (if I did.)

But thought control – or let's call it something less Orwellian, like thought habits - help me find a state of mindfulness when I've let the wheels start spinning off in unfocused directions.

Mindfulness is not often fun for me. There are times, especially in the spring, when it is very pleasant – but not fun.

To tell the truth, I'm not much into fun. I'm not comfortable with it.

---

I haven't been on a long cross-country drive in years (since 2001, to be specific) but one of the things I like about them is that once I've gotten about 40 miles out of town and hit my cruising speed on the interstate, I tend to quit worrying about stuff happening back at home. There's nothing I can do about it, so I can just let it go.

(I know some people are unable to do this, but I can.)

The state of mind I have while on the road must be, I think, somewhat like that state of being comfortable with uncertainty that Pema Chödrön writes about so frequently, and that Alan Watts described in my favorite Watts book, The Wisdom of Uncertainty.

Ideally, I'd have that 'road trip' sense of comfort all the time. I spend too much emotional energy worrying about things I can't control or influence.

Saturday evening

"Because of forgetfulness and prejudices, we generally cloak reality with a veil of false views and opinions. This is seeing reality through imagination. Imagination is an illusion of reality which conceives of reality as an assembly of small pieces of separate entities and selves."

– Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness

So, first of all, never mind that hologram analogy from a couple of weeks ago. It's not that we're just semi-real. We're real; we're just not what we appear to be to the unenlightened eye.

Second of all, I was taken by the use in this paragraph of the words 'forgetfulness' and 'prejudices.'

I've been working on mindfulness - which I understand to mean being aware of what's happening in the present moment and seeing it for what it actually is - for awhile, and one of the biggest obstacles I've encountered is simply remembering to do it.

If you're like me, you often find yourself mentally 'lost in space' while driving. Ever had the experience of finding yourself at your destination, sitting at the wheel of your car, but having absolutely no memory of having driven there? When I was a news anchor, I used to have what I called 'out of body newscasts' where I couldn't even remember what stories I'd read in the previous half hour.

During those times, my mind was 'somewhere else.' Most of the time, in my particular case, I was revisiting some past trauma or unpleasant experience. Not only could I not remember how I'd gotten to my destination, I arrived in a seething rage over something that had happened to me in 1978.

But I've actually had some success in training myself so that when my mind wanders onto certain subjects, it snaps back into the present moment and I can stop and think, 'Okay, where am I right now? What is happening around me right now?'

Thirty-plus years ago, when I was a devout fundamentalist Christian and attending all kinds of 'training sessions' and 'seminars' and 'institutes,' one of the concepts that they tried to drive home with us all the time was 'thought control.' I bristled at the notion; it sounded too much like 'The Manchurian Candidate,' or maybe 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers.'

But the Buddha also advocated a certain kind of 'thought control.' I don't have the quotes here in front of me, but if you've had any exposure to meditation instruction at all, you've probably heard the phrase 'monkey mind'... the part of your mind that wants to run off and climb trees and grab at bananas when you're trying to sit quietly. The reason they teach beginning meditators to count their breaths is so the 'monkey mind' will have something to keep it occupied while the students are trying to break through that first level of meditation.

Teaching oneself to remain mindful is also a form of thought control. It's a patterning of thinking habits. There's still a part of me that's a little offput by that notion, but after fifty-odd years of thrashing about and, as they say, repeating the same actions while expecting different results, I'm willing to try a little thought control. (But no, I'm not going back to Navigators sessions, thank you very much.)

Now, onto the word 'prejudices.' Because of prejudices, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote, we cloak reality with a veil of false views and opinions. In our cultural context, we tend to use 'prejudice' as a shorthand for 'racial prejudice' or 'ethnic prejudice,' but of course there are other kinds.

'Why is that person staring at me?' Well, is that person really staring at you, or did you just make eye contact for a second and something about his or her clothes, body language or even race struck you as a little odd or a little threatening? Think that one all the way through: maybe you based the incorrect assumption he was staring at you on the incorrect assumption he was weird or dangerous based on an incorrect assumption about why he was dressed the way he was.

If you see things as they actually are, what you'd see in this case might be that a guy in a biker jacket made eye contact with you for a second. All the rest is your imagination and assumptions.

And then, of course, there's the 'illusion of reality' versus the Buddhist view of reality which sees all things as part of a single whole, rather than as separate entities.

"This is you and this is me and this is the Eiffel Tower... it's Paris!"

Bernard Jaffe, Existential Detective,
in I Heart Huckabee's

The ability to see reality in a non-dualisitic way is the main goal of meditation practice. What I'm saying, though, is that through mindfulness, we can rid ourselves of a lot of misunderstandings, misapprehensions and inaccurate assumptions that inhibit our ability to live.

(this posted was edited Sunday morning)

The New Deal

Here's the new deal: I'm going to make the effort to post less. It will require effort, because I'm drawn to doing this.

But I need to learn more and expound less. This is all ego-driven, and I'm doing it because at some level I just enjoy hearing the sound of my own voice.

Every culture has a variation of the saying, 'Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.'

I have mentioned the poet Cold Mountain more than once. What I write isn't poetry, but in the past year I've exceeded his entire lifetime output, and haven't come close to matching his insight or wisdom.

Let's see if I can get this blog down to posting four days a week, for starters: let's say Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Today is Wednesday, so I won't be adding anything until Friday.

At least that's the plan.

See you Friday.

Yin and yang, etc. and etc.

Shakyamuni, as I have mentioned before, was pretty big on celibacy... maybe moreso than St. Paul.

Although the Buddha himself had been married and had a son, he described romantic love as a destructive emotion, akin to hate, jealousy and the like. My own life experience tends to confirm this, although I realize your mileage may vary.

We are also told that the Tao, the Way, is made up, in a sense, of the tension created by opposing, or at least contrasting, forces: yin and yang, good and evil, light and darkness, masculine and feminine.

Some of the Taoist masters also believed in celibacy (as illustrated in the Chinese folk novel Seven Taoist Masters), but it seems to me that something is lost when a person chooses to live a life completely apart from the opposite sex.

I don't think it's a matter of sexual relationships, necessarily, but rather a matter of having some degree of, for a man at least, 'female energy' in your life... some degree of input from the contrasting, or opposing or complementing force.

---

I don't know what I'm talking about.

I'm just blathering, driven by boredom and the need to say something to simply verify to the rest of the world that I exist. Sometimes when I sit here alone I feel as if I don't exist, or might as well not exist (which may be true).

---

A person with my name and who is about my age died here last week. I didn't know him, or even know of him, but it turns out we had some mutual friends.

It's an odd feeling.

9 p.m. or thereabouts

Fell asleep and had a dream about being chased by a wild bull. That's a first.

I fell asleep at about this time last night and dreamt about trying to escape a tornado, which is a regular dream event for me.

Does any one dream about green meadows, gentle breezes and sunny days? Does any one dream about love or peace or rest or happiness?

Not a joke

At least not an intentional joke. It's from WorldNet Daily...

A devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals

Wow. Hope it's not cheese sandwiches.


















(And I should credit The Huffington Post, from whence I obtained that link.)

Tuesday evening

I'm eating cheese sandwiches.

Monday evening

and I'm sitting here swathed in the Bathrobe of Perfect Wisdom with a bag of chips and Dean's French Onion dip. I should be eating something healthy, and eventually I will.

Christmas music on the PA at Homeland tonight... Harry Connick, Jr., I think. It wasn't very appealing. I'll skip the 'Silent Night' story since I've already told it a dozen times, but I just don't get any warm fuzzy feeling from Christmas music. It depresses the hell out of me.

I read somewhere that Jesus was actually born in August. They moved his birthday celebration to December because that's when the pagans were already crowding into the shopping malls. Back in those days, an iPod was the size of a refrigerator and you had to have oxen pull it along while you listened to it.

---

I would like to know why, by federal law, I'm required to have a low-flush toilet that moves less water than an aquarium pump while Iron Starr Bar-B-Q is allowed to have toilets that could suck down a bowling ball.

"Damn! That's the third time since Friday I've had a customer walk on a tab! How come I never see them leave?"

Just woke up...

...from another TV news nightmare. I've already forgotten the specifics, but it was TV news.

Obviously, I went to YouTube instead of Barnes & Noble

These are all straight cut edits... not matched to a separate audio track.

Maybe John X can translate

I am led to understand that although the music is Black Sabbath's 'Paranoid,' the lyrics, sung in German by Cindy und Bert, are about the Hound of the Baskervilles.





And what's up with Bert, here, anyway? 'Cause he's lookin' like he'd just as soon be someplace else.

On the moor near Devonshire,
A bigass dog ate Sherlock Holmes.

Doo doo doot doot doo doot doo,
Da doo doot doo doot doo doot doo.

Now I have the urge to go to Barnes & Noble

Just to escape the house.

I've already got my pajamas on, so I won't. Don't feel like getting dressed again.

---

The dead zone. I need to spend time alone, but I want to be with someone else. I want some distraction.

I'm having some trouble discerning the point of existence –– I don't mean why I exist... I mean why anything exists. It's all rather pointless, isn't it? Or is that just sour grapes on my part because I'm so far out near the orbit of Pluto that I might as well not be in the solar system at all?

The Dead Zone

Sunday evening is sort of like the dead zone for me: one would hope I had learned to be comfortable with myself, yet at this point in the week I feel the need to get out of the house and go do something. I know (or at least I believe) I am running from some unpleasantness or discomfort that prevents me from enjoying time alone, but I can't seem to shake that. (If I can't be alone for even 12 consecutive hours, how am I ever going to do the Cold Mountain thing?)

So, after being at the Red Cup for three hours or so this morning, I found myself back there again this evening for awhile. It's much quieter there on Sunday evening, with a different crowd of people around.

Anyway, back at home now, thinking about finishing up the Dhammapada.

On love and attachment

It was difficult for me to accept at first that there's no place in most Buddhist teaching for what we think of as romantic love. Given my own record of 90-day relationships, giving it up shouldn't have made much difference.

Even as cynical as I am about the promises our culture and media hold out in front of us, I had kept hanging on to hope.

But Buddhism is, in some ways, about giving up hope. We give up hope for getting the shiny, pretty, glittery things in exchange for the seeking of things which are less shiny and glittery but more reliable, less maddening and disruptive and, we hope, more satisfying.

Here's a pretty decent web page on Buddhist teaching on different kinds of attachment, including romantic love. (Check the section called 'Notes on "Ordinary" Love.')

When the student is ready, the bathrobe will appear

I had this idea that I wanted to buy a meditation cloak to wear when I sit.

Two reasons for this: one, it helps it create a sense of being protected or isolated; and two, I get chilly when I sit absolutely still for more than a few minutes.

I found a few on the web:

• Yogaware Cloak


• The Monastery Store Cloak


• DharmaCrafts Meditation Cloak

But these are, I dunno, kinda... pricey, maybe? The Buddha got his iconic saffron robe from a corpse –– literally a steal. And these meditation cloaks are structurally just big hooded bathrobes, are they not?

So, I'm in SteinMart tonight, and what do I find but... big hooded bathrobes. Not as big as the meditation cloaks, maybe, but big enough. If I wasn't six feet tall and 235 lbs., they'd be even roomier. So I bought two of them: $40 apiece.

They look almost medieval. I feel very cloistered in them.

Zakir Hussein

Zakir Hussein

Catalog




iTunes: Rama Sreerama, U Srinivas, electric mandolin, with Zakir Hussein, tabla

Narcissism redux redux

Erika West recently commented:

"There's nothing wrong with being narcissistic. It's an adjective applied to anyone who knows what to effectively rely on. It's a transcendence, actually, and being able to admit and embrace it is a step toward survival without regrets."

In Greek mythology, Narcissus was so infatuated with his own looks that he just stayed in the makeup room adoring himself, missing the preshow tease and not arriving on the set until 20 seconds into the news open.

Okay, that's not really what the Greeks believed. I added the TV news angle because during my 25 years in that business I got see what I called narcissism up close and personal. (In the myth, Narcissus sat by a pond or pool adoring his own looks until he starved to death. With my face and my appetite, this is not something I personally worry about overmuch.)

I didn't know this until I started Googling the subject a little while ago, but narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder are not considered the same thing – at least on Wikipedia.

Narcissism
Narcissistic Personality Disorder

"At least five of the following are necessary for a diagnosis [of NPD]:

1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance
2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited
success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can
only be understood by other special people
4. requires excessive admiration
5. strong sense of entitlement
6. takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
7. lacks empathy
8. is often envious or believes others are envious of him or her
9. arrogant affect."

(Doesn't sound like anyone I ever knew. Nope. Not at all. Just my two cents.)

When Erika West commented about narcissism, I think she was using the term more accurately than I did, because I always thought narcissism was more like narcissistic personality disorder, and when I wrote 'narcissism,' I was thinking about something more like NPD.

But do I have NPD? More like the opposite, actually.

As I mentioned previously, my own background and upbringing emphasized self-sufficiency and self-reliance.

But this wasn't a rugged individualist's sense of self and independence. It was the result of having two parents who weren't very parentally-inclined, thereby prompting me to find ways of doing things that didn't require their input or aid, and which preferably escaped their notice altogether. It was more of a Radar O'Reilly sense of self-reliance than a John Wayne sense of it.

I didn't learn to take care of myself well, but I did learn to take care of myself.

I was (and am) self-centered, but not arrogantly or megalomaniacally so. I don't like asking others for help and I don't expect others to help me. Although, thank god, other people have been willing to come to my aid when I was physically unable to take care of myself.

I think this is something I'll encounter more often as I get older –– the need to rely on other people. So I have to work on being more community-minded, and less of a loner.

For my own part, I find I am more willing to offer help than in the past - something which I attribute in large part to my conversion to Kindasorta Buddhism.

---

That's all I have for now. Which was more interesting... this, or the talking dinosaur?

Breaking news

Dinosaur to run for president...



...it's just six minutes of your life.

Mmm-mmm easy

Some of you already know this, but my diet has changed some since leaving the hospital. I've had no fast food of any kind (as opposed to my old habit of KFC twice or three times a week, punctuated by Taco Bueno on non-chicken nights), and practically no fried food. The amount of meat and poultry I consume has diminished, and I intend to eliminate it from my diet. Pigs and cows should not die for my sins.

(When Master Gotama outlined the principle of 'right livelihood,' one of the few vocations he identified as 'wrong livelihood' was that of butcher.)

I've had no coffee since leaving the hospital, and no soft drinks, either. I drink immense amounts of plain water –– probably a gallon a day.

(Oddly enough, I'm gaining weight with all this.)

My post-hospital recovery reintroduced me to a forgotten pleasure of my childhood: Campbell's canned soups. I know there are more 'premium' soups on the market these days, but there's something about popping the top on a can of Campbell's, pouring the contents in a big mug followed by a can of water, then nuking it for 2:30 and having a bowl of soup that can't be beat. I don't even need a can opener!

When I was a kid, we had a lot of Campbell's Soup, especially the Cream of Mushroom, which I recall I liked more than any other. Today the idea of soup made from fungus strikes me as repellent. I can eat mushrooms, but I'm not crazy about them.

But never mind the mushroom; there's vegetable, minestrone, and a dozen or so other kinds.

Narcissism redux

I've been mulling over Erika West's comment from the other day. As I often do, I posted a quick response that could perhaps have been better thought out.

In any event, the mulling process continues at this hour, and maybe tomorrow I'll post something else.

I thought about it all day...

and finally I was able to come back home to the futon.

You know, I have a bed. A very nice bed, in fact. But it's not the same. I need the futon.

I know this is a phase I'm going through. I've had periods of futon-centricity before.

I don't have anything to think about, and no place I need to be, and not a lot I need to do. Might as well be one with the futon.

Fu-TON! Fu-TON! Fu-TON! Fu-TON!

Stopped at Lido on the way home for work for a quick bite, then came home, slid under the blankets with the Dhammapada, and stayed there from 7 p.m. until now.

Maybe it's the early darkness. But I am happy as a clam on the futon.

12:50 am

It's 20 degrees outside, I have the thermostat set on about 68, and I woke up sweating. This has been going on for a couple of months now: I wake up with my head and neck covered with perspiration and my legs and feet wrapped in two blankets and either a little cold or just right.

I will cool off as I sit here blogging, and when I go back to bed, I'll have no more problem with it tonight. I don't know what's going on.

I'm thinking too much again. I'm going back to the futon and assuming a not-thinking horizontal position.

Meet me on the holodeck

I'm still struggling with some of the concepts I encountered in The Diamond Sutra.

'A bodhisattva seeks the liberation of all beings from delusion,' the Buddha told Subhuti, 'but anyone who has a concept of 'beings' cannot be a bodhisattva.'

So here we all are, not really beings but more like illusions (or delusions) who neither exist nor non-exist. We're like holograms: sort of there, but not there.

Me? Hologram.

Lulu the Cat-Hater? Hologram.

Beasley and Smudge? Holograms.

John X and Nina? Holograms.

But if there's no such thing as 'I', who is having this delusion that I exist? Is the delusion just free-floating around like a cloud of swamp gas? I don't understand it.

---

In fact, I've come to the conclusion that I can have no confidence at all in anything I believe or learn. I could be wrong about everything, and draw a new set of beliefs and conclusions that are just as wrong as the ones I just abandoned.

But there is no 'I' to have the beliefs or conclusions, so what difference does it make?

---

Went to the RC this morning as usual, and suddenly became very sleepy around 10 a.m.

I went home and crawled under the blankets on the futon, still wearing my overalls, sweater, scarf and cap. I slept for a couple of hours, then arose and puttered around the house. I went back to RC for some tomato soup in the early afternoon.

But the futon is the center of my universe now. I want to stay there all the time, surrounded by pillows and wrapped in blankets. I could take my laptop there and never leave. That's sort of like my 'safe place.' It's warm, it's comfortable, and no one can get to me there.

I'm going there to hide, frankly.

More random notes

I don't even have a lot of random notes this evening.

Gallery Walk was kind of a bust Friday because of the weather. Most of the galleries didn't open and I don't blame the owners.

---

I dropped my car keys in the snow Thursday and didn't find them until it melted off the driveway today. I'm glad I didn't back the minivan over them. Fortunately, I had spares for most of my keys.

---

Nina wrote last night about wishing she could get back the seven months she spent dating Hercules, from whom she has since been unchained. It occurs to me that most of the women I've dated would say the same thing about the time they spent with me. My wife got the worst deal, investing ten years of her life in a relationship that I'll be the first to admit didn't give much back to her. I've said before she deserved better, and she did.

An anonymous poster claimed a few months back that I was narcissistic. That's not true, but it is true that I'm extraordinarily self-involved. I used to be a very good listener, but I've lost some of that ability over the years. I'm too focused on myself to be empathetic.

I've had a couple of ex-SO's suggest I need to get rid of my cats. The cats are still here.

I doggedly pursued (no pun intended) Lulu the Cat-Hater for months before she went out with me. On our first date I mentioned Beasley and Smudge and she blurted out, "I don't like cats." I never saw her again after that.

(Adele, on the other hand, adored Beasley. In fact, it was Beasley who sort of introduced us. Adele couldn't decide what she thought about me until after I had finalized plans to leave Texas -- so by that time it was too late. Or maybe she planned it that way.)

When my dog, the immortal Buddy Lee, was in rapidly deteriorating health, the woman whom I was seeing at the time said, "Honestly, I think sometimes you care more about that dog than you do about me."

To which I thought in response, 'Hmmmm... actually, I think she's right. Now what do I say?

'Oh, shit... I still haven't said anything and now she's looking at me.

'Oh, shit... has she figured out what I'm thinking?

'Okay, it's been, like ten seconds now and I still haven't said anything. I better come up with a response right now, or I'm hosed.

'Oh, screw it. It's too late.'

And indeed it was.

I am a pretty damn boring date and an even worse boyfriend, and I'll freely admit it. I chose the life I have now and I can't imagine any way I would significantly change it. Less rogue cat shit would be nice, but that's about all I can think of.

But I also realize, although it took me years to reach this point, that most people don't want the kind of life I have. We all have our goals, and we shouldn't demand that other people buy into our ambitions, and I don't ask others to buy into mine anymore.