Random Notes: Meditation, Manic Episodes and Me

I did meditation last night for the first time in a month.

I went through a period where I was depressed and physically uncomfortable and just didn't want to do it. That was followed by a brief period of unusually high spirits, and I still didn't want to do it. Eventually my brain chemistry settled back into its normal state, and I began feeling a new desire for meditation about four days ago.

I want to say something about the unusually high spirits. My normal state is one that most of my friends consider mildly or perhaps seriously depressed. They think my life is boring, and can't imagine anyone would want to live this way, but it's the lifestyle with which I am most comfortable. I don't have as much excitement in my life as they have in theirs, but neither do I have all the drama and intrigue.

The period of high spirits began at roughly the time I was flirting with the thirtysomething woman about whom I wrote previously. I knew as I was doing it that it was very out of character for me, and I suspected at the time I was having what, for me, constitutes a 'manic episode'. I am pleased to say the thing played itself out without me getting my feelings hurt or my heart broken, and without leaving other people with the impression that I'm some sort of creepy stalker. Previous infatuations have usually ended with much bumpier landings.

In other news, Zen is starting to bore me. I think I've gotten from it all I'm going to get from it. I understand that I don't see things exactly as they are, and that my view will always be clouded by perceptions, desires, biases and prejudices. I will always work to overcome them, but my understanding will never be perfectly clear.

But I'm not going to move to another city so I can join a zen center. The whole thing about the robes and the chanting and the Japanese middle name doesn't have much appeal for me. I suspect a lot of people get into that stuff because the process gives them a sense of accomplishment, of making progress in some way.

I don't need to feel like I'm making progress. I realize I have a mind best suited to napping on the front porch, watching clouds, listening to birds sing and saying hello to stray dogs and cats, and I'm going to stick to what I do best.

Jury Duty

It's not tomorrow, it's a week from tomorrow.

Don't worry — I've already updated Facebook.

Facebook III

Sometimes I update my status a half dozen times in a single day. If I'm not otherwise occupied, I check it for notifications every ten minutes or so. How am I going to be a Zen hermit if I can't even stay away from Facebook for half a day?

Facebook II

I was criticized tonight for posting a link to this Roger Ebert blog item about the nation's apathy toward its new class of robber barons.

I should focus, I was told, on "more positive thoughts and feelings."

All I can say is that nobody is stopping anyone from posting YouTube videos about new age medicine and/or baby ducks. Knock yourselves out.

Facebook

I post a lot on Facebook... more than I post here. And I have a larger audience. In spite of that, or perhaps because of it, I am more guarded about what I say there.

I post a lot of Zen and Taoist quotes. I post a lot of links to political items, although lately, there are fewer of those as my interest in political blogs has waned. I 'check in' with reports of my whereabouts and activities (feeling reasonably confident that none of my friends will burglarize my house if they see I'm away).

But I don't think I've ever used the words 'willowy' or 'ethereal' on Facebook. I've never written the words 'infatuation' or 'made foolish'.

I've come to think that there are few things on the Internet drearier than guys whining about their love lives, although I do it myself. Facebook is just not the place for that.

Years ago, during the morning chatter around the table at the coffee shop, a friend revealed he had been diagnosed with cancer. The whole conversation stopped. Everyone looked at him, then at each other. The discomfort, including mine, was palpable. His honesty, and, frankly, his vulnerability at that moment had violated the understood code of superficial jocularity that guided coffee shop conversation.

Facebook is a lot like that. Keep it happy, keep it superficial. If your grandma is sick, it's OK to mention that, but your own pain, doubt, suffering, dukkha, whatever is too much of a downer.

Oh, look. It's a baby animal video from YouTube!

Not All the Time

Sometimes it sucks to be alone. But it doesn't suck to be alone all the time, which is part of the reason I don't try harder to change that.

Jury Duty

I have jury duty next week. This is already starting to be flashback-y for me, and I'm kind of freaking out about it. The last time I was in a courtroom was as a reporter covering the McVeigh trial in Denver. It makes me queasy even thinking about that. I do not, do not, do not want to find myself in a courtroom again. This is going to be like psychological torture.

God damn I hate being reminded of any of that.

Obama Announces Re-election Campaign. BFD.

Well, the President has announced he'll seek re-election. And, of course, I'll vote for him. What other choice is there? (And don't say "Ron Paul", dammit.)

At least Obama will ease us into medieval feudalism gently, instead of strapping us to a time-traveling rocket sled and firing us back to the Middle Ages at the speed of sound.

Love, Depression and Neediness

The times I feel loneliest seem to be generally the times I am also the most depressed. When my mood is good, I seem to be pretty comfortable with being alone. But when my mood is down, I feel like I want that archetypal willowy, ethereal hippie chick around to comfort me.

But that's 'neediness', and it runs counter to conventional wisdom in our culture. Relationships, like everything else, are supposed to be about winning, achieving, manic consuming, moving up, status, etc. — all the things for which you'd need an electron microscope to see how much of a shit I give.

Plus, relationships are also supposed to be about passion, drama, intrigue, excitement, anguish, recriminations, etc., barf, blrrrf, gorpf, snort, while all I want to do is sit with the archetypal willowy, ethereal hippie chick and watch birds.

So, my relationship prospects remain dim. I refuse to conform.

Drama Free

My life has been drama-free for years now. There have been a couple of little dustups during that time, but I don't count those. When it comes to long, byzantine dramas that are the result of other people's plotting, scheming and love of intrigue, I haven't had to suffer through one in about four years.

I've now reached the point I've started to take drama-free living for granted. But I should pause once in awhile to consider how lucky I've been to have this opportunity.

'You Just Buy The Refrigerators'

Everyone around you is telling you what you are and who you are by expecting certain behavior from you. Which, if you are a reasonable and socially-inclined person, you perform. Because that's what's expected of you.
— Alan Watts

When I was a kid, especially from age seven on, I was given the message a lot of children get when their parents are alcoholic: 'You are not as important as the alcohol. You are not as important as the bars and the parties. In fact, you're just in the way. Your role is to be as close as possible to invisible. Don't distract us or bother us.'

That's how I learned to be an enabler. It's how I learned that my role in life was to be the selfless giver, playing the role of supporter and friend while expecting nothing for myself. All my life I transmitted the 'enabler' message, and there were always people who recognized the message and exploited it. They included bosses, friends and women.

I finally started learning about this in therapy, when I was in my mid-forties. The short-term results were disastrous. My friends and my employer of 17 years, who had been telling me what I was and who I was by expecting certain behavior from me, abandoned me. Fortunately, I had the support of a men's group I had recently joined as well as a large circle of online friends on The Well. Even though my Well friends had never met me (or perhaps because of it), they were far more supportive than my 'real' friends.

I kept pushing on, and today I'm much less of an enabler than I once was. But I'm still far from completely liberated.

In the Rinzai school of Zen, they teach that enlightenment is sudden, but that it must be followed by years of rigorous training to cast off habitual behavior and thought processes. The same is true of post-therapy life. I still have to be mindful of my own thoughts and behavior, and must frequently ask myself, 'Are these the thoughts and behavior of my post-therapy 'enlightened' self, or is this my parents still talking to me?'

A few years ago I was with a female friend at Lowe's, walking through the hardware aisles. She suddenly turned to me, smiled and said, "Would you buy me a refrigerator?"

There was a time I might have done it. Maybe I would have done it right then, if she'd phrased the request as a command and attached some guilt strings to it. But I turned her down. More importantly, I saw at that moment that our 'friendship' was based upon her being a user of other people who had picked up on my weak but still flashing 'enabler' beacon.

About five years ago, the woman to whom I refer as Ms. Willowy and Ethereal had to choose between me and her current boyfriend, and she chose the current boyfriend. I was crushed — I loved her and still love her now — but I never spoke of it to her again. I wrote about it endlessly here, but I didn't say anything to her. I felt it was my job as 'the friend' to just shut up and be supportive.

I got differing advice from friends about how to deal with this. Some said I should have kept trying, while others said I should let it go. Among those who said 'let it go,' I frequently picked up a 'vibe' that seemed to say, 'Let it go because you're just the friend. You're not supposed to get what you want. You just buy the refrigerators.'

I think what I'm saying here is that some of my friends are real friends, and some — especially women — have just latched on to me because they've seen the still-flickering 'enabler beacon'. They actually find me weak and mildly contemptible, but they don't mind humoring me so I'll keep doing them favors. And I still have trouble telling which are the friends and which have just latched on.

When women flirt with me or seem to be attracted to me, I've learned, nine out of ten times it's the 'enabler' beacon that's drawn their attention. I can't trust them, and I don't.

Harmony With the Tao vs. Just Plain Crazy

I try to live in harmony with the Tao these days. But I can actually live in harmony only with my perception of the Tao, which is far from perfect. For the big picture, I can rely on old and ancient Chinese masters. But when it comes to the smaller, immediate picture, I don't have much to go on.

My New Age-y friends feel that they're achieving harmony with the Tao by advocating practices and procedures that I think are mostly utter bullshit. Which of us is right? Is it possible we both are? Could the Tao be carrying our lives in opposite directions?

Some of my friends tell me I don't rely enough on my emotions. I feel like my lack of emotion is in harmony with the Tao. My emotionalism, when I let it show, makes me seem weak and needy, and frankly disgusts and sometimes scares people. But maybe emotionalism is the right path for some other people.

Are the tea partiers in sync with the Tao? Hard for me to see how that could be, but maybe they are.

Well, the wisdom I've got is the wisdom I've got.

All right... Santa Fe

I am still not in the mood to write this, but I probably never will be. So, I might as well do it now and get it over with.

There was once another MCARP in this town. He was a few months younger than me. I never met him, and became aware of his existence only because he died suddenly, and some acquaintances thought his obituary was actually about me. All this happened about six years ago.

Fast forward to several months ago. I'm going to say late 2009, but it may have been more recent than that. I was killing an evening on Facebook, when I got an email via FB from a woman in Santa Fe asking if I ever lived there.

In the course of our back-and-forth emails, I learned that she was looking for an old boyfriend who had my name, and that the boyfriend was probably the MCARP who had since passed on. I checked with some mutual acquaintances, and reported to her the following night that the MCARP she was looking for was probably dead.

But Joan and I stayed in touch, communicating via email and Facebook. We talked on the phone a couple of times. She invited me out to Santa Fe, and I accepted.

So, off Blogblah! and I went to New Mexico. We had never traveled together before. He made an excellent road companion, and the long drive going and returning was certainly eased by his company.

I had not been to Santa Fe in fifty years. BB had been more recently. I got lost shortly after arriving in town, but Joan found us and led us to Maria's, a popular restaurant.

After dinner, Bb! and I checked into Garrett's Desert Inn in downtown Santa Fe. The rooms there are utilitarian, but clean and comfortable. The staff is great and the prices are extremely good. And it's within walking distance of the plaza and the art gallery row.

Bb! and I split up for much of the weekend, as you've read in his account. Joan and I visited art galleries on Saturday, went up to look at the scenery in the ski basin, and met back up with Bb! for dinner at The Ore House.

On Sunday, Joan and I went up to Taos. I will simply say I was disappointed. It seemed like the Cherokee Trading Post on the interstate outside of my hometown, just a hundred times larger. Lots of T shirts and Minnetonka Moccasins. I doubt I'll ever go back. Bb! and I had dinner at The Pink Adobe that evening.

We returned to Oklahoma City the next day.

I've left a lot of small details out, but you get the idea. I had a good time.

Right Speech vs The Truth

Right Speech: "That's great news, Ms. Willowy & Ethereal! I'm excited that you and your boyfriend have finally bought a home together. I hope this works out great for you, and that you two enjoy many long years together in your new place."

The Truth: You can probably guess.

Now, if I had Right Thought about this, Right Speech and The Truth would be one and the same. But I'm still a selfish SOB.

More 528 Hz Woo

I saw an ad online this week for a toothpaste, called "Liquid Dentist", billed as coming 'with 528 Hz Frequency'. As if it were an ingredient like fluoride, or mint flavoring.

New Age folks talk about frequencies as if they were tangible things. A couple of years ago, I had a conversation with a friend about this. As she put it, "I'm all about healing with frequencies."

"Frequencies of what?" I asked. "Light? Sound? Electricity?"

"Frequencies!" she replied, mildly irritated.

"You understand that a frequency is a unit of measure, right?" I replied. "Saying you heal with frequencies is like saying you heal with inches or pints."

"Well, if you just want to criticize everything..." she said, and let her response trail off.

So, to get back to 'Liquid Dentist', how does a toothpaste get a frequency? Is it vibrating at that frequency? Shouldn't it create a sound if it's doing that?

This stuff is not inexpensive, by the way. I saw it on various web sites selling in the $50 range for a 16 oz. bottle.

The Past Few Days

Almost all I have done since returning from Santa Fe is sleep and eat. It's been cold and gloomy here, more like late fall than early spring, and that has encouraged drowsiness.

I get up in the morning, go somewhere for breakfast, then come home and go back to bed. Later, I'll go to lunch, then return to bed. I'm not sleeping well at night, but then I never do.

I guess some people get genuine joy out of being alive. I'm not one of them, and never have been. I'm not miserable — I'm not even unhappy. I'm not anything. I see myself as a sort of disconnected observer of a quickly eroding society and culture. I guess 'alienated' would be the word. I feel as if I got dropped off here by mistake, but I'm stuck in any event.

Strange Dreams

They don't happen as frequently as they used to, but I am still occasionally afflicted by strange dreams and/or nightmares about a career I haven't pursued in 13 years. I wish I could get my subconscious to let go of it.

Santa Fe

Not yet. But you can read Blogblah!'s version of the trip here.

Alert! Alert!

In a previous post, I referred to the 527 hz 'sound of love'. Actually, the 'sound of love' is 528 hz.

527 hz is the sound of something else. Constipation, maybe – they didn't say.

We regret the error.

Depression

I've hit a little dip in my ongoing depression struggle. May have started after returning from Santa Fe. As always, I'll just ride it out.

Santa Fe

Eventually I will have the energy to write about this, but not now.

My New Dog

Boy, this is one energetic pup. He is just crazed. I thought Bailey was tightly wrapped, but Cooper is in a realm of his own.

Do dogs have chakras? What about birds? Lizards? Earthworms? Bacteria?

New Agers Make My Brain Hurt

I am surrounded on all sides these days by new agers.

You can't have a conversation with a new ager, any more than you can have a conversation with a 9/11 truther or an Obama birther. Lately, largely thanks to that halfwit book The Secret, new agers believe reality is whatever they perceive it to be. Their perception can't be wrong, they believe, because it is their perception that literally creates reality.

(If you're thinking that you're going to correct me by telling me that halfwit book The Secret doesn't actually say that, save your typing. Their perception is that it says that, and therefore, that's what it says.)

Are there any new agers who have not cured cancer with crystals, colored lights, homeopathy or the mystical 527 528 hz 'sound of love'? Why does cancer even exist anymore? Apparently it's easier to fix than a hangnail. A rhetorical question, of course. Cancer exists because of a conspiracy by Big Pharma and the Defense Department and/or the CIA to keep it going. This conspiracy exists because new agers believe it exists.

For the past two or three months, I have been beseiged by a friend who, after years of personal new age beliefs, has decided to become evangelical about it, and equally determined to convert me. I assume she has willed me to believe it, and since I still don't, she must think her will power has somehow been tainted — perhaps by misaligned chakras or unfocused kundalini energy. And if she thinks it has become tainted, well, that makes it so.

Some of my new age friends assume that because I lean toward Buddhism, I must also be a new age believer. Lord, no. I don't know how a person even functions when he or she believes all their thought processes are closed feedback loops altering the reality around them second by second.

Santa Fe

Blogblah! and I went to Santa Fe this past weekend. I'll write more about that later.

The End of A Recent Story

A few weeks back, I wrote about having lunch with a woman I found attractive in spite of what most people would say was a considerable difference in our ages. A few days after that, we went out to a lakeside park and spent the afternoon talking and watching aquatic birds on the water. A few days after that, I got the friend-o-gram from her via email. And that was the end of that.

More to come on other topics, though.

Addendum: I have friends who would tell me that going to the lake and watching birds does not constitute a 'real date', and I would agree. I understand that a 'real date', as defined by local culture, is dinner at one of the recently-opened urban steak joints, followed by an NBA game, and wrapping up with chocolatinis or mintinis or breadpuddingtinis or bananacarameltinis at one of our warehouse district bars.

This is why I don't date. I'd rather sit at the lake and watch birds.

Meditation Practice

...is completely shot. I don't know when I'll be back on track.

More to come.

Cooper the Co-dog

Here's a pic of the new co-dog, Cooper, with senior dog Bailey.

I have a lot of stuff to get caught up on, blog-wise, and I will try to do that in the next couple of days.

The Co-dog

It's taken about a year, but I have finally found a co-dog for my pup, Bailey. The new dog is an 18-month-old black lab named Cooper. Cooper was found wandering near Weatherford, severely malnourished. Even now, after six weeks of care and regular feeding, he is still just skin and bones — the skinniest black lab I have ever seen.

I've already discovered he loves the rawhide chews Bailey doesn't like, doesn't like the treat biscuits Bailey likes, and enjoys running and playing with Bailey. That last part is especially good news, because Bailey spends too much time just snoozing in the back yard. They're both on the back porch asleep right now, and I haven't heard a peep out of them since I put them there. I hope that means they're worn out from play.

Like a Passing Daydream

"What many of us take seriously as our life is like a passing daydream – a succession of thoughts not grounded in what's happening at that moment. And this daydream of how and what we imagine our life to be – it's usually so all-compelling, that we take it as the solace of our life, take it as the solace of our days, we see it as the way we can get through the day. We go home and lay down on the couch and think about what we believe will make us happy."

– Jordan Thorn

Jordan Thorn is a priest and practice leader at the San Francisco Zen Center

Everything Else Is A Complication

One of the joys of being an indolent slacker is that I really can live mostly in the moment. I arise every morning — well, sometimes in the afternoon — with no plan, no schedule, no agenda. No one sets deadlines for me anymore. No one calls me or emails me, wanting to know where such-and-such a project is. My goal each day is to do nothing; my ambition is to be bereft of ambitions.
 
And when I'm not living in the moment, it's usually because of some situation I've created myself. Everything I do obliges me to do something more as well. If I drive to the coffee shop, I'll have to buy gas. If I buy a new gadget, I have to find a place to put it. If another animal moves in with me, I have to get pet food more often.
 
As the Zen master Bankei said, "My miracle is that when I'm hungry I eat, and when I'm tired I sleep." Everything else is a complication.

Brain Freeze

Woke up, as usual, in the wee hours of the morning. I was so restless I decided to do some housecleaning. That occupied my mind for about five minutes. Then my brain froze up. Where does this go? Do I need to keep this? Where can I put this?

So I stopped. I turn this over to my higher power. You know who you are.

All my brain is good for anymore is looking at clouds and leaves and sweetgum balls. Studying sycamore bark. Talking to cats and dogs. Afternoon naps on the front porch.

Everything else is too complicated.

Now where the hell are my car keys?

Too Much Time on My Hands

Ladies and Gentlemen... STYX!

Foolishness

...that's all. Just foolishness.

Meditation Update

My daily meditation time has been on hold for a couple of weeks now. I put in my 25 minutes tonight, but that was the first in four or five days. And only the second time in about ten days. I wish I could say I was getting something from it, but other than some zone-out time, I'm not sure I did.

This Is Where I'm Supposed to Be

Rogue Cat Shitting

I visited some art galleries this evening during the March Paseo Gallery Walk, then went over to the Farmers Market to see the 2011 Momentum Art Show. Then I came home to the aroma of freshly-laid cat shit. Not in the box, of course; it's behind some furniture somewhere.

I have two cats who don't get along, and this rogue shitting seems to be part of some sort of passive-aggressive conflict between them.

Leg Pain

Today is Friday. I tried to get back into meditation Wednesday night. I sat for only twenty minutes, instead of my usual 25, and I was more uncomfortable than usual. When I awoke Thursday morning, my legs ached as if I'd walked ten miles. They still ache now. This isn't the kind of sharp, cramping pain one would associate with a potassium deficiency; it's just a dull ache.

I've had this intermittently my whole adult life, and my father had it before me. It usually manifests itself every 90 days or so. It interferes with my sleep and generally makes me uncomfortable.

Gee Whiz

I don't generally get very 'gee whiz' about technology anymore. But I woke up awhile ago, checked Facebook, and discovered that even as I was lying here in bed, Thich Nhat Hanh was about to deliver a lecture at Plum Village in France, and that it was being streamed live online.

I followed the link, and there was Thay, speaking in French with English translation. And I could watch it as it happened without even getting out of bed.

There's something about watching a glitchy, low-res feed that gives you a sense of 'being there' that you don't get from glossy, hgh-quality broadcast or cable coverage.

I've Written This Only About A Dozen Times...

...'infatuation' literally means 'made foolish.'

So, it's not like I don't already know it.

Meditation Update

Meditation has been non-existent for I-don't-know-how-many days. Just haven't wanted to think about it. I'm going to try to get back on track this evening.

Zen Sourcebook

I've had this book called Zen Sourcebook around the house awhile. It's an anthology of writings by past zen masters from China, Japan and Korea. Bodhidharma is represented, along with such luminaries as Huang-po, Lin-chi, Layman P'ang, Dōgen and Bankei.

If you're going to be a book-taught loner Buddhist like I am, these writings from the past seem much more helpful than most of the contemporary stuff.

And when the stresses of everyday life get to be a bit much, it's comforting to put some Tibetan singing bowl music on the stereo and relax with wisdom that has withstood the test of time. I guess I could try studying zen with Marvin Gaye in the background, but I don't think I'd get the same result.

Zen Sourcebook seems like a very handy overview of traditional zen teaching, and a pleasant antidote to all the 'who fucked whom' controversy that currently has so many people's attention. I haven't mentioned anything else about that, because it's not my story, but the stuff is still churning along.

Oscars®

Not Watching®

HBS

I'm suffering through another spell of Howling Bowel Syndrome.

I'm almost certain this stems from backsliding on my commitment to caffeine-free beverages. I've stayed away from coffee and tea, but I've been knocking back a lot of diet colas, and I'm paying the price.

But damn, I'm sick of water all the time. I drink a lot of herbal teas at home, but when I'm out, they're often hard to find. The Red Cup has some, as does Beatnix, but ask for a raspberry rooibos at Jimmy's Egg and see what you get.

Can You Believe It?

Blogblah! suggests that I can solve my relationship problems by keeping Marvin Gaye songs on my iPhone – specifically, 'Sexual Healing' and 'Let's Get It On'.



Also he advises that I get rid of my 'Tibetan bowl crap.'

He would have me believe that women would more readily respond to Marvin Gaye than to the sacred tones of Tibetan bowls:



or this:



The second one starts out slow, but stay with it. It picks up a few minutes in.

BTW, I've mentioned it before, but there's a widget on the right side of this page that shows what's playing at my place as you're reading this. If there's a red 'play' button on a selection, you can click it to hear the music via last.fm. It plays right there without opening a new browser or forcing you to download anything.

Sometimes, It's Me

Many, many years ago, I was in a relationship with a woman who loved me and had a wonderful plan for my life. In fact, the plan she had for my life was a hell of a lot bigger than my own plan. She saw us in an elegant home in a historic neighborhood, surrounded by wealthy friends who talk about Martha Stewart the way some people talk about the Dalai Lama. She saw us with designer furniture, white carpeting, one of those gigantic commercial kitchen ranges you buy for your cook to use, and not a single cat to be seen scratching at all our antiques and custom upholstery.

I told her, 'my bohemian lifestyle is part of my appeal.'

'Up to a point, yes,' she replied. But we had reached that point, at least in her mind, and it was time for me to clean up, buy an appropriate car, quit wearing baggy t-shirts and old jeans on weekends, switch my voter registration, and make friends with the movers and shakers. (I was a reporter. I already knew all the movers and shakers. If I had wanted to be friends with them, I already would have been.)

I eventually left her by literally climbing out a window to escape.

I mention this because if you read back into previous months and years of ths blog, it sounds like I've spent my whole life mooning over unavailable Stevie Nicks types.

In fact, sometimes I'm the one who was unavailable.

What's 25 Years in the Scheme of Things?

I have generally believed that people ought to pursue romantic relationships with those close to their own age. The differences in cultural values and life experience were too great, in my opinion, for people more than about seven years apart in age to have a successful relationship.

Lately, I've been rethinking that. Take two hypothetical people: one is twenty, the other is forty-five. Almost everyone would agree one is too young for the other. But that's using twenty and forty-five as the basis for comparison.

Who says that has to be the basis? What if, instead of comparing them to each other, we compare them to the age of our whole universe, now estimated at 13.75 billion years? Now we have a different, cosmic perspective.

And the fact is, none of us is here for more than a blink of God's eye, anyway, so why split hairs over age differences?

With that in mind, I invited an acquaintance to lunch this week. She is, in fact, 25 years younger than me. We talked about meditation practice, our families, various spiritual interests. It was a very pleasant adult conversation, not flirty in any way.

In spite of the age difference, she seems like someone I could sit with for a couple of hours and say nothing at all. And that's important to me.

But I have a long history of magical thinking about this kind of thing. As I've said before, I've been infatuated many times, and made foolish many times. I have worked long and hard on it. My friends think I'm a hardcore cynic on this subject. But I am no longer, as my therapist once said, "gullible and naive."

While we were talking about our spiritual practices, I told her, "What I want is to see things clearly, free of my own biases, prejudices and preconceived notions."

I want to see this clearly as well, but I don't think I do.

I would rather be alone than be crazy, and that's the main reason I'm alone.

No Meditation Tonight

Just not gonna do it. Just not.

Like Two Pints of Milk of Magnesia

Did my 25 minutes on the cushion tonight, but I can't say I enjoyed it.

I wonder why I can talk so much more freely about death than I can life. I know I became less afraid of death after being with my father when he died ten years ago.

And life... well, my life is like an off-brand adhesive bandage you've had on for a couple of days. It hasn't fallen completely apart yet, but it's peeling back around the edges, and the gauze in the middle is starting to unravel. It still works, but it's just kind of worn out and nasty looking.

There's a young woman who comes to the coffee shop who is totally high on life. She's young, she's beautiful, she sings, she has hyperanimated facial expressions, she's been Miss Warr Acres Congeniality or something. She's cheerful, friendly and optimistic. She means well, but she's like two pounds of divinity candy. She's an unrealized buddha, but she makes my teeth hurt.

I sing — badly, have no facial expressions except 'awake' and 'not awake', and I've been on TV. I'm like two pints of milk of magnesia. But I can mostly stand myself.

Meditation Practice

I guess it was last night that I gave up meditation at about 23 minutes. I was pissed off when I sat down. You'll notice, if you read this within a day of my having written it, that the top of this page is blank. The title banner, which lives on a separate server, is caught in domain registration limbo. That's what I was pissed off about. Then the dog started barking to come in. So I stopped meditation and let her in.

Actually, I never started meditation. I just sat there on the cushion fuming, listening for the prerecorded gongs of my timer to go off at five-minute intervals. Plus, my hemorrhoids were complaining.

I can almost guarantee you that nobody who has hemorrhoids believes in intelligent design. I told this to a friend, and she responded that she could see the beauty and music in all things. Maybe she should take a close look at my ass and see if there's a symphony for her there.

I hit the cushion tonight and realized I just didn't want to think about correct posture, following the breath, five-minute chimes, etc. So I just sat there and goofed off. I'd left the door open, and Rollo had come in and crashed on the zabuton. I scratched his ears for a few minutes, then I got up and went to bed. Which is where I am now.

Time to sleep.

Don't forget you're going to die.

Ciao.

Banana Caramels Until You Puke

One of the Buddhist teachings that has stuck with me over the years is Ajahn Chah's admonition that 'the glass is already broken.'

Ajahn Chah drank water from an ornate tumbler as he gave his dharma talks. Sometimes, a student would warn him to be careful and not break it. "The glass is already broken" was always his reply.

What he meant by that was that the glass, like every other material object, would eventually be broken or otherwise rendered useless, and there was no point in being attached to it.

The same thing is true of our bodies. They are glasses that are already broken. They will eventually stop functioning, and on the cosmic scale of time, they will stop functioning in mere moments. There's no point in being attached to life, because it's just a brief flicker, and frankly, not that big a deal.

I upset another friend last week with the 'waiting to die' discussion. "Yes. I'm waiting to die," I told her, "and so are you." She didn't like hearing that. She thinks she'll find a way to adjust her chakras or focus her kundalini energy or align her meridians or something and live forever. Maybe Oprah will bestow immortality on her. But in the meantime, she's still waiting to die, whether she wants to face it or not.

While you are waiting to die, what are you going to do that will matter? What will you do that will outlast you? Will you build a Great Pyramid? Everyone has heard of the Great Pyramid, but who knows who built it? Few people do. Hell of a lot of good it did for Khufu, aka Cheops. Nice pile of rocks, but his glass is still broken.

Some people think the way to deal with impending death is to grab all the shit they can in the meantime. They are like a child who, given thirty seconds to snatch up treats in a candy store, stuffs his pockets with everything he can reach, then eats until he makes himself sick. He would have been better off spending that thirty seconds meditating, or blogging about the inevitability of death, instead of gorging on banana caramels until he pukes.

Well, that's all I have for now. Have a nice day.

Sleep

Sometimes I want to sleep as a way to just get away from stuff. And you may ask, 'Get away from what? You're single, you have no family, you don't work. You hire people to do the most basic daily chores. You wander around all day and not much else. What are you getting away from?'

And the answer is, 'I don't know.' I just know that I feel not very at home in my world. I feel like an alien.

Last Week

I have a loosely-defined personal standard for how I interact with others. I certainly didn't meet it last week. I need some alone time.

Strangely Satisfying

It would not be at all Buddha-like to stand in the middle of the intersection of NW 23rd & Classen at rush hour and scream incomprehensible shrieking sounds at passing motorists.

And yet, I think I would find it strangely satisfying.

Clutter

I'm pondering today what constitutes clutter. Not just physical clutter, but mental clutter, emotional clutter and spiritual clutter. My mind looks a lot like my house.

Mental, emotional and spiritual clutter are all basically the same thing: stuff rolling around in your head that has no current value or purpose, but which you keep anyway. Maybe you have some attachment that keeps you hanging on to it, or maybe you just don't know how to get rid of it.

I wonder if freeing my mind of clutter would make it easier to keep my house free of it.

Power Usage

Got a first-ever email today from the power company purporting to show my weekly electricity usage and comparing it to average use and potential efficient use. Even though this house is full of LED and fluorescent bulbs, and even though there's no functioning refrigerator, my electricity usage is supposedly about 30% above average. I guess it's the computers and the always-on teapot.

Meditation

Zazen still at 25 minutes. I guess my goal should be 40, but that sill seems like an eternity.

From the Dalai Lama

"Feelings of anger and hatred arise from a mind that is troubled by dissatisfaction and discontent. So you can prepare to deal with such occasions by constantly working to build inner contentment and by cultivating kindness and compassion. This brings about a certain calmness of mind that can help prevent anger from arising in the first place."

— The Dalai Lama

Right Speech

Here's an interesting article on right speech. By Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

Let No Unwholesome Word...

I'm just going to think out loud here for a moment.

Even though I have a rather flat and uneffusive personality, I'm pretty quick with one-liners and snappy retorts. For most of my life, I couldn't let an opportunity pass. Eventually, when I was in my forties, I decided I didn't need to be clever all the time. I learned to keep some of my humor to myself. I would open my mouth to toss off a line, then catch myself and think, 'You know, you don't have to say that. Just let it go this once.'

As I write this, I'm wondering what would happen if I let it go all the time.

I was listening to a dharma talk today by some zen teacher — I forget who. He briefly mentioned Buddhism's focus on 'right speech' — part of the Eightfold Path. It is not far removed from Paul's exhortation to the Ephesians to 'let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth.'

Witty or snappy lines don't necessarily qualify as 'unwholesome' words. They're certainly not as counterproductive or destructive as malicious gossip or outright lies. But if a person is known predominantly for being a wisecracker, how hard is it for him to be taken seriously at other times?

I have friends/acquaintances whose humor is as quick as mine. But I don't always find them entertaining; sometimes they seem obnoxious. For the first time ever this week, I deleted another person's comment from my Facebook page because I thought it was over the top. I think I'm always hilarious, but it may be that others find my humor just as unfunny and tiresome.

Why do I think I need to make people laugh? Why can't I just sit and talk without trying to be funny?

What would happen if I let go of trying to be funny?

Sensory Overload

Have I mentioned this before? I have this thing where, whenever I get a sort of sensory overload, I start getting sleepy. Once in awhile, I even fall asleep. It seems odd to others because it happens in very loud, crowded social situations.

I was in my forties before I realized this was a subconscious defense against this overload.

It happened today at the coffee shop. There were a lot of people. It was loud, and rather busy. I felt myself getting sleepy, so I left. Within about fifteen minutes, I was back to normal.

And by 'normal', I mean normal for me, which is probably really low-key by your standards.

I really need a lot of time alone, and a lot of quiet.

More on the 'dead stop'.

There is a zen proverb which says something like, "When you reach the top of the mountain, take another step." I think 'the top of the mountain' must be the same thing as the 'dead stop' I described yesterday. But I don't know how to take 'another step'.

The Point

"As soon as you open your mouth to speak," a zen proverb says, "already it is a mistake."

The proverb is talking about trying to describe enlightenment or awakening, but I think it can be applied more broadly than that.

I've devoted a lot of space the past few days to talking about issues about which I actually don't know very much. There are plenty of people out there with more knowledge of these events than I have, and more background and wisdom with which to discuss them. I didn't need to say anything.

In February of last year, I didn't post a single word on this blog for two and a half weeks, and it was because I didn't have anything to say. I still don't, but that hasn't stopped me from going on anyway.

When I first started trying to understand buddhist concepts of reality, I hit a place I described to myself as the 'dead stop'. It was the point beyond which nothing else is, and about which nothing can be said or described. Even if I said 'it just is', that would be too much.

All the things I've said and written since then are not evidence of having passed that point, but of having backed up from it. It's as if I subconsciously said to myself, 'Well, I can't deal with this. Let me retreat to some ground where I can go back to being myself.'

This is the challenge — to stay at that point that neither exists nor is non-existent, about which nothing can be said, about which no action can be taken.

Incidentally, This Doesn't Mean I Reject Zen

...or at least my understanding of it, however half-assed that may be.

I think that's part why I'm so annoyed by this. I found a belief system (my zen/tao party mix) that answered all or most of my existential questions, only to discover that a lot of people use it for the same old drama and uproar. And that it attracts a lot of people who just want someone to run their lives and do all their thinking for them.

Humans... I don't get 'em.

So You've Heard About This Chris Lee Guy, Right?

Responded to 'women seeking men' ad on Craigslist. Lied about his age and marital status. And his job. Said he was a lobbyist when actually, he's a US Congressman.

Sent woman a photo of himself, shirtless, hastily shot in a bathroom mirror. Said it was 'all he had.'

Was stunned that she figured out who he was. Probably more stunned that she notifed gossip web site gawker.com, and was able to provide pic.

This is what comes of making poor choices. This guy should have been a zen master.

Networked Blogs Update

Apparently it's happening to other bloggers, too.

In Other News...

I don't know what I ate, but I've passed enough gas in the past 72 hours to inflate the Hindenburg. No wonder I'm grumpy.

What Happened to Networked Blogs?

I don't know. Right now, at least as I see it on my monitor, that box is empty. I'll look into it, eventually.

Lineage Delusion Redux

I want to go back to the Lineage Delusions commentary I posted previously.

As you know if you've followed this blog for any length of time, I don't belong to a sangha. In fact, I don't belong to anything. I am not a joiner. I am an aloof, remote, arrogant motherfucker.

And in four sentences, author Erik Fraser Storlie explains why for me:

"This is a Mad Hatter’s tea party, where hierarchical robes and titles, sadomasochistic austerities, and subterranean libertinism mix together in incestuous 'spiritual communities' filled with distrust and rivalries – all this in a scramble for the summit of some distant 'spiritual' mountain. This would be comic if it weren’t tragic.

"And it is tragic.

"It is tragic because countless Americans hunger for genuine meaning – meaning unavailable in the toxic mimics offered by game shows, professional sports, 'reality' TV, ugly politics, 'free-market' competition, and unimaginably wasteful wealth accumulation at the top."

This explains why I have resisted joining everything from a zen sangha to the Society of Professional Journalists. These things always look pretty good at first glance, and then when you get a closer look, it's about 5% worthwhile stuff and about 95% horseshit and internal politics and drama. Granted, they don't wear hierarchical robes in SPJ, but that's probably because nobody's thought of it.

(I wrote a lengthy aside here about my own experience with SPJ, then decided it didn't have anything to do with the point I was trying to make, so I cut it. But it's a good story. Maybe I'll make it a post of its own someday.)

Everyone who has studied zen to any degree knows the story of Bodhidharma and Emperor Wu. It may be apocryphal, but it still sets the stage for the arrival of zen in China.

Here's a version lifted from the web site monkeytree.org:

"The emperor practiced the outward behaviors of Buddhism; he wore Buddhist robes, abstained from eating meat, built many temples and supported hundreds of monks and nuns. The emperor was proud of his knowledge of Buddhism and his support of Buddhism in his kingdom. He asked Bodhidharma, 'Since I came to the throne, I have built many temples, published numerous scriptures and supported countless monks and nuns. How great is the merit in all these?'

"'No merit to speak of,' was the shocking reply of Bodhidharma. The emperor had often heard renowned masters say, 'Do good, and you will receive good; do bad and you will receive bad. The Law of Cause and Effect is unchangeable, effects follow causes as shadows follow figures.' But now, this foreign sage declared that all his efforts had earned no merit at all.

"The emperor failed to understand that one is not practicing Buddhism if one does good with the desire to gain merit for oneself. It will be more like promoting one's own welfare or hoping for admiration by the public. The emperor asked his next question, 'What then, is the essence of Buddhism?'

"Bodhidharma's immediate reply was, 'Vast emptiness and no essence at all!' This stunned the emperor. Other masters had explained that the essence was contained in doctrines such as The Four Noble Truths and The Law of Cause and Effect, but this foreign sage of Buddhism had just declared there was 'no essence at all'."

Bodhidharma had presented the emperor with a version of Buddhism that was so stripped down, so bereft of the pomp and circumstance that had accreted since the Buddha's death, that the emperor couldn't even recognize it.

Later, it is said, Bodhidharma spent nine years 'at the wall,' which is to say, in meditation. History does not say whether he entered the room with his left foot, bowed to his cushion, bowed to the wall, bowed to his partner, allemande left and dosado. My hunch is that he didn't.

Nowadays, it seems like zen isn't much better than being in the Assembly of God. Well, they don't roll around on the floor and speak in tongues in zen, so there's that. On the other hand, in the Assembly of God, they don't smack you with a stick because your head is tilted at just slightly the wrong angle.

But this is what happens. This is what humans do. They start out with a good thing, and they cannot resist loading it up with horseshit and drama. The thing gets going, whether it's zen or Christianity or the Platypus Lodge, and then it gets boring. So what we can do to spice this thing up some, broaden the appeal, improve the demographic? Aha! Just add horseshit!

Everyone has seen the phenomenon where a teacher becomes popular, and suddenly the teacher is bigger than the teaching. I think this happens because in any religion or belief system, about 70% of the people can't 'get' the teaching at all. So they focus instead on the personality, whether it's a tulku or a televangelist. And this, in turn, leads to the popularity of sexy, charismatic teachers and preachers who can spin a compelling line of BS for the rubes. And with the sexy, charismatic teachers come the outsized egos and narcissism.

Or they focus on the process, which is why you hear people describe their beliefs in terms of how many retreats they've done, or how many revivals they've attended, or whether they saw Billy Graham in person.

Somewhere down below all the lasers and arena-sized sound systems and online stores and ultramegasuperchurches and ski resorts-turned-upscale-zen-monasteries, there is still some original truth, but who gives a shit about that? What do the focus groups show, that's what we need to know.

(John Lennon was on the mark when he said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ. A lot of people are more popular than Jesus Christ. He may be the only religious leader who is actually a minor figure in the religion named for him. At the moment, Sarah Palin is a bigger player in Christianity than Jesus is.)

As is often the case with my lengthy posts, this one just went on and on until it ran out of steam. No conclusion, folks. I'm done for now.

More Delusion

I may have to reconsider the post I wrote entitled "Secrets of the Ancient Horndog Zen Masters Revealed".

Just about a year ago, the website Buddhist Geeks published a review of the then newly-revealed archive of the writings of zen master Robert Aitken. The archive revealed that Aitken, a major and revered figure in American zen, concealed the allegedly abusive behavior of zen monk, and later abbott, Eido Shimano, for forty-odd years.

The Aitken-Shimano Letters

The same article was published at The Zen Site.

The events and behavior described in this article go well beyond mere animal magnetism and/or personal charisma. Shimano is described at one point, for example, as volunteering to work in a psychiatric ward in order to find more women upon whom to prey. This is genuinely creepy stuff.

I'm going to ponder this some more. I still don't understand how he was able to find so many willing victims over the years. (I expect to be criticized for using the expression 'willing victims', but I don't know another way to describe them. It appears no one was threatened or intimidated. They voluntarily had sex with him, at least sometimes hoping it would improve their chances of 'enlightenment', and afterward regretted it. I still don't understand how this happened so many times.)

Lineage Delusion

A fascinating article from the Sweeping Zen website. It questions the validity of the whole concept of ‘dharma transmission’.

Lineage Delusions: Eido Shimano Roshi, Dharma Transmission and American Zen

Almost every Buddhist teacher claims to have received his teaching in an unbroken person-to-person line that began with the Buddha himself. In zen, at least, this hits bumpy ground with the story of Hui Neng, the sixth leader of zen in China, through whom all subsequent zen dharma transmission passes. I won't go into all the details here, but the story of how he received transmission is considered by some scholars to be far-fetched, and possibly invented by his own students to conceal the reality that Hui Neng was a self-taught zen master who received dharma transmission from nobody.

Anyway, the article is a good read if you're interested in this stuff.

Secrets of the Ancient Horndog Zen Masters Revealed

I'm only half-joking when I say that every time I read about one of these zen masters getting in trouble for his sexual adventures, I find myself wondering where I sign up. I suspect a lot of other men think the same thing.

But here's the reality: donning the robes of a zen priest would not improve my love life one iota. All it would do is make me into a pretty dull and boring zen priest. I would still be me, just in a different set of clothes. Still negative, still cynical, still no aura of danger or bad boy cred. Still just as safe and dreary as a bowl of tepid oatmeal.

The thing that makes these sixty- and seventy-year-old zen geezers attractive to women is the same thing that makes them successful as teachers. It's not their accumulated wisdom or their enlightenment; it's intensity and personal magnetism. They'd be just as successful selling multi-level marketing schemes or running for political office. Having a title and a Japanese middle name have little or nothing to do with it.

Some of you know that due to a series of odd circumstances, I briefly acquired a frankly undeserved 'bad boy' reputation in my mid-forties, and the results were salutary. However, it was going against my basic nature, and it intellectually and emotionally drained me. I was always 'acting'. I eventually went back to being good ol' reliable boring mcarp.

At this stage in my life, it's sort of comforting to have a sense of my place in the scheme of things, even if it's not quite the place I would prefer to have. I'm too old and burnt out now to swim upstream against my basic nature.

But it would be nice to have that personal assistant.

More Human Contact

I got a ticket today for having an expired car tag. The tag expired in November, and I had put off getting the little sticker that keeps it current. This is another of those annual chores that seems like it happens every six weeks. A year just isn't what it used to be.

I don't mind the money, but I hate the paperwork. And the human contact. Unrealized buddhas one and all, but I don't want to sit in that dingy tag agency with them, waiting for my name to be called. But I dragged myself down there in the afternoon and got it done.

One of the great things about becoming a fully authentic zen master, other than apparently getting laid relentlessly, is that you often get some sort of humble monk assistant who takes care of all the shit work while you're neither being nor not being.

What I probably really need is a nanny.

More Winter

Snowpocalypse 2: Blizzard Boogaloo is forecast to arrive in town tomorrow around 6pm. This time, all the livestock will be inside.

Again

I see where another prominent US zen priest has decided to disrobe and resign from all his priestly duties because of an affair he had with one of his students.

Inside My Own Head

Buddhism teaches non-duality, i.e., not adhering to a view of the world as 'me' and 'other'. But as time goes by, I have more and more trouble adhering to this. My natural inclination is to view everything as, 'here I am safe and quiet inside my own head' vs. 'what the hell is the matter with you people?!'

It really is pretty cozy in here.

Not Watching

I can't tell you the last time I watched a Super Bowl. Early seventies, probably. And I'm not watching now.

The 28-Day Meditation Challenge: Blew It On Day One

Every year, Tricycle Magazine holds its ‘28-Day Meditation Challenge’. I thought my practice had become consistent enough that I could undertake the challenge this year. Of course, I didn’t actually read the challenge. If I had, I would have noticed it required twenty minutes weekday mornings, another twenty weekday evenings (almost twice my regular session), and ninety minutes every Saturday and Sunday. I noticed this for the first time on Jan. 30th, only two days before the challenge’s Feb. 1 start date.

So, I blew it on day one. I had been so mentally overloaded by the snowstorm and Gastón's disappearance that I didn’t sit that day at all. Yesterday, I kept putting it off, and by the time I decided to do it, I was too sleepy and went straight to bed.

But even though I am not living up to the challenge, I am generally satisfied with the way my practice is going. I look forward to it most days. Mentally, it’s no effort to get on the zafu, although sometimes there’s a physical challenge.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my current practice wouldn’t pass muster with purists. I don’t do gassho or bow to my cushion. I move a lot, generally to straighten up when I find myself starting to slump forward. Lately, there’s also been some coughing, sneezing and sniffling. Oddly enough, this is a problem only during meditation. I'll go all day without coughing or sneezing, and suddenly have an attack of it when I’m sitting. I’m sure the coughing is because of breathing very dry winter air, but I can't explain the sneezing.

Sometimes I will move my right leg if I feel it going numb or starting to cramp. I read different opinions about the numbness. Some say it’s harmless, and should be ‘worked through’ as part of the practice, while others say it should be avoided. None of these are medical opinions, and until I find a medical opinion online, I’m going to err on the side of caution and avoid letting my legs go numb. It’s always my right leg, btw, never my left.

My current session time is 25 minutes. I have a meditation timer installed on my iPad that rings a tibetan bowl sound every five minutes. I suppose that for ‘real’ meditators, the timer keeps them from accidentally sitting all day long, and getting nothing else done. For me, though, it’s more of a ‘come on, just two more chimes’ thing. Mentally, I think I want to do more, but my body isn’t ready yet.

I do sort of light meditation throughout the day. What I mean by that is that I try to remember to be aware of my own breath and be mindful of surroundings and my own thoughts all the time. I am a natural introvert, prone to shutting down in crowded places, and that actually makes this process easier. If you see me in the coffee shop and I seem to have ‘zoned out’, that's what is happening. Obviously, it doesn't look like meditation, and strictly speaking, it isn't. But it is a process of disengaging from the ten thousand things going on around me and getting back to my own quiet personal center.

I suspect zen and taoism always had a special appeal for introverts. For those of us who find the daily business of life overwhelming and intolerable, zen and taoism both offer a sort of intellectual shelter, as well as a justification for our unsociable ways.

Better weather

The sun is out today, and there's not a cloud in the sky. The official temp right now is 26°, but my car thermometer showed it as 34°. Snow is definitely melting. The hot water is running in the garage again. Looks like the faucet on the back of the garage might have burst. It has a relief valve, but the whole thing is coated with ice, and I can't tell if the valve worked or if it broke.

Best news, though: Gastón reappeared this morning, one week to the day after he disappeared. His feet were barely wet, and he was warm to the touch, as if he'd been lying in the sun somewhere. My guess is that he spent the whole storm in a neighbor's house and didn't come out until five minutes before I found him.

Solitude Day 3

Not so much solitude today. Went to Jimmy's Egg for breakfast, then to the Red Cup just to visit a little while. Later, I went to VZD's for dinner.

Streets are still snowy and difficult. I'm trying to decide whether to try to make a run to the grocery store for more housebound munchies. The forecast calls for more snow tomorrow, but I'm tried of getting in and out of my Sorels.

Still no sign of G or any other neighborhood cats.

Solitude Day 2

Made it to Wendy's this afternoon, but it was a major effort. Some of the main thoroughfares have been plowed and sanded, but others appear to have been untouched. I'm getting tweets and Facebook messages from city employees alternately telling me to stay off the streets and exhorting me to go to the NBA game downtown tonight. I will choose to stay off the streets. I have no interest in the NBA even when the weather's nice.

I tried to plow the minivan through a three-foot deep by four- or five-foot wide snow drift in the driveway. I almost accomplished it. I eventually gave up out of fear I would sideswipe my neighbor's car. (We share a double driveway.) The van hasn't been driven in perhaps six weeks; it almost wouldn't start. I let it idle while I drove to Wendy's in the beetle so the battery would recharge.

The cold water in the garage is running, but the hot water is not. I don't understand that. The lines are basically side by side. I know the thing about hot water freezing faster than cold water, but this an on-demand system, and the water in both pipes should have been the same temperature. The heat was off in the garage, unbeknownst to me. I turned it on, and I hope I'll have fully functioning water and no breaks once it warms up a little.

Still no sign of Gastón, nor any other neighborhood cat.

Cabin Fever

Like millions of other Americans, I am snowed in. I don't know how much snow we received here, but there are drifts two to three feet deep around my house, and I've seen reports here in town of drifts up to five feet deep.

This is a good opportunity to practice that solitude about which I speak so frequently, but after just one day, I'm getting cabin fever.

I tried getting out yesterday. I went to a breakfast place just about a mile from the house. It was closed – the first time I've ever seen it closed by winter weather.

I got stuck in the parking lot. Two guys were kind enough to help push me out. We have a large enclave of Moroccan immigrants here, and they appeared to be part of that group.

The VW beetle, I learned, is not very good in snow. It sits much closer to the ground than the minivan. I might not have gotten stuck if I had taken the van out instead of the beetle.

Coming home from the restaurant, I decided not to take the snow-packed street I had come on. Instead, I went out of my way north to take a main thoroughfare that I thought would be plowed and clear. It wasn't. The city used to plow what it calls 'designated snow routes,' but it appears they have stopped that practice and now just close the city when it snows.

So, I got stuck twice more. Once I had to stop when a person just walked off a curb in front of me. The second time, a police car made a U-turn from the oncoming lane and pulled diagonally across the street with lights flashing. As soon as I came to a full stop – and was bogged down – the officer drove off again.

I came close to abandoning the car at that point, but fortunately, someone in a big pickup came along and pushed me out of the snow.

So, I will stay in today. The dog refuses to go out at all, but is getting tired of being cooped up. She's barking in her crate right now, in fact. Rollo the cat is in. But Gastón wandered off Saturday and I haven't seen him since. He is much less prone to wandering off than Rollo is, which is why I didn't worry too much when he didn't come in Saturday night. My next door neighbor told me she saw him Sunday afternoon. I have to say I doubt he will survive this, unless someone has let him in a house. The temperature as I write this is 7 degrees, and it has been in the single digits for almost 24 hours. We don't have above-freezing temps in the forecast until Friday, and then for only a short while.

I've seen one trail of dog tracks in the snow since the storm hit. All the other strays and neighborhood pets appear to be hiding out. I wonder how many will survive this.

On the plus side, the house is warm, I have food and the electricity has stayed on. I still have Internet connectivity. I haven't been out to the garage to check the pipes, but the water in the house is flowing freely.

I had decided to do Tricycle Magazine's 28-Day Meditation Challenge, which began yesterday. But I was so frayed by the experience of getting back home I didn't sit. I guess I should have looked at that as an opportunity to meditate on the experience, but I didn't. I also have a touch of head cold, and meditation doesn't go too well when you're sniffling and coughing the whole time.

But I imagine I'll sit today. I've nothing else to do.

And the Horse It Rode In On

I was snowed in Tuesday, and I ended up spending time reminiscing about TV news with former coworkers on Facebook. This is something I try to avoid doing, but one of them had tagged me in a story he was telling about a live shot I had done, and I allowed myself to be drawn into the conversation.

It didn't take long for a lot of fifteen- to twenty-year-old anger and resentment to resurface. God damn, I hated that business.

I suppose when I achieve enlightenment, I'll look back on all that with compassion and equanimity. In the meantime, fuck TV news and the horse it rode in on.

Test Results!

The website similarminds.com has an online personality disorder test. Here are my results:

Personality Disorder Test Results Paranoid |||||||||||| 46% Schizoid |||||||||||||||||| 78% Schizotypal |||||||||||||||||| 78% Antisocial |||||||||| 34% Borderline |||||||||||||| 58% Histrionic |||| 18% Narcissistic |||||| 30% Avoidant |||||||||||||| 54% Dependent |||||||||||||||| 62% Obsessive-Compulsive |||||| 22%

Take Free Personality Disorder Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

This doesn't show how I compare to the rest of those taking the test. But I was more schizoid, more schizotypal, more borderline, more avoidant and more dependent. I was less than the rest on everything else.

Of course, I'm not going to stake my mental health on the results of one internet survey. I'll see if I can find another one for a second opinion.

21st Century Schizoid Man

I learned something new this week, thanks to one of my Facebook friends.

I had always thought 'schizoid' was just a slang term used to describe someone who appeared mentally ill, or even just very eccentric. But now I know it has a clinical definition, as summarized by Wikipedia:

"Schizoid personality disorder (SPD) is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of interest in social relationships, a tendency towards a solitary lifestyle, secretiveness, and emotional coldness. SPD is not the same as schizophrenia, although they share some similar characteristics such as detachment or blunted affect and there is increased prevalence of the disorder in families with schizophrenia."

The article goes on to describe signs and symptoms:

"People with SPD are seen as aloof, cold and indifferent, which causes some social problems. Most individuals diagnosed with SPD have difficulty establishing personal relationships or expressing their feelings in a meaningful way, and may remain passive in the face of unfavourable situations. Their communication with other people at times may be indifferent and concise. Because of their lack of communication with other people, those who are diagnosed with SPD are not able to have a reflection of themselves and how well they get along with others. The reflection is important so they can be more aware of themselves and their own actions in social surroundings. R. D. Laing suggests that without being enriched by injections of interpersonal reality there occurs an impoverishment in which one's self-image becomes more and more empty and volatilized, leading the individual himself to feel unreal.

"According to Gunderson, "people with SPD 'feel lost' without the people they are normally around because they need a sense of security and stability. However, when the patient’s personal space is violated, they feel suffocated and feel the need to free themselves and be independent. Those people who have SPD are happiest when they are in a relationship in which the partner places few emotional or intimate demands on them, as it is not people as such that they want to avoid, but both negative and positive emotions, emotional intimacy, and self disclosure.

"This means that it is possible for schizoid individuals to form relationships with others based on intellectual, physical, familial, occupational, or recreational activities as long as these modes of relating do not require or force the need for emotional intimacy, which the individual will reject."

And there's more. The whole article is here.

It caught my attention because it seems to describe a more extreme version of myself.

"The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fourth edition, a widely used manual for diagnosing mental disorders, defines schizoid personality disorder (in Axis II Cluster A) as:

A. A pervasive pattern of detachment from social relationships and a restricted range of expression of emotions in interpersonal settings, beginning by early adulthood (age eighteen or older) and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by four (or more) of the following:

1. neither desires nor enjoys close relationships, including being part of a family
2. almost always chooses solitary activities
3. has little, if any, interest in having sexual experiences with another person
4. takes pleasure in few, if any, activities
5. lacks close friends or confidants other than first-degree relatives
6. appears indifferent to the praise or criticism of others
7. shows emotional coldness, detachment, or flattened affect

B. Does not occur exclusively during the course of schizophrenia, a mood disorder with psychotic features, another psychotic disorder, or a pervasive developmental disorder and is not due to the direct physiological effects of a general medical condition.

"It is a requirement of DSM-IV that a diagnosis of any specific personality disorder also satisfies a set of general personality disorder criteria.

"In the draft of the DSM-V it is proposed that schizoid personality disorder should be represented and diagnosed by a combination of core impairment in personality functioning and specific pathological personality traits, rather than as a specific type.

Fewer than 1 out of 100 Americans meet the standard for Schizoid Personality Disorder.

Here's some more from the Mayo Clinic.

By the Way...

If anyone wants to send me a willowy, ethereal young zen student, who's also impressionable, gullible and profoundly codependent, and who maybe looks kinda sorta like Stevie Nicks, that would be so special.

Buy a Porn Star an iPad

There is a story on The Daily Beast today about how porn stars are using Twitter. Apparently they have some special Twitter porn service that doesn't do anything but manage porn star Twitter accounts, which in itself is an interesting exercise in entrepreneurship.

But the part that caught my attention, 'way down in the story, was how porn actresses use their Twitter accounts to solicit, and receive, gifts from fans:

“On the place on Twitter where you can put your website I put my Amazon wish list,” says DeArmond. She also likes to tweet out her wish list. She says three packages—jewelry, shoes—a day is normal in her mail.

...

Not to be outdone, Kristina Rose says: “I got an iPad yesterday. The fan had it engraved on the back to say ‘Slutwoman A.K.A. Kristina Rose.’ I love Twitter.”

As I've written frequently, infatuation literally means 'made foolish.' And I've been made foolish a lot. A whole lot. But holy shit, I've never been made this foolish. Let's skip the part about being porn actresses. They could be rock stars or anesthesiologists – it wouldn't matter. Buying someone you don't even know, have never met and will never meet gifts off her Amazon 'wish list' – knowing full well she's just trolling for them? That's crazy.

I guess I'm seeing this as sort of the flip side of the coin for the gnarly old zen master pressuring young female students to fuck their way to enlightenment with him.

Recovered Memories

When I was three or four years old, I had a set of those wooden blocks that kids always had back then.

I don't remember flushing them down the toilet, but I do remember my dad pulling the toilet off the floor mount to fish them out. I remember being fascinated by the big hole in the floor, and wondering where the water went. (Even now, I don't know. Where does the water go when you pull a toilet off the floor?)

He was pissed off, of course, but I don't remember him being outrageously angry. He didn't yell at me or spank me or anything.

And tonight, for some reason, I had a flash of something. Fifty-five years later, I sort of remember knowing as I flushed those blocks down the toilet that they would be gone forever, that I would not get them back, and that, for some reason, they had to be gone, and that I had to deprive myself of them for some reason.

I wonder why I thought that. It sort of makes me sad to recall it.

New Stuff

I broke down and bought a new computer last week. My old day-to-day computer, a dual G5 PowerMac, was almost eight years old. It wouldn't run the current version of the Mac operating system, and therefore cannot run a lot of current Mac software.

I hope the new Mac keeps me set for the rest of my life.

Meditation update

I continue with the meditation practice. Not hitting it seven nights a week, but four or five. I'm still trying to just be comfortable. Lotus and half-lotus are beyond me, as I've mentioned, and I probably won't live long enough to ever be that flexible again.

Hell, I'm doing it all wrong, anyway. Here's Brad Warner's instructions on how to do zazen correctly.

Here's some more instructions from the Albuquerque Zen Center.

Nothing is ever easy, is it?

I started out thinking I would just sit, focus on the breath, observe thoughts, etc. I didn't know there was all this put-your-left-foot-in turn-all-about do-the-hokey-pokey stuff involved, too.

I like the way Liza Rose gracefully rises from the zafu. I could probably do that, too, thirty or forty years ago. Here's how I do it now: at the end of twenty minutes, I fall over on my left side. Then I just lie there for about ten seconds. After that, I slowly stretch my legs back out. That takes six or seven seconds. My legs don't go numb, or even hurt that much, anymore; they just don't want to move. I could no more stand straight up after twenty minutes of meditation than I could flap my arms and fly.

Of course, the whole purported purpose of the lotus position is to keep you from falling over. If I couldn't fall over, I would have sat there trapped for days after the first session and eventually died of dehydration. I would probably have been considered a great master for doing that.

Last night, I tried doing the seiza position taught in martial arts schools. This is what my friend Ms. W&E does. It was even worse. Both my feet went numb after about fifteen minutes. Plus, when I sit in seiza, I'm up so high I don't have a lap. So there's no place to rest my hands in a mudra.

If you look at the woman on the first zazen link and the woman sitting seiza in the third link, you will notice that they are both rather willowy. Probably ethereal, too, but without the floaty clothes, it's hard to tell.

I think you probably just have to be willowy to do this stuff. Me doing it is like performing brain surgery with a butter knife out of the kitchen drawer.

Keith Olbermann

I am a big fan of Keith Olbermann. There was a time when he was almost the only progressive voice in the ‘mainstream media.’ Moreover, he was one of the few people on television willing to swim upstream against ‘the narrative’, that sort of conventional wisdom embraced by the punditocracy.

But Olbermann made himself a target. He promoted the impression he was bigger than his employer, and all but untouchable because of it. I suspect executives at NBC and GE, and perhaps Comcast as well, had the impression he was ‘out of control’, and encouraging a sense among other MSNBC staffers that he, and not management, was the ultimate authority in day-to-day operations.

So, in spite of the fact he rescued the network from obscurity, and remained its most popular personality with viewers, they fired him.

There are people at FOX News, of course, who make Olbermann seem like the very model of a sober, reasoned newscaster. But although Glenn Beck may suggest that various political figures need to be “shot in the head”, you will never hear him imply that he is bigger than FOX News itself.

I hope Olbermann turns up somewhere else doing what he did at MSNBC.

Maybe It's Just Me

I'm still trying to understand this story about the 70-something Zen master in New York who has been accused of sexually exploiting students for fifty years.

I was talking about this with a friend whose Buddhist beliefs are a mix of Tibetan and Theravada. I gave her a synopsis of what I'd read, and she said, "Oh, yeah. That happens all the time."

I know it happens frequently, I told her, but I didn't understand why women would agree to this.

"Well, if he's a teacher, that's a powerful attraction." She didn't say she'd done it herself, but I sort of had the sense that was hanging over her comment.

I still don't get it.

If your Zen teacher suggests to you that the two of you hook up, and maybe opens his robe to give you a look at the goods (as this guy apparently did), why would you not just say, "Well, thanks for the offer, but there are about fifty Zen masters in New York City, and I'm sure that at least some of them are not old perverts, so I'll just see you around."

Maybe I just have a weird attitude about sex. I'm not a Victorian. I don't think I'm a prude. But I wouldn't think, "Gee, maybe I oughta fuck this gal, so she won't be mad at me or not let me come to meetings." I would just go somewhere else.

Cold

18 degrees outside right now. Grateful again to be inside and warm.

Meditation update and other notes

The meditation practice seems to be improving. When I last posted about this, I mentioned that it seemed to be getting harder rather than easier. But I may have just hit some bump I needed to get over. I'm doing better now, and I enjoy it enough that I don't have to force myself to sit.

My meditation space is in the back bedroom, all the way back in the far southeast corner of the house, away from the street. It feels very quiet and secure back there. I have to remind myself that the sense of security is false. It's all really very fragile, and inevitably headed toward its end someday.

A house around the corner from me burned the other night. It had been vacant and boarded up the whole ten years I have lived here. I had seen indigents climbing out a window one morning several years back; I assume they had slept there overnight.

Recently the owners began rehabilitating the house for eventual sale or occupancy. But the fire left the place a charred shell. What's left will fall down soon if it isn't demolished. That's the fourth house fire in ths neighborhood over the past decade, and by far the worst.

Snow is in the forecast for tonight and tomorrow.

Here's How I Roll

For as long as I've been able to drive, I've preferred major city streets to interstates, and neighborhood streets to major city streets. So, when I go somewhere, I frequently take a meandering route rather than the fastest, most direct one.

This makes some of my regular passengers crazy, although most eventually get used to it.

I'm sometimes absent-minded when I drive, and moreso when I have a passenger. Ms. HRP, Diane, Nurse Kathryn and even my ex have all been accustomed to having to remind me when to turn, or to point out that I'm actually getting farther away from my intended destination instead of closer to it.

When I was younger, I used to drive like a bat out of hell down residential streets. As I've gotten older, and become a homeowner myself, I've learned to have more regard for safety and quiet in neighborhoods. Plus, I'm rarely in a hurry to get anywhere. Even if I'm not in my own neighborhood, I try to drive like I live there.

Taking residential streets keeps me out of the traffic. I'm not as distracted by billboards and other signs. I like looking at homes, and checking out paint schemes and landscaping. Sometimes I'll make an unplanned turn just to see what's to be found down an interesting-looking street.

I guess it's obvious I live in an older neighborhood with grid streets. I've never liked cul-de-sacs, and I wouldn't live in a neighborhood that has them.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Y'know, it seems like about two-thirds of the things I post here are just rehashes of things I've already posted.

It's felt that way for a couple of years now.

Going Downhill

People told me when I retired that I would start mentally 'going downhill' within a matter of months. It has taken longer than that, but there's no question in my mind that it's happened.

I have always been sort of a fuzzy, scattered thinker. I guess having a job forced to me to focus my thoughts for at least part of the day. Now, there's nothing to do that, and it shows in the general slippage in my overall presence of mind. It's been very gradual, but I certainly have the sense that I'm less organized, less motivated, less everything than I was four years ago.

This has had some benefits. I don't have as much stress as I once had, for one thing. It has also helped me embrace eastern philosophy. I think the study of zen and tao is not especially compatible with the disciplined 'gung ho' mental approach working Americans are expected to have. Especially with taoism, I think you have to be prepared to reject a lot of American 'values' that are cherished in the workplace.

But there is a down side. I really have no concept of the passage of time anymore. My doctor told me last week I needed to come in for a checkup, as I hadn't come in at all in 2010. I could have sworn I was there last spring, but in fact, it was fall of 2009. It actually seems like it was only about five months ago.

I also need to pay my property taxes. I live close enough to downtown that I just drive to the courthouse rather than mailing a check. I do this once a year, but it seems like I do it every 90 days.

I hate doing this stuff. It's not the money; I just can't stand the repetitive task, even if it's once a year. And yet, my life is the same from day to day, and the repetitiveness of daily living seems to calm and comfort me. I usually eat breakfast in one of two places. I may go for a walk around the same park. I seldom travel more than two miles from my house, and never more than 20 miles.

I do not feel at peace with the world. My view is very dualistic. It's me right here, and a lot of crazy shit out there.

I've finally worked out my human contact quota. I can currently stand 120 minutes of human contact every 72 hours. Waiters, store clerks and the like don't count toward the total. If I go more than 120 minutes with my friends, I start to get overwhelmed and have to withdraw.

I have this sense of an overall decline in my sense of being present in the world. But, I was never all that wild about the world anyway.

I Don't Want To Think

I just do not want to think. About anything. Nothing interests me. Nothing enthuses me. What a ridiculous situation we humans are in.

If I could detach my intellect from my physical body and fly amongst the stars and galaxies, that would interest me. For awhile, anyway.

But all this pointless blather here on earth does nothing for me.

Deja Vu All Over Again

For about the past two years, it's felt like about two-thirds of the things I post here are just rehashes of things I posted previously.

I'm not sure that's true, but it feels that way.

Nothing You Could Call a 'Relationship'

Years ago, a friend gave me a tape of a lecture on relationships by a self-help guru. I think the lecture was intended for recovering alcoholics and ACAs, but I'm not sure of that.

Anyway, among the bits of advice he gave was this: “Don't try to make connections with people you're attracted to.”

That seems sort of nonsensical. What are we supposed to do — hook up with people we're not attracted to? In a word, according to this guy, yes.

His reasoning was that those of us who grow up in alcoholic families can't make intelligent choices about relationship partners. We're drawn, at some subconscious level, to recreating the atmosphere that existed in our childhood homes.

I've had discussions on this subject with friends, and most agree with the premise. Where we disagree is on the subject of whether a person can reprogram himself or herself to be attracted to a different kind of person. My position is that we can't. I believe we can be educated to recognize when we are attracted to an incompatible person, but I don't think we can change the attraction.

This brings me around to my response to blogblah!'s comment to a previous post:

If by "successful" you mean only a relationship that's filled with laughter and dancing, great sex and lasts forever, we're all failures.
On the other hand, if by "successful" you mean any relationship in which you had some good times, a few laughs and a bit of snogging, you've had some.
The only relationship I know of that you've had that's been a bit of a "failure" is the one you have with yourself because you spend so much time with him even though you don't care for his company, which is a shame because you're really a pretty fun, smart guy and rather pleasant to hang out with.

First of all, thanks for the compliment.

But actually, I wasn't talking about relationships at all. None of these ever reached the relationship stage.

I think I've mentioned this before, in conversation if not here, but my tendency has always been to suddenly fall for someone after I've known them awhile — like a couple of years or more.

This rarely works out. In fact, it so rarely works out that I saw a cartoon about it on the web back in November. The guy makes his impassioned confession of adoration to his long-time platonic friend, and she responds with a sweeping condemnation of the guy's whole life — based entirely on his inability to provide conflict and drama — that I swear is an almost word-for-word recitation of what I had been told, and told more than once.

Part of the cartoon guy's problem - and mine — was that the guy's friend was a drama queen. She didn't want a 'relationship,' as I understand the word. She wanted some guy who would keep her life in constant upheaval so she could dish to her girlfriends about how dramatic it all was.

This, unfortunately, is the kind of woman I always fall for. Sometimes it's evident right from the start, and thanks to therapy and accumulated life experience, I can keep myself out of harm's way. But once in awhile, the signs are so subtle that I don't see them consciously until after I've already formed some emotional attachment.

So, here's what I know: if I find myself strongly attracted to a woman I've known for awhile, I've made a bad choice and I need to walk away. Once in awhile, I decide, ‘to hell with it, let’s see what happens.’ And the results are always the same — nothing you could call a 'relationship'.

I am too old for this stuff now.

Speaking of Bad Relationship Experiences

Teenager Passes Out Marrying Cow He Had Sex With

“In his defence, Alit admitted to the act of bestiality but claimed the cow, which he believed was a young and beautiful woman, had wooed him with flattering compliments.”

What kind of beer do they sell in Bali, anyway?