Tuesday (I think) morning

I have nothing to report.

Overthinking

Sometimes I overthink things. As a result, I am tied up in a tangle of speculation, alternate scenarios, and probable and possible outcomes. I become so weighed down by the analysis that I don't do anything at all.

Sometimes this is beneficial. Mental paralysis has prevented me from taking action in situations where no action was necessary, and the best course was to let things be. It would have been easier to have seen from the start no action was required, rather than burying myself in analysis, but the outcome was the same.

Other times, though, I think I've missed opportunities because I pondered while others acted.

In the end, though, the moon has still been exceptionally bright the past couple of nights.

Mundane

Many of my friends believe that because I describe myself as a Buddhist/Taoist, I must believe in almost anything: Mayan calendar, UFO abductions, astrology, telepathy and telekinesis, tarot, homeopathic medicine, Jesus as a space alien - you name it.

In fact, though, I'm fairly skeptical about almost everything. I'm constantly amazed at what people believe, from the John Birch politics and fundamentalism my ex-wife and her family embraced to the Murrah bombing conspiracy theories that still carry some currency in my part of the country to the suck-toxins-out-your-toes machines in which a couple of my friends soak their feet, paying good money to do so.

People just seem to not want to believe that things are as they are. They want to believe, or need to believe, that there is some second reality underlying the one we see.

Personally, I don't think it's there. I think the world is as it appears. If it seems mundane, that doesn't mean there's some hidden reality. It just means it's mundane.

Nap update

I am now iPhoning in from beneath the fuzzy red blanket.

Talk to you later.

Bird feeder update

I finally had to put some fresh seed in the new bird feeders I first filled one week ago. Even then, I had to refill only two of them - the other two look like they'll be good for another two or three days.

This is a big improvement over the feeders I had to refill every day, especially when it's twenty-something degrees outside.

Unattached

I was thinking about the two women whose pictures I found the other day. I recall that I would probably never have asked either of them out left entirely to my own decision-making process. They were both 'set up' by mutual friends who thought they were the kind of women I 'belonged' with. I stayed with both for many months, even though there was frankly no physical attraction on my side. One finally backed me so far into a corner that I literally climbed out a window to get away from her. I've always been a magnet for controlling personalities whose attraction to me is based on their perception I need them in my life to straighten me out.

I've been unattached romantically for about four years now (at least I think it's been four years) and most of the time, I'm OK with that.

I've sort of let myself go during that time, and I've reached a point where it's not practical for me to be in search of 'love.' It would take me literally years to get myself back into some sort of appropriate condition - I would be sixty by the time I was ready - and even then, my idea of a good time would still be sitting around at the Red Cup and elsewhere.

I've noticed that the times I most feel the absence of 'love' in my life are when I'm depressed. But I don't think it's loneliness that triggers depression; rather, it's depression that triggers loneliness. It's like having some sort of flu bug that gives you a craving to drink Liquid Plumber as medicine.

Not depressed

I know when I sort of disappear it often means I'm depressed, but not so this time. I've been socializing all day long, and by the time 5 pm rolls around, I'm too worn out to eat out anywhere. I will probably return to my normal schedule next week.

More newsworthy events

When I came home today, there were two kittens on my front porch, following Chilly Mama around. Chill is obviously their mom.

This is the point where I really have to focus on not projecting all my own family issues on the cats.

Let me put it another way...

The most newsworthy event of my day yesterday was finding a kitten sleeping on my front porch.

That is the way I like my life to be.

mcarp-in-the-box

Ms. HRP suggested today that I seem to have deliberately put myself 'in a box' as far as how I live my daily life.

I absolutely agreed.

I've said before that I know some other people perceive me as boring. I am basically OK with that, if the alternative is to turn my life upside-down again. I had all the excitement I needed working in television (about which I had another strange dream night before last).

Blogblah! can probably relate some to what I'm talking about. A reporter's life is filled with sudden and disruptive events. Even if you're just working in humdrum local news, you may find yourself as I once did stuck at a gas station at 4 am in a small town 150 miles away, trying to put together enough material to file a story for a 6 am newscast.

Or you may get tapped twenty minutes before your shift ends to jump in a car and drive at break-neck speed halfway across a neighboring state to follow up what turns out to be an incorrect report by one of your competitors.

A reporter's life is also filled with sudden and disruptive craziness, personal drama and corporate recklessness. You may have a boss call you up at home at 3 am, rip-roaring drunk, and screaming at you incoherently for reasons you can't begin to comprehend, and which your boss won't even remember after he/she sobers up.

Or you may find yourself flying with a copter pilot who is desperately trying to find a safe place to land out in the middle of nowhere after an eager-beaver assignment editor lied to him about weather conditions and tricked him into flying straight into a severe thunderstorm in the hope of 'getting great video.'

Or, if you're like one of my coworkers, you may find yourself permanently disabled after being directly instructed by a supervisor to ignore basic safety precautions at a hazardous live remote.

Or you may work for a boss who, beset by poor ratings and increasing pressure from senior management, starts bringing a shotgun to work every day and leaving it propped up against his desk.

That was pretty much my daily life for 25 years, and even though I've been away from it for a decade, a decade is not enough. I revel in knowing I don't have to venture more than two miles from my home. I'm greatly relieved to be able to just walk away from crazy people, instead of having to work for them.

And I plan on staying in my box for at least a few more years.

A new kitten

There was a kitten about a month old sleeping on my front porch chair when I came home this evening. I don't know where it came from - I suspect Chilly Mama is its mother.

There used to always be a zillion cats hanging around this end of the block, but their numbers have diminished over the past year, and it's rare to see kittens about.

Clarification

I didn't mean to imply my ex-girlfriend had actually persuaded me to register as a Republican. What I was trying to say was that she had a wonderful plan for my life, which included registering as a Republican, as well as moving back to Edmond and marrying her.

Flashback

Also while rummaging around through my old socks, we came across two pictures of former girlfriends, both from about ten years ago.

I almost don't remember what it was like to have a girlfriend. It seems almost inconceivable to me now that I ever had any.

I remember one of the two wanted to marry me - after she had upgraded my wardrobe, gotten me registered as a Republican and moved me back to Edmond. Seeing her picture after all these years made me shudder.

The other would probably have married me as well. Maybe I shouldn't have run from that.

Neither was particularly ethereal or Buddhist/hippie/gypsy, though, and they weren't the least bit gauzy.

They were both the kind of women my friends thought I should be with, not the kind I wanted to be with.

Senator Al Franken and Tom Davis

Is he singing or lip-synching Mick?

My photo

This is the pic I use on my Myspace profile.

Ms. HRP describes it as 'heinous.'

I say it looks like me, and what else matters?

Socks

Ms. HRP and I opened up a big plastic container stuck in my back bedroom today. It was mostly filled with socks. I had boxed these up when I moved to Texas in 1998 and they had been stored away ever since.

I would guess there were at least a hundred pair and maybe more. There were dress socks, casual socks, summer and winter socks. There were wool socks and cotton socks. There were cheap socks from Target, and Polo and Byford socks from Harold's. There were solids and stripes, argyles and patterns. There was a pair of glen plaid socks. There was a pair of socks with pheasants on them. These were all socks I bought back in my TV days. Some of them were twenty years old, but they all looked like new.

All my old silk 'pocket squares' were in there, too, and I gave them to Ms. HRP. I'm going to be interested in seeing what she does with them. She'll turn them into a bedouin tent or a parachute or something.

Now I have to find a place to put all these socks.

Man, I've got a lot of shit.

Software

I still lack decent iPhone software for blogging. I'm making do with what's available, but neither of the two options available is satisfactory.

One of them tends to abruptly wipe the whole post from the screen in mid-word. The other is more stable, but lacks the ability to do italics or bold face.

This looks about right.

The cat is obviously wondering where the space between things came from, and the human just doesn't want to confront the issue.

Update

This is crazy. Reality is crazy.

This makes my head hurt

Where did everything come from?

I know the scientific and religious beliefs, at least from a layman's perspective.

But where did everything come from? Where did atoms come from? Where did subatomic particles come from? Where did energy come from?

Where did space come from? Why is it there? Why is there anything? What if none of it was there? What if there really was just nothing? Then what?

I'm old

It occurred to me today I can't call myself 'middle-aged' anymore.

I'm just old.

Saturday evening

I turned off the Christmas lights this evening. I was the last person on the block to have them on. I'll try to muster the energy tomorrow to take them down.

The cats are all manic tonight. I came home from the RC and found all kinds of stuff knocked down and scattered around. They're all galloping back and forth through the house, including Rollo, who usually doesn't gallop.

Bird feeder upgrade

I think I mentioned how frequently I was having to fill the bird feeders. Those tube feeders - all four of them - had to be filled every day. And if I filled them in the morning, they would be empty by late afternoon.

This week, I found a feeder at Petsmart that I hope will give me a break on the feeder refilling. It's called the Stokes Select Giant Combo Feeder, and it's huge. One of these holds almost as much seed as all four of the feeders I was using previously.

I hung four of them in the back yard; in theory, I shouldn't have to fill these but once every four or five days. Right now the birds are avoiding them, which isn't surprising, since they're unfamiliar. I expect the birds to start feeding from them in a day or two.

Have you ever noticed...

... how when a guy is infatuated by some other woman, women think it's cute and fun, but when a guy is infatuated by them, they think he's a stalker?

I'm a lot calmer now

A friend of mine leaned over to me at the coffee shop the other day and asked, "So, do you take... medication or anything?"

"Well, I take blood pressure medicine," I replied. "But if you mean antidepressants or anything like that" - and he nodded affirmatively - "no, I'm just like this naturally."

Several months ago, someone told me I had the personality of someone who smoked a pound of weed a week.

I take both of these anecdotes as signs of progress. Those of you who knew me ten or twelve years ago, when I threw things and punched holes in walls with my fist, will appreciate the difference.

I'm a lot calmer now.

The Chunky Buddhist

I saw some pictures taken Christmas Day that reinforced what I already knew: I'm huge.

My ideal weight is somewhere around 180-190 lbs. For years, my weight ranged from 220 to 240, although it sometimes was as low as 170. Since I've retired, my weight has gone up to more than 250.

This has sort of surprised me, because I'm about as physically active now as I was when I worked, but I don't eat as much junk food.

On the other hand, most of my social interaction occurs while eating. I eat a large restaurant breakfast almost every day. Some days I'll skip lunch, but I rarely miss dinner.

I don't snack much. I don't keep chips or cookies around the house.

My daily activities center around the coffee shop, eating and napping. I'm still enjoying the calm and solitude that comes from not working, and I really enjoy just being still and quiet. Not to mention asleep.

Nonetheless, I recognize the health detriment that accrues to having the illusion of Orson Welles' self instead of my own.

I don't know how to get motivated to do anything about it.

More crazy dreams

I came home after breakfast and decided to take a nap. I didn't sleep well overnight - I had the creepy flooded car dream I described earlier, and after I went back to sleep, I had a couple of more strange dreams I can't remember now.

So I went to the Cup, then to Jimmy's Egg, then came home and tried to take a nap, and had even more more hyper-realistic dreams. In the first one, I stepped out on the front porch to find it stripped bare. My glider, rocker, and rattan lawn chairs were all gone, along with some miscellaneous stuff that's out there. The glider and some of the other stuff had been dragged out into the street in front of the driveway I share with my next door neighbor. I started to walk next door to see if he knew how the stuff had gotten out there when I suddenly woke up.

Then I fell asleep again, and dreamt that I saw a bright green bird like a parakeet sitting in a tree outside my dining room window. I didn't have my glasses on, so the bird was just a blur. I crept forward to get a closer look without scaring it off. As I got closer, I saw Chilly Mama creeping up the tree toward the bird. The bird was looking straight at her, but not moving. 'That's somebody's pet bird,' I thought, 'who doesn't know to be afraid of the cat.'

I rapped on the window to frighten the bird away, but it didn't budge. Chilly Mama suddenly grabbed it. I scrambled for the door to go outside and try to rescue the bird. But I didn't have my glasses on and I couldn't see what I was doing. Then I woke up.

Then the doorbell rang and there was a knock at the door. I jumped up, knocking my glasses to the floor. But that wasn't a dream... that was actually the FedEx man.

It doesn't matter

It doesn't matter by whom I am infatuated.

Infatuation actually involves only one person: the one who is infatuated. The object of infatuation is just a bystander. It may be that the object of the infatuation encourages the infatuation for one reason or another, and it may be that two people are infatuated simultaneously with each other, but infatuation is always a process that occurs in just one person's brain.

In Buddhism they teach about the illusion of self. It's a complex and elaborate illusion - and processes such as infatuation, attachment and aversion help reinforce it.

Infatuation is all about me. In fact, you could say I'm actually infatuated with myself, because what I'm reacting to isn't really some other person, but the chemical process going on in my own brain.

It takes two to tango, but I can make an ass of myself all on my own.

I'll tell you something else, while I'm thinking about it

I'm at the stage in my life where my major contribution to society should be sharing the wisdom I've accumulated from a lifetime of experience.

But like most other Americans, I spent most of my life acquiring crap and credit card debt instead of wisdom, so I've got nothing to share.

Turn off your TV, and throw it away if you can bring yourself to do it. That's all I've got.

A dream

Holy shit.

I just dreamt that I drove the minivan into high water across a road. I couldn't tell exactly how high it was or whether it was too deep for me to back out, so I tried opening the door.

The water wasn't high enough to come in through the door, so I decided I would be OK.

Then I thought to myself, "This can't be right. How did I get here? Am I dreaming or something?"

At that point the water came over the bottom of the door. It was cold and wet, swirling around my ankles, and I thought, "Shit - this is no dream. I don't know how I got here, but I've got to get out while I still can."

I thought for a second about all the stuff in the van that was going to be lost or ruined, and realized I would just have to leave it - I didn't have time to grab any of it.

Then the van started to slowly roll over to the right. I realized I was likely to be trapped in it, and I started scrambling to pull myself up through the driver's side door.

I think I yelled, "Oh, shit" or "Oh, no" out loud and woke myself up.

I was never so glad to find myself in bed. Most of my dreams seem like dreams, but that seemed absolutely real.

Groan - infatuation again

I will mention - without going into a lot of potentially embarrassing detail - that I find myself infatuated again.

Years ago, infatuations led me to think I had found The One. Later, with time and experience, I came to see the objects of my infatuations as women I might enjoy time with on some temporary and limited basis.

Now, as someone transitioning from middle age to senior citizen status, I think of infatuation as being like a cold - if I just hunker down and get plenty of rest, it will clear up on its own. In that respect, I view being infatuated as a lot like being depressed. The two states have a lot in common, and in fact I wonder if they are not linked in my case.

The Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman wrote in one of his books that if we're not enlightened, we should at least act like we are. I'm not sure what is involved in 'acting enlightened,' but I believe these sort of silly attractions are one of the things that get in the way of it for me.

I've forgotten most of the Bible, but I remember the apostle Paul writing something about putting away the things of a child when he became a man. That's sort of how I see infatuation - it's the province of a young man, and something which I should have moved beyond by now.

And as I've posted before, the word infatuation literally means "being made foolish."

I can see past infatuation now - I just can't get there.

The last post of 2008

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

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

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

Home Improvement Update

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

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

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

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

New Year's Eve

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

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

Painting

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

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

Life vs Art

Time magazine asks: Are Romantic Movies Bad For You?

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

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

A dream I once had

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

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

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

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

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

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

Morning storms

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

Something else

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

It is the first time you using the editor

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

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

We'll see how this works out.

Friday

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

Blackout

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

72!

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

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone.

More cats (and dogs, too!)

This could be me.

Progress

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

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

An appreciation of going to bed

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

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

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

Sometimes I feel...

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

Dreaming about Smudge

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

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

And then I woke up.

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

Saturday afternoon

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

How can you help who you're attracted to?

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

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

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

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

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

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

But how could she help who she was attracted to?

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

But how could I help who I was attracted to?

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

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

How can you help who you're attracted to?

Birdz 'n' tha Hood

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

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

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

What day is it?

I guess it will tell me when I post.

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

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

It's Monday

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

It was worse in years past.

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

Insomnia update

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

Insomnia

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is not a joke

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

I was hoping it was real.

Soul, spirit and other popular misconceptions

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

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

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

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

One year ago...

...the electricity was out.

Other than that, nothing's changed.

Full moon

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

What a perfect opportunity to practice non-attachment.

A sack of bones

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

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

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

Or perhaps we would all be one big cloud.

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

I'm buying too much crap.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I love this blanket

...along with my iPhone, of course.

Day's end

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

And that was my day.

My blanket

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I guess I could get Pizza Hut to deliver.

That's enough...

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

A minor victory

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

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

Use the force, Lute

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

Here he is performing on baroque guitar in 2006.



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

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

Alan Watts recordings

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

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

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

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

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

Fact is...

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

By the way, I looked it up...

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

Sunday afternoon

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

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

Saturday evening

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

If I could change the world

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

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

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

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

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

It's Friday

I have nothing to report.

Rewind

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

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

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

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

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

Redecorating note

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

Home rehab

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have yourself a merry LED Christmas...

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

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

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

Black Friday

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

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

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

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

The big rock

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

Photo by Nurse K.

Another random note...

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

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

On second thought...

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

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

A couple of random notes

Big Rock

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

Big Helmet

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

Woodpeckers

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

Saturday

I have nothing to report.

But I am not alone:

Antisocial behavior

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday

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

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

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

Heat

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

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

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

Thursday

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

The new cat

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

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

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

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



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

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



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

Roland has a rounder face and longer legs.

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

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

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

Dan-O

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

Friday night

I have nothing to report.

Election Day, part 2

Well... !

Election Day

Well, today is election day.

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

You'd think...

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

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

Happiness

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

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

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

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

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

Sycamores

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



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

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