Coyote Tracks

Pain

2012-02-08T15:11:00.000-08:00

Everybody has known pain, or will, of some kind or another, and at some time or another. Some have known physical pain, mental anguish, some emotional pain, or psychic trauma. And some have known it all. The pain of a body being broken or traumatized, diseased, or worn out; the pain of a lost love, splintered family, or a broken promise; the pain of shattered dreams, a broken spirit, or the loss of inspiration. Most of us have had loss. And loss is pain. If we have not, however, we will. It is inevitable, like the tide ebbs behind the flow.

My pain is not yours, nor yours mine, but we share the experience, nevertheless. It is part of what connects us as a human family. Maybe I cannot relate to your poverty, or to your wealth, your station in life, politics, religion, or lifestyle; but I can relate to your pain whether I know of it specifically or not. I can understand yours, not necessarily the circumstances, but the pain, and maybe even feel it, specifically because I’ve had my own. It is part of the way, and part of the reason, that people find healing. I can carry my own pain alone, and for a very long time if necessary. But when someone in my life, or a stranger even, shares even a small part of that pain, for no matter how brief of a moment, it can diminish its devastating impact in a very measurable way. We need each other like that.
We all do.

Pain might feel arbitrary, but it’s not. I may wonder why I have this kind of pain, and you have that kind. But I believe that our own particular pain chooses us for a purpose. I don’t know why I believe that, but I do. It is up to each of us to divine the intent of its presence in our lives. It is part of what will enable our learning, and our healing. We are sometimes able to come to a conclusion on our own, but, more often than not, it takes the company, the counsel, and the involvement of others.

Pain has a way of humbling us, and providing an opportunity for a deeper connection with the rest of the human race.
I hope you’re managing the worst of your own pain.
And, if not, I wish for you the comfort of others.

Give Me Dogs And Frisbees

2012-02-06T10:12:00.000-08:00

I, like a hundred zillion other people watched the Super Bowl. Good game, I thought, although I didn’t really care who won.
But the halftime show? Well, it was Madonna: What would one expect besides the most pompous, self-aggrandizing, bloated tribute to self and excess that one could ever hope to produce.

And I just want to ask, “Is this really what our culture has become? Giving this kind of platform to this kind of person?
As I heard somebody say after enduring the torturous show, “PLEASE, GIVE ME DOGS AND FRISBEES.”
I cannot agree more.

In my humble opinion, how satisfying, and appropriate, was the very final second of the performance when Madonna flushed herself down the toilet, or whatever that apparatus was with the smoke and trap door. I don’t know about you, but I just wanted to stand up and cheer the symbolism of the moment. In any event, she was gone, disappearing suddenly, and hopefully for good.

Oh, and the Madonna and World peace display? Hey Madonna, how bout’ you start treating the people in, and around, your own life with a little dignity and respect, before you try to unite the rest of the world around your sleazy Kabbalah world peace act. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, getting people to love each other like you love others is more likely to lead to continued world conflict than it ever would to world peace.

Peace/Out

Vulture Peak

2012-01-22T00:47:00.000-08:00

'Wilderness', the novel, is in the final stage of being readied for the Publisher, and should be submitted by the end of the week. It will be available soon for purchase. In the meantime, here's a small excerpt for your enjoyment.

Vulture Peak

It was a spring afternoon with soft light coming to rest on the hood of Tim’s truck, bathing his windshield in promise, and an unapologetic radiance, the kind you might be used to seeing in the early morning, or even later in the day as the light lingered. There was a calm, ethereal, glow as he moved through the naked landscape of the High Desert. It reminded him of something in a dream sequence from one of those low-key indie movies that were always winning the awards at Sundance.

Colors danced on sand canvas, cactus planted inadvertently, scattered, as if by the wind, across a vast landscape, rising like the hairs on the back of your neck would at the thought of being stranded there. Rocks lying about like treasure strewn across the ocean floor around an old shipwreck, other rocks reaching, spire-like, towards the sun, content in the knowledge of their own ancestry, and in their dominance of the landscape.

As Tim pulled into the dirt parking area for the Vulture Peak trail, he noticed Lindy under a scrub-pine tree off to the side of the trailhead. She was wearing khaki walking shorts, a soft terra cotta cotton blouse, and tan hiking boots with red laces. She was leaning forward, rear knee low to the ground, with her front knee pointing forward, stretching out her upper thigh, and lower back muscles, in a kind of scissors position. She completed the exercise, and then, standing upright, reached back to grab her foot, pulled it up to her butt, held it for a few moments to further stretch the thigh, released it back to the ground, and then did the same with the other foot. She finished up with toe-touches, bending from the waist, with palms lying flat on the top of her hiking boots.

Tim was feeling nothing short of inspired by her beauty, and the natural elegance with which she moved. She blended with the landscape like a sunrise on an eastern peak. He was delightfully lost in the enchanting apparition for a moment.
As she was rising back to the upright position, Lindy caught Tim’s eye, and waved him over. Actually, I think she caught him staring, but had the presence of mind to not let on, the grace to let him off the hook, so to speak. It was, somehow, very enabling for Tim, just to see her. He felt himself kind of excited now for the walk.

Still They Come

2012-01-09T07:30:00.000-08:00

There was a full moon tonight. Still is actually. Lighting the sky, and the way of all after-hours travelers to the planet. Not that they couldn’t find us without the moon, but you know what I mean. The darkness would inhibit some, but encourage nocturnal visitors, to be sure. Same as it’s always been.

The earth has forever been a beacon for anonymous vagabonds, mysterious drifters, vagrants, beggars, tramps and hobos. Not to mention the nameless, faceless eccentrics, unusual, peculiar, bizarre, and just plain outrageous strangers traveling the myways, the buyways, and the high ways. Some come seeking to exploit earths meandering clans, some come with cash spilling from deep pockets in fancy sharkskin suits, and some come as pied pipers bearing medicine for the masses, intoxicants to pacify, and appease, the minds of the weak.

But you’ve got to love them. You’ve got to love them all. Some for the insistence of their own benevolence, even though the evidence shows otherwise, and some for their self-delusion. Some for their alacrity, and some for their lack of pretension. Some for their innocence, and some for their savvy manipulation of the system. Still, they come, like the annual migration of holiday shoppers to the great mall of America.

The full moon will continue to light the sky for them, and the way, every 30 days, for all who wish to visit earth, as it has now become the number one vacation destination.

My New Years Revolutions 2012

2012-01-01T17:08:00.001-08:00

1. I will not take anything for granted.
If, in fact, I ever figure out exactly what that means.

2. I will let the future take care of itself. And if it doesn’t,
I will continue to live in the past until I’m confident that it will.

3. I will let bygones be bygones, since they already are anyway.

4. I will no longer hope for the best.
I will hope for the second best because that will leave some room for improvement.

5. I will leave politics to the politicians and curb my inclination to expose them. They are doing a pretty damn good job of exposing themselves.

6. I will speak only of what I know. What I don’t know can wait until I do.
Or until it just becomes readily apparent to everyone.

7. I will only think good thoughts. All of the other thoughts can be thought by more qualified thinkers than myself, whoever they are.

8. I will be grateful for what I have. And for what I don’t have.

9. I will only criticize the critical. Or those deserving of criticism. Or those who criticize those undeserving of criticism. Well, in any event, I’ll find somebody to criticize. And somebody not to criticize.

10. I will apologize to everyone I can think of this year, including myself.
That should make up for all the people who have never apologized to me, or to anyone else. For anything. Ever.

11. I will do my best to be guided by faith.
So if your faith contradicts my faith, I’ll have faith that your faith will eventually guide you to my faith, or mine to yours, so that we don’t have to disagree about faith anymore.

12. I will try to be more generous with my opinions. Which means that you might get even more sick of me in 2012 than you did in 2011.

And Have A Happy New Year.

Rocks

2011-12-24T06:51:00.000-08:00

I really like rocks.
They’re one of my favorite things.
They might even be my very favorite thing on earth.
It’s hard to explain why that is, it’s difficult for me to understand even. Something about them having been here for a long time, I think.
You don’t ever find a new rock. I don’t even know if there’s any such thing as a new rock. It seems like there’s new everything else, but rocks are always old.

New things don’t excite me that much anyway, but rocks do.
Rocks were not planned, designed, made, manufactured, or crafted.
They’ve just kind of always been here, in one form or another.
Some of them fell out of the sky, and some of them shot up out of the earth. Some of them even formed themselves right where they lay, out of minerals, stardust, and other such properties; but none of them were ever created by some clever marketer. They were not patented, and they are not advertised on late-night television. I like that about them too.

You look up ‘rock’ in the dictionary and it just says stuff about music and describes swaying back and forth in a chair, and stuff like that.

There are hard rocks, I think everybody knows that. There’s even a Hard Rock Café. But there are soft rocks as well. I’ll bet not nearly as many people know that. ‘Soft rock’ is kind of a contradiction of terms, but it is not a contradiction to a rock.

I used to bring a rock home whenever I went on a hike, or to a lake or river, to remind me of the beautiful place I’d been. Kind of like how some people buy a snow globe in every city, or country, they visit. Or some other kind of kitsch. But I eventually realized that I could never remember which rock was gathered from which place. And I never thought to date and label the rocks with a sharpie, so I stopped gathering them for that purpose. Besides, writing on a rock tends to invalidate its very character. Oh, I still gather them, but I no longer worry about where they came from.

I collect rocks on, and from around, my property, in the mountains, by the side of roads, and near rugged creeks and rivers. I know some environmentalists would have a fit over that, but the way I look at it is that those rocks were somewhere else before they were where I found them. And they’ll be somewhere else again. I’m a part of the natural cycle, and the natural re-cycle of nature, and nature tends to move things around a bit. I don’t steal from nature, I just relocate bits and pieces of it. You could say I do some landscaping, some design work, if you will.

On my own property I’ve found some giant boulders in the forest and dragged them with truck and chain up to the house because I like to look at them there. Some weigh hundreds, and even thousands of pounds. I like to walk out into my yard and see a two-ton rock that I moved by myself. It gives me great satisfaction, and it adds a pleasurable ambience to the area around the house.

I like to pick up rocks, all sizes of rock, really. I like to move them from here to there. I always have. I like to pick them up off the ground and put them into the truck, and I like to pull them out of the truck and put them back on the ground in a different place. I like the way rocks feel, and I like how they make me feel when I interact with them. I like to hold them, I like to throw them, sit on them, lean up against them, and even roll them down hills. I like to pry rocks loose from the earth. I like to climb rocks, and I like to build a campfire up against a big granite rock wall at night in the wilderness. Don’t ask me why. I couldn’t really tell you. It’s just that rocks tend to make everything right with my world.
It’s an ancient presence.

I also like to make things out of rocks. Fire pits, yard borders, sculptures, garden areas. I’ve always wanted to build a rock house by a river, and planned to collect all the rocks from the river as I built it. I probably won’t be doing that now because I’m getting pretty old, but I want to.
I’m sure I’ll always want to.

With the arrival of the Christmas season I often find myself thinking about the Rock of Ages. I even catch myself singing the old song sometimes.

Rock on.

The Brass Ring

2011-12-21T09:03:00.000-08:00

Whenever I have something to say about the younger generations I know that I can immediately be labeled as an old guy who either doesn’t know anything about the younger generations, or who might know something about them but doesn’t really get it.

Well, one of the reasons I embrace the moniker of The Old Coyote is to just get that out of the way right up front. Not only am I old, but I’m also getting older every day. If that disqualifies me from valid observation of life, so be it. I happen to know, however, that I know a little more about life than those coming up behind me, as they will know a little more than those coming up behind them.
But if you really believe that age should disqualify my observation, you must then also disqualify my experience. And in that case you should disqualify your own as well, and not bother reading anything else I have to say.

And here is what I have to say today.
“The brass ring cannot be attained.”

No matter how many times one goes around the carousel of life, no matter how many different animals one may ride, no matter how many reinventions of one’s self, a person cannot, as a life goal, seek the brass ring and hope to find happiness, fulfillment, contentment, honor, dignity, or love.

It is never to be found on the carousel. It is anathema to the very concept. The carousel holds two illusions. The first is that if you grab the brass ring you’ll be happy. And the second is that if you missed the ring on the last pass, you’ll get it the next time around.
The ring is a promise, but it is a promise broken, invalidated if you will, even before it’s given. The wise among us know that intuitively, and the fortunate among us have been taught, and embrace, the truth of its lie.

Life is not a party, as many in today’s world seek for it to be. Life is a serious endeavor, punctuated with degrees of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain. Those whose primary motivation in life is to party, to have wealth, stuff, recognition, prestige, celebrity, position, or power, will wake up to an empty life, a life bereft of everything that matters. The sad part about it is that they will not realize its full emptiness until later in life. It is the modern day equivalent of ‘keeping up with the Joneses', and it plays itself out today just as it always has.

As many young people find themselves always ‘needing’ the newest ‘this’, the latest ‘that’, the next ‘must have’, they also find themselves needing another drink, another toke, another hook-up, another party to satisfy the emptiness, to be OK with themselves. Every person of substance knows that those things, those endeavors, and those behaviors, don’t satisfy, but rather, just numb the senses, subjugate the pain, and prolong the inevitable.

I do not write these things to judge, or to condemn, young people. I was young once. But I am not here to be their friend either. I am here to show the way. I express what I know because I care deeply about them, as individuals, and as collective generations. I care about their long-term wellbeing, much more so than with their temporal gratification. I want them to wake up down the road and be satisfied that they have made wise, and responsible choices, that their actions, when young, will serve to enhance their overall lives, rather than to inhibit them.

True value in life is in a commitment to what you have, and to what is within reasonable reach of your means, rather than in a compulsive drive to acquire whatever you can get. It is true of relationships with people, as well as lifestyle. Value is in embracing love, and family, finding deeply satisfying work, and an appreciation of the divine, the God around whom all life actually revolves. Honor, respect, dignity, fulfillment, contentment, and, hopefully, even happiness, will follow. Happiness is not guaranteed to anybody, but seeking the brass ring only ensures that it will never be attained.

Do not believe the happiness images that celebrities, rock stars, socialites, and their publicists, attach to their lives. They have the wealth, the mansions, the adulation, beautiful people on their arms, sex at their command, enormous fame and notoriety; and they are, for the most part, pretty lonely, ambiguous, and unhappy people.

The party only lasts until closing time, and then the lights just dim again. They always do. They always will. Unconscious people tend to repeat the same familiar patterns, thinking there is satisfaction to be found. Don’t be unconscious, and don’t be fool enough to just repeat your own futile patterns.
Be smart, and be true to truth.

Our time on earth is short, and much too valuable to live with a shallow and cavalier ambition. Life is the greatest treasure one can be given, and it has already been given in abundance to each of us. It could never have been acquired on our own. It is not a brass ring. It just does not work that way. Take seriously what you do with the gift of your life.

The brass ring is slippery, and all but impossible to hold.
Believe me, it is not even worth the ride.

If you know somebody chasing the brass ring, and you want to help, please forward this to them.

And have a meaningful holiday this year.

I Walked Into The Past

2011-12-12T08:46:00.000-08:00

I walked on the beach this morning, the same beach I walked on when I was a teen-ager. It all felt familiar, like nothing had really changed. And, in fact, nothing had changed.

Now, forty-five years later, the tide still ebbed and flowed. The waves still rolled towards shore and tumbled into whitewater like they always have. Seaweed floated on the surface of the sea, some of it standing vertical, not too far offshore. Pelicans patrolled an emerging sky just outside my reach, or within it had I just had arms a little longer, and dolphins lazed about playfully in the glassy calm ocean like children frolicking on grass.

People looked the same as well; mothers with babies, the surfers, the beachcombers, fishermen, and the beach patrol. The moms and dads, they were there, with two kids, racing the water to deeper sand in a futile attempt to keep their feet from getting wet. Everything was as it had been, and how it will be in the foreseeable future.

I walked the length of the pier, as I used to do, bought a corn dog at the bait and tackle shop, about a quarter mile out to sea, then sat and watched young lovers stealing time from their hurried, and harried, lives, time they finally found to set aside just for themselves.

Clouds drifted by overhead, slowly, reflecting the pace of the people on the pier.
I drifted in and out of reminiscence, present at times, conscious, and at others just barely touching the fringes of life in the now.

I walked into the past this morning. It all felt familiar, like nothing had really changed. And, in fact, nothing had changed, except myself.
And the cost of a corn dog.

Sometimes I See Pictures

2011-12-07T12:49:00.000-08:00

The park was covered with glass, and the children’s playground was dangerous. Tiny feet, bare in the summer warmth of days, hobbled like old men, flesh torn with fresh and numerous wounds, the jugular heel drained of its own purpose. Tender feet bouncing from here to there on sand bleeding from within, clumping like the bitter winds of winter.

And the land mines scattered about, the banned mines still ready to detonate between the toes of those innocents, between the souls of their feet and the soles of their shoes, those children from homes just down the road, who came to play with friends, without concern for the grownups, or the growing machinations and power grabs of ominous men who insinuate themselves into wonderland, the wicked men who separate these kids from their own dreams.

Sharp knives, waiting by the dribbling creek, lying in wait, really, glinting in the noonday sun, with every sinister purpose, camouflaged well behind twisted smiles of feigned propriety, content in their intent to slash the sky, to rip the soul asunder, and from under the feet of the innocent.
The illusion of decency in a world gone mad.

It seems there’s very little for the children to look forward to these days.
Sometimes I just see pictures and have to write them down.

A Beacon In The Night

2011-11-30T22:19:00.000-08:00

The wind is blowing like a freight train howling down the mountain.
The trees are bent like personalities of the deranged.
The sound and the fury encompass all but the quiet space beneath my blanket.
The ferocity akin to the hatred the wicked hold in cold hearts for the righteous.
Limbs torn from trees like arms from their sockets.
Pebbles blazing trails across the sky like a million tiny meteorites on acid.
Patio furniture upended like the best laid plans of the shrinking middle class.
Spanish tiles clinging precariously to the roof as if desperately afraid to fall.
Windows rattling like the bones of young soldiers preparing for battle.
Lights extinguishing themselves as the power goes down.
Moon rising over the bedlam like a beacon in the night.

Oh My God!

2011-11-20T08:08:00.001-08:00

“Oh my God!” is by far the most used, and obviously overused, exclamation ever spoken in the history of our planet, or at least in the U.S.
How do I know this? Because it is spoken by almost everybody, of every age, and in almost any given situation. You say it, I say it, we all say it, although you may not even realize it about yourself.

What’s interesting to me is that the expression is used by Atheists who profess there to be no God. It is proclaimed by agnostics as well, which ought to, at the very least, suitably answer their own dilemma for them.

With God on the lips of almost everybody alive, I can only presume that God must also be on the minds of those same people, whether consciously or unconsciously. I think it’s safe to say that we do not usually speak of what we do not first think of.

I do not find it at all ironic that the exclamation has been building to a crescendo at about the same rate that the world has been going mad; socially, economically, politically, spiritually, and even geographically with the bizarre weather upheavals.

I went to Catholic school as a child, first through ninth grade. Today I do not practice, nor do I espouse, any religion. Those of you who know me, or who have read my writings over time, understand that about me. For the most part I do not remember Catholic school fondly, but, fortunately, there are some good things left over from the education that I appreciate, and that will always remain with me. One example is the prayer with which I first became aware of the expression, ‘Oh My God’.

As I still remember it after all these years:

“Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because of thy just punishments, but most of all because they have offended Thee, my God, who art all-good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more, and to avoid the near occasion of sin.
Amen.”

Life changing, to be sure.
Feel free to use it if you’d like.
Nobody even needs to know.

The Veteran

2011-11-11T12:58:00.001-08:00

-You wore a uniform for me while I complained about my job.

-You saluted your commander while I argued with my boss.

-You marched in line for me while I got high at the festivals and clubs.

-You learned to be a warrior so I wouldn’t have to fight.

-You embraced a grueling boot camp while I enjoyed the beaches.

-You froze at night on the battlefield while I soaked myself in a nice warm tub.

-You ate MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat) in the field while I barbecued chicken in my own back yard.

-You stood in front of me while bullets were flying.

-You put yourself at risk while I cowered behind my ideology.

-You bled on the ground for me while I spilled red wine on the dining room floor.

-You watched your friends get killed while I watched movies about them getting killed.

-You were afraid for me while I hid my own fear behind intellectual arrogance.

-You were scared in battle while I was just scared of being alone.

-You were psychologically scarred by war while I was scarred by self-indulgence.

-You were wounded for me while I was only wounded in love.

-You wrote letters to the loved-ones of your fallen friends while I wrote Christmas cards to family.

-You sacrificed your future for me while I sacrificed nothing in return.

-You left your family so I could be with mine.

-You died for me and I have never shed a tear.

I will not forget you now.

Death

2011-11-08T08:59:00.000-08:00

Since my fathers passing I’ve been thinking about death, more so than usual.
What it is, and why it might exist.
Many personal feelings have been percolating within me,
some of which I may choose to share with you in the future.
In the meantime, here are some of my more general thoughts on death,
in no particular order of significance.

Death is the ultimate pain medication.
Death is the best way of getting away from it all.
Death is a man’s way of scouting out the hereafter for everybody else.
Death is a way of finally moving past the inevitable.
Death is a cancellation of the reality show.
Death is a way of circumventing the high cost of health insurance.
Death is what finally puts everything in the past.
Death is the elimination of anticipation.
Death is the end of everybody’s expectations.
Death is winter after the fall.
Death is a pretty good indicator of having been alive.
Death is a certain eventuality.
Death is the end of things to come.
Death is proof that no person is more important than anybody else.
Death is the ultimate reward.
Death is separation from uncertainty.
Death is a reboot.
Death is the cold embrace of a total stranger.
Death is the warm embrace of love.
Death is an as-of-yet unknown equation.
Death is the sum of our fears.
Death is the brass ring finally in hand.
Death is staying down for the count.
Death is freedom from anxiety.
Death is never having to justify one’s self again.
Death ‘is just another word for nothing left to do’.
Death is a means to an end.
Death is an end with meaning.
Death is the last word in the big disagreement.
Death is our birthright.
Death is our first conscious impression.
Death is our last unconscious act.
Death is our final expression.
Death is our first authentic glimpse of life.
Death is the last chip left in the bag.
Death is a test of our spiritual equilibrium.
Death is the end of the pretending.
Death is a return to innocence.
Death is the elimination of disorientation.
Death is escape from procrastination.
Death is the sum total of all things left unsaid.
Death is where the rubber leaves the road.
Death is where the trail meets the great unknown.
Death is where the wilderness ends.
Death is potential left untapped.
Death is life exhausted.
Death is a promise kept.
Death is separation from the herd.
Death is the culmination of one’s aspirations.
Death is truth in advertising.
Death is the redistribution of life.
Death is everybody’s right, but few people’s wish.
Death is the ultimate happenstance.
Death is a matter of fact.
Death is the loss of everything but regret.
Death is a final apology, or a last denial.
Death is a tired mans last request.
Death is an ageing soul’s relief.
Death is redemption from the judgment of life.
Death is a frightful proposition.
Death is a beautiful thing.
Death is the sudden disappearance of someone we love.
Death is the illumination of their impact on our life.
Death is the opportunity for a good do-over.
Death is a new opportunity.
Death is going it alone.
Death is life personified.
Death is a good rest in peace.
Death is a resurrection of the will to live.
Death is natures way of making room in the world for someone else.

In A Couple Of Hours

2011-10-26T11:20:00.000-07:00

In a couple of hours my family and I will be discontinuing the life support system that is currently keeping my father alive.

He is eighty-six years old, and has been in ICU in a worsening physical condition without hope of recovery.
I’ve been actively wondering what in life has prepared me for participation
in such a monumental decision, or for the expected emotional aftermath of its finality.

And I arrive at the conclusion that, in fact, my father has prepared me for it.
I don’t yet know how, or even if, any such preparation was deliberate on his part,
or just a byproduct of his general influence on my life.

I only know that I derive great strength from my father. Not necessarily because of his own strengths, or even his weaknesses, not necessarily from his triumphs, or his failures, but from the idea that he has survived until now.

Life has thrown a lot of junk at my father, as it has done to many of us, but his being here this far down the road, requiring my participation in his passing, my permission to leave, if you will, has somehow enabled me to survive as well.

My father never complained about the past years he’s spent being physically compromised. He focused, rather, on being as little of a burden on my mother as possible.

I walked alone to get coffee early this morning. Thinking of my father, I fingered his watch, newly strapped on my left wrist, my face wet with tears too long held for him, and I felt the overwhelming privilege of being able to relieve him of his burden in just a couple of short hours from now.

My father will be free.
And he will be with my older brother, Mike.
I know he’s missed my brother.

I’ll survive as long as I can for my sons,
knowing they will one day be prepared to relieve me
of my own burden.

What He Said About Hate

2011-09-28T08:48:00.001-07:00

I heard songwriter John McCrea, of the band ‘Cake’, being interviewed recently. I’d heard of the band before, but was not really familiar with their music, and had never known the songwriter. Anyway, it’s not John’s name, or even the band, that’s relevant here, but what he had to say about hate in the interview.

Referring to his songs, and his writing, the host said to him, “There seems to be a lot of fun, a lot of playfulness in your songs.” To which John responded, “No, not really. It’s actually hate masquerading as playfulness.”

He went on to say something to the effect of, “With all the enmity and divisiveness in the world today, with all the acidity and toxicity, I don’t want to add to it by repeated overt expressions of anger.” “That”, he suggested, “wouldn’t do anybody any good.” He also said that he’s got to be able to express his rage, and chooses to express it playfully. In other words, he uses a lot of sarcasm, humor, and bizarre and unusual images in his songwriting, rather than directly attacking the object of his scorn.

Personally, I think Mr. McCrea was stretching his own truth a little bit by saying that his songs contain a lot of hate masquerading as playfulness. I think it’s more powerlessness, and frustration, than hate, that he’s expressing. He just did not strike me as a hateful guy. Quite the contrary, really, he impressed me as a thoughtful and intelligent man.

But on the subject of hate, he said that, “Hate begins with a wide arc, and over time the arc shrinks down on its way back to oneself.” He implied we might start out hating some figurehead, like the president, but then go on to hate the ideological politicians who support him, and even the constituents who put him in power. From there we might hate the celebrities that share the same ideology. Well, the arc keeps shrinking, getting more personal, and closer to home, until we hate our boss, the acquaintances with whom we might have a disagreement, our uncle, brother, and ultimately ourselves. He reiterated how hate begins a long way from home, but as it works its way back-around to us it, invariably, gives birth to self-hate, self-loathing if you will. Self-loathing will then choke the individual like a boa constrictor squeezing the life out of its hapless victim.

Well, from what I heard from him I liked Mr. McCrea, more as a person, though, than as a songwriter. But, I’ve got to say I disagree with his assessment of the origins of hate. It all sounded good when he was saying it, and, I must admit, it made me sit up and think, but I believe he really has got the whole damn thing backwards. I don’t fault him for that, however, because it seems to me to be emblematic of having grown up in a very conflicted culture.

I believe that hate, on a broader scale, actually begins with self-hate, self-loathing, rather than just culminating in it. Oh it ends up there as well, but I think our actions and behaviors, even from a relatively early age, if left unaccounted for, unresolved, un-atoned for, unchanged, build up within us to produce self-hatred. As vulnerable human beings, I think it begins choking the breath from us from the very beginning of our conscious accountability. The age, however, of that consciousness, and accountability, comes at a different time in every individual life. The important thing is that it has, most certainly, been choking us for a long time, and if left unacknowledged, it will end up reducing us to pathetic irrelevance.

Hate makes the jump from self to the far reaches of our field of vision, and experience, to those we know of, but whom we don’t actually really know. We kind of practice our hate out there where it’s safe. Those people are really just irrelevant substitutes for the people who really bother us, the ones we know, and who know us, the best.
Eventually, like John McCrea said, it all works its way back to the origin of the hate, which, again, is one’s self. It’s just that, unlike John, like I’ve already said, I believe it begins there as well.

On a related note: “You’re a hater” gets thrown around today like rocks at the windows of a vacant house on a deserted street. And to make matters worse, those rocks get thrown by adults with the same emotional acumen as the kids bent on emulating them. Pointing the hate finger is just the modern-day, but classic, denial of one’s own self-hatred. Any fool can see that about these accusers who are bereft of both common sense, and the ability for self-analysis.
I’m not fooled by the accusations these people make.
I hope you won’t be either.

I write sometimes about politicians, celebrities, psychic thugs, pseudo spiritual gurus, and narcissistic cultural leaders who believe, somehow, that they’re all that. And I write about them in often unflattering terms. But, as those of you who know me understand, I do not hate them. I could not hate them, they’re much too transparent to hate. I hate the impact, and the influence, that they, without conscience, or personal consequence, far too often visit upon our culture, on the people who I care very much about; particularly the young, the naive and the impressionable.

But I do hate narcissism in all of its guises, and disguises. I hate dishonesty, and I hate greed. I do not hate the people who embody those qualities, I pity them, and I wish personal redemption for each of them.

Oh, and what about myself?
Well, in case you’re wondering, “No, I do not hate myself.”
I take account of, atone for, and change behaviors of mine that conflict with love.

Generally speaking, I love, and I am loved.
There is no room in love for self-hatred.
Love will not allow it.

Chaz, Dancing With The Starz

2011-09-05T07:57:00.000-07:00

I want to say that I don’t know Chaz Bono, and I’ve never really watched Dancing With The Starz.

Now, like many people, I’ve seen a few minutes of the show here and there while channel surfing, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than two or three minutes of it at one sitting. I’m just really not interested in celebrities, other than for the influence, or impact, they might have on our culture. If I’m going to watch dancing I’d honestly rather watch people that I know nothing about. I find them to be far more interesting than the cultivated images of celebrities who are constantly being force-fed to us like fruitcake during the holiday season.

Chaz Bono, however, is different. She’s not really a celebrity, she’s an enigma.

I know she’ll be a contestant on Dancing With The Starz because I’ve inadvertently kept up on the guest list for the show. I’ve never intended to, but it’s almost impossible not to, short of never watching television, or turning on a computer.

Having said that, I want to offer my impression of Chaz being recruited as a dancer. As you probably know, Chaz is the daughter of the famous hippy pop duo, Sonny and Cher, and she’s recently undergone gender reassignment surgery (sex change) in order to begin identifying as a man, rather than as a woman.

In any event, there is always an agenda connected to the producer’s choices of who will be invited to dance on the show. And, although that agenda might look political, and many people believe that it is, I’m here to say that it is not. It is always financial. Every guest decision is based solely on the probability of getting ratings, on how many viewers a ‘celebrity’ is likely to bring to the show, on how much money can be made from their appearance. In the case of Chaz Bono, sHe has been heavy in the media recently for her transformation, so there’s a lot of curiosity about her. Why not invite her, why not exploit her new condition; why not make some money off of, what has been, her personal tragedy.

I’ve been reading some opinion pieces, along with some reader responses to the whole controversy. Needless to say, there is some pretty heated expression about her addition to the cast, and that, ultimately, is what has drawn my interest. The different perspectives, the different points of view, the different ideologies connected to the approval, or disapproval of her inclusion.

As you can imagine, people’s opinions run the gamut from considering Chaz to be disgraceful, a failed human being, to her being a champion of individuality, and her inclusion being a brave and compassionate gesture by the producers of DWTS on behalf of the transgender ‘community’. I might add that I have yet to read a comment about the exploitive nature of the producer’s decision.

Anyway, the problem I have with the whole situation is that it is bound to be clothed in a celebration of Chaz’s courageous re-emergence, her self-discovery, if you will, even though she was chosen for ratings, and only for ratings. I don’t know if she can dance or not, and I don’t think it really matters. People will watch in record numbers just to see how a woman dances as a man.

Maybe for Chaz it is a courageous re-emergence. Maybe the whole gender reassignment surgery is a bold statement of re-emergence, a separation from her lifelong problems (her parents), the problems that have clung to her like leaches since early childhood. But it is not a celebration of self-discovery by any means. Chaz has not discovered self, she has just created a new persona, an identity she can hide behind to protect her from her lingering pain.

Life cannot have been easy for Chaz. With just the little I know of her life, it is a life that few of us would have survived intact. It is a life we would neither have asked for, or willingly embraced. But it was imposed upon her, and she had to live with it. If you think differently, go to Wikipedia and read about the phenomena that was Sonny and Cher. Then read about the troubled life of Chaz Bono. The bio’s don’t necessarily make her life out to be troubled, but it certainly doesn’t take a genius to be able to read between the lines.

For God’s sake, her parents named their baby girl ‘Chastity’. What did they think was going to happen to that precious little girl?
In the big picture, Chaz is not so much an icon of individuality, as she is an example of a child exploited, of a life gone tragically wrong, and of a confused and wounded woman ultimately doing the best she can to feel better about herself.

What saddens me is that Chastity never got the chance to have a grounded and well-balanced life. Her parents never gave her that. She had to become Chaz in hopes of finding happiness.
And now it will all play itself out before our curious eyes on Dancing With The Starz. The network, to be sure, will make a boatload of money from her pain.

So I’m just saying, everybody, especially those of you who wish to condemn her for her choices, “Give Chaz Bono some empathy, the kind you might like for yourself if you were in her shoes. And give her long-troubled soul a break.

She’s still Chastity beneath it all.
And I hope that someday she will end up
truly dancing with the stars.

Feeling Thoughtful

2011-08-09T10:59:00.000-07:00

Feeling vs. thinking in today’s world.
I’m feeling thoughtful today, so I thought I’d give you my thoughts on both.

I know that the thoughts I am about to write constitute a convoluted, thorny, and entangled topic, but, oh well.
Notice I said the ‘thoughts’ I am about to write, rather than the ‘feelings’ I am about to express.

First let me say, “A significant percentage of any population is psychologically damaged in some way or another.”
That’s right.

I don’t have any numbers in front of me because they’d be impossible to quantify, but there are an inordinate number of people who’s thinking is unduly influenced by the damage they have incurred in their lives; damage that can go all the way back to childhood, or which could have occurred much more recently.
By ‘unduly influenced’ I mean inhibited, restricted, stunted, compromised, and subjugated to one’s own feelings. That’s right, subjugated to one’s feelings.
What we are subject to we are dominated by, whether we are able to see it for ourselves or not. Unless the damage is acknowledged, and dealt with responsibly, it will continue to enable our feelings and repress our ability to reason.

The restricted development of one’s intellectual capacity enables the further cultivation of, and reliance upon, feelings above everything else. How one feels becomes the primary motivation in one’s life, determining relationships, social constructs, careers, spiritual paths, and even one’s politics.

Damage to one’s soul, or psyche almost always affects one’s emotional well being, invariably stunting the intellectual growth of the individual. When the emotional quotient of a person rises to a level of dominance over thoughtfulness the person can very easily become stuck in his, or her, pain (feelings). It can lead them on a lasting search for ways to feel better, to feel good, and often ends up with the individual embracing an extremely skewed relationship with reality. It becomes an ‘us’ (the wounded) vs. ‘them’ (the dominant) world. The individual will see things in black and white (good vs. bad, the privileged vs. the disadvantaged, the sensitive vs. the uncaring. Everyone in jail is innocent, rich people are evil, poor people are righteous, minorities are special). These convoluted feelings solidify themselves as enlightened thinking, and ultimately become the adopted politics of the wounded.

Feelings are good to have. They are what keep us from becoming cardboard cutouts of actual human beings. But the ability to think for ourselves, and to reason, is what allows us to navigate our way into, and through, beneficial situations; and away from, or out of, circumstances, belief systems, and ideologies, that would set us back or do us harm.

Many people are locked into the feeling that what they do feel is the most accurate indicator of how things actually are. But that application of feelings invariably trumps logic and reason for the individual much like suicide trumps the continuation of life. Being locked into one’s feelings is the life equivalent of being stuck in the mud. Eventually one has to think and reason their way out of the swamp. Feelings will only keep a person stuck there (It’s not fair that I’m stuck in the mud).

The cause of psychic damage, which ultimately provokes people to embrace their feelings over a more general thoughtfulness, is as varied as the kind of weeds you’d find growing in an old vacant lot. It can include such circumstances as an abusive, or domineering, parent, divorce, an immoral, or exploitive teacher or caregiver, and drug or alcohol abuse. It can take shape in someone who has been the recipient of violence, unforeseen tragedy, lack of control over circumstances, religious indoctrination, poverty, and, yes, even privilege. The change-over from thinking to feeling most naturally occurs in, or around, adolescence, as young people experience rejection, isolation, alienation etc., but it can find its way into the DNA of just about anybody, at any age, who ultimately chooses to regard their feelings as more important than someone else’s capacity for reason.

Ironically, young people fall back on feelings just as they’ve begun to become more adept at deductive reasoning. Feelings charge in and take over like a bad disease. Adolescents have already learned that the world is a pretty scary place, that it is a major challenge to navigate, and that it requires some knowledge and experience to establish, embrace, strengthen, or maintain, one’s own position on any given matter.

But feelings, well, they require no proof, no tangible experience, no conclusive arguments, and no logic whatsoever. Feelings can be used as weapons to disarm an adversary, as barricades to hide behind, and as substitutes for actual wisdom in almost any situation. They can give the holder a sense of power and control. Feelings cannot be questioned, they cannot be challenged, and they cannot be denied. Logic cannot do battle against them, and reason cannot root itself in their shallow soil.

It is understandable for the young to become feelings oriented. And it is even understandable for them to get stuck there for a while. It is, however, disconcerting, when one grows into adulthood but still maintains a feelings-based orientation. By then it has become seriously inhibitive to the persons development. As it becomes more culturally acceptable to hang onto such an orientation, society eventually becomes as dysfunctional as the individual adolescent.
Just look around.

It is dangerous for one’s politics to emerge from such an immature foundation. It is dangerous, and it is lazy. It is certainly not logic and reason that prompts many of us to elect our representatives in Congress, and in the White House. It is feelings. The savvy political manipulator’s know that (Change we can believe in).
Unfortunately, thinking is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.
As I’ve said, “Just look around”.

Feelings are not something to take pride in, to trumpet, to celebrate, to hold as conclusive, to wallow in, or to foist upon anybody else.
They are, however sadly, a very safe place for the stunted, for the compromised, and for the immature to reside until they can find their way out of such profound, and prolonged, subjugation.

For the mature adult, feelings are something to be managed with skill, and with every good intention.
They are never to be scattered like rice at a wedding.

The 19th of July

2011-07-19T10:16:00.000-07:00

I was born on this day a very long time ago. But I’m not the only one. There were many born on this day that you may have heard of, and many more that you probably have not. I don’t remember much about being born, only that I was late, that I didn’t want to leave the womb, and that, ultimately, I was extracted. Well, I don’t really even remember that, it’s just what I’ve been told.

I do remember, however, what life’s been like since the day of my birth. Probably a lot like yours. Some ups and downs. Some joy and sorrow. Some laughter and some tears. Some thrills and some bitter disappointments. Throw in all the other cliché’s on the list and I’m certain you’ll recognize my life as your own. Maybe all that’s different is that you were born on a different day than I was. The rest could be quite interchangeable.

We’ve all faced challenges. We’ve passed some of them, and failed miserably at others. We’ve recovered from defeat, and risen up on our feet again only to be knocked back down. We’ve stood again on wobbly legs, and fallen over on our faces. Sometimes somebody has helped us up, and sometimes we’ve had to summon the strength, and the courage, on our own. In any event, as we all know by now, life happens to us while we’re living.

Each of us has turned left when we should’ve gone right, gone forward when we should’ve turned back, retreated when we should’ve advanced, looked down when we should’ve looked up, stood our ground when we should’ve been moving, or given up when we should’ve stood our ground.

Each of us has taken when we should’ve given, been angry when we should’ve been gracious, been jealous when we should’ve been glad. Every one of us has been vocal when we should’ve been quiet, and silent when we should’ve had something to say.

Every one of us would take back something we’ve done, or said, something that hurt somebody, or that we’ve been embarrassed or humiliated by. Each of us has been ashamed of our shortcomings, and proud of our accomplishments, even if we are the only one’s to know of them. We each share birth, and life, with only the day being different.

When I think about being born on the 19th of July, a very long time ago, I also realize that I have been born anew every day since then, given repeated opportunity for divine alignment, given fresh breath to breathe, given time to get things right.

Given more, even, than I would have ever asked for.

The Buffalo

2011-06-26T06:09:00.000-07:00

(An excerpt from my novel, "Wilderness").

We’d intended to have breakfast in bed, and spend a lazy morning lying around in the crisp morning air while San Francisco slowly woke up around us. We’d planned on enjoying the breaking of dawn together, and the swelling warmth of the sun as it rose over the rooftops of the neighborhoods off to the east. It had shaped up to be a brilliant beginning to a Saturday, and because the Richmond district is considerably elevated from the downtown area of San Francisco, from my rooftop we could see all the way across the Bay to the Berkeley Hills.

Since we already had a good start on the day, Marty and I decided to go see the buffalo over on the west end of Golden Gate Park, and then take a leisurely walk out to Ocean Beach, and the Lands End trails from there. We threw Wag in the Jeep, jumped in behind him, and hit the still quiet streets of San Francisco. Because hardly anybody else was even out of bed yet, we felt like bandits in the process of stealing the best part of everybody else’s day. We stopped in at Royal Grounds on Geary Blvd. at 17th for orange juice and bagels, then just a couple of minutes later pulled quietly off the road near the buffalo enclosure in the Park.

Marty had never been out there before, but it had been a regular destination for me for several years. I’d always go in the early morning, although every once in a while I’d stop by in the late evening. I’d usually ride my bike, or run, if I felt particularly energetic. It always helped me work out accumulated stress, and I really enjoyed the personal interaction with these magnificent creatures. There was never anyone else around. In all the time that I’d been visiting the buffalo I might have encountered other people fewer times than I could count on the proverbial fingers of one hand. It was the best-kept secret in all of San Francisco, and I felt good to share it with Marty.

She was breathless as we walked up to the pasture, and as the buffalo began calmly migrating over towards us she whispered to me that she hoped she doesn’t wet her pants. She was beside herself with awe, and a not-too-well-concealed excitement. I pointed Napoleon out to her. He was the smallest male, but had the biggest self-identity. Ego, if you will. In his mind he was Sasquatch, he was Moses on the Mountain, he was the Sun God, he was Geronimo, and Chief Joseph too.
I never knew his real name. Might even be Napoleon, for all I know.

Silent half-snorts of warm breath in the cool morning air made the scene more a surreal painting than a private gathering of man and beast. These were creatures that looked you in the eye when communicating with you, unlike many of the two-legged variety I encounter throughout the regular course of my usual day. There is an ancient wisdom actually visible, a soul behind the eyes that is unmistakable in these animals. There is also a sadness, and an expectation of understanding that few other creatures would have of you.

We extended our hands through the fence. A couple of them licked Marty’s fingers, and she said she wished she could hug them. She said they possess such incredible warmth, and such accessibility for being such magnificent animals, and that she really had no idea they were so enormous. We interacted physically with them as best we could, then became quiet, both of us, transfixed really, as we spent another half hour just looking, just speaking with them silently, as one would commune with oneself, or with an angel of God, on top of a very sacred mountain.

We left feeling different, as I always have after time in the company of the buffalo.
Marty said she understood why I’ve always come here.
She said she’d like to come back with me again, as soon as we possibly could.

The Window

2011-05-30T08:05:00.000-07:00

I like the way that in the morning, when the light’s just right, I can look through my window and see a deep reflection of what’s behind me. Oh, I can see what’s in front of me through the window as well; the outside, the forest, the meadow, the sky, the sunrise, but the window holds another dimension that allows me to see what’s behind me in the house. I see what’s in back of me, but I see it in front of me, if you can picture that. It’s deep in the foreground of the glass. It’s different than standing in front of a mirror. In the mirror, I see myself, and what’s behind me, but I cannot see what’s in front of me. The mirror is in the way. The window, however, offers a blending of the front and the back, the future and the past. The present even.

It’s a good perspective to have in our lives. If we see what’s ahead of us, and forget what’s behind us, we will probably make the same mistakes we made when passing through the first time around, but they’ll get worse with repetition. And, if we only see the past, but fail to see the future, we will never rise from the ashes of regret. I believe that’s called depression. A place where many people end up being stuck these days.

Our culture conditions us to be enamored of the image we find of ourselves in the mirror. And we cultivate that image incessantly, like a cat grooms his own coat. That’s called narcissism. But Narcissus, from Greek mythology, enamored of his own image in a reflection pool, could not tear himself away from that image. Much like we’ve become today, more concerned with how we appear, than with character, or with what we actually accomplish.

Personally, I prefer looking through a good window.

The Rapture Ideation

2011-05-23T09:55:00.000-07:00

Just as I suspected, I was left behind.
And so was everybody else.

As Pastor Harold Camping, founder of Family Radio, had determined, and many more believed, the Rapture, as Christians call it, was supposed to have happened on Saturday, May 21st. That it did not happen comes as a big surprise to no one outside of that particular bubble. It is a bubble that has reached across the globe to encompass many hundreds of thousands of people, but it is a bubble nevertheless.

I am not going to make fun of Pastor Camping, as many have been doing, but I am going to put his feeble, and self-misguided faith into some context.

So, what causes a man to espouse a belief system that puts his own credibility so directly at risk? Well, mental illness comes to mind. But clothe mental illness in religious doctrine and it becomes legitimized in the minds of many, as we have seen over the past few weeks.

Suicidal ideation is a concept that also begs to be examined in the context of such a persons predetermined, and hoped for, exit from this earth. Because Pastor Camping can no longer make his own life work, that is, that he can no longer reconcile his feeble faith with the realities of real life, he prefers, instead, to make a grand exit, one that will solve all of those problems for him. And not only solve them, but ensure that he ends up being right as well. After all, being right is more important to some people than actually being well. The things the mind will do to justify one’s own psychosis.
I also suspect, in the Pastor’s case, that there is a pompous, and self-aggrandizing, need to lead, a need to be right in the eyes of many, rather than in just his own. When one, however, does not actually have any credible thoughts worth following, you can see why that person would appeal so strongly to those whose own faith is equally feeble.

The problem with the kind of suicidal ideation that Pastor Camping entertains is that he does not have the moral courage to actually carry it out himself. Instead, he spiritualizes it, trusting God to remove him from his own inadequacies, from his own failures, and from his own disappointing, probably guilt-ridden, life here on this earth.

Don’t be misled into thinking that I believe suicide is a courageous act. I don’t. I just think it’s more courageous than hoping God will do it for you.
I heard interviews with several May 21st, Rapture doctrine inductees who stood in their back yards waiting, hoping to be taken. I heard them express heartfelt grief, and disappointment, at being left, pained beyond words that they would have to remain here on this earth even a little while longer.
Says more about our world, than it does about their faith.
Don’t you think?

One could argue that the fact that these people believed so strongly in the May 21st Rapture, is evidence of their faith being unusually strong, rather than feeble. Yes, one could argue that perspective.
And one would be wrong about it as well.
I think these people have faith and hope confused with each other.
Faith is not the hope that all your problems will be solved, absolved, dissolved, or mitigated, in the swoop of a divine hand.
That is wishful thinking, at best.

Faith is something you have to find on your own.
And it will not require you to follow someone else’s lead.

By the way, the Pastor is now in seclusion, where I happen to believe he should remain since he was not supposed to be here today anyway.

My thoughts. I’m sure you have your own.

Hey God, Stay Off The Pot

2011-05-15T10:48:00.000-07:00

It snowed last night, and again this morning. It’s actually still snowing right now. It’s not supposed to snow here on May 15th. It’s supposed to be spring weather. We’re only at 3,300 feet elevation. It’s not like we’re at 7,000. But, the weather gods are not taking that much into account. They’re going to send snow wherever they feel like they want to see it. And when.

The weather has been wacky all over the United States this year, the world, even. At least that’s how it looks from watching the news. Tornadoes, hurricanes, unexpected ice, and snow storms, floods, wildfires, and various other natural calamitous events, temper tantrums really. Makes me wonder if the weather gods might have finally discovered crack cocaine, or methamphetamine. Which makes me think, ‘What if God was in the habit of ingesting mind altering substances, like so many of us humans are’? Can you imagine God on LSD, on ecstasy, on pot, or Chivas Regal? How in the world would he ever hold things together?

Maybe, because he’s God, he wouldn’t be subject to addiction. Maybe he’d just enjoy those drugs recreationally, a way for him to relax. God must have a major need for relaxation. When you think about it, what would he do to relax? Would he sit on the porch and listen to a baseball game, like I might do sometimes? Or take a walk in the woods, or watch an Airborne Toxic Event concert on TV? Maybe God would hang out at the beach for a day just to enjoy some of the beautiful women he’d made. Or go soul-surfing on a long board.

But, God on drugs could be kind of scary. Can you imagine what a mind as complex as His would be like behind some of the stuff we lose ourselves on?
Drug users are not normally the people you can most count on. Oh, they might be very nice, and they might be some pretty good people, but, everything else being equal, you’ll most always be able to count on a sober person ahead of a stoner. I didn’t design it that way, that’s just the way it turns out. So, imagine if God were getting stoned a lot. My faith in Him would gradually erode, as would my hope that things would be addressed by Him in a timely fashion, and in a reasonable manner. He might spend more time laughing, and less time looking after his responsibilities. It could be kind of cool to know that God was taking things a little less seriously, but in the long run, I want the guy that has my back to be a guy that I can trust will actually have my back.

So God, if you want me to be able to trust you for the weather, or to adequately take care of all of your children, you’re just gonna have to stay off the pot, no matter how much you might need to relax.

Please Don't Say That Anymore

2011-05-05T06:33:00.000-07:00

* ‘GOING FORWARD’.
OK, we know you’re going forward, we’ve figured that out.
Everything is ‘going forward’. Except, of course, the past.
And the past is getting farther away.

* ‘IT IS WHAT IT IS’.
What it is to you is not necessarily what it is to me.
Yes, it may be ‘what it is’, but that is not all that it is.
There are usually many layers of what something is.
But, whatever it is, to reduce it to such a simplistic cliché is an insult
to the person with whom you happen to be speaking.
People are capable of determining for themselves ‘what it is’.

* ‘DON’T GO THERE’.
Well, unless there’s a ‘Keep Out’ sign,
I’m probably going to go there.
Unless someone has designated themselves to be a Private Reserve (Preserve),
I won’t bother avoiding the space.
Do you really want to fence other people out, or just fence yourself in?

* ‘AT THE END OF THE DAY’.
Next week is not the ‘end of the day’.
Next month is not the ‘end of the day’.
Next year is not the ‘end of the day’.
When you die is not the ‘end of the day’.
When you finish eating your lunch is not the ‘end of the day’.
THIS EVENING is ‘at the end of the day’.

* ‘NO PROBLEM, or ‘NOT A PROBLEM’.
Usually, only said if there’s a problem.

* ‘HE DIED DOING WHAT HE LOVED’.
Yeah, solo free-climbing Half-Dome in Yosemite, like an idiot.
Never mind that he left his Grandparents without a grandson,
his Parents without a son,
his wife without a husband, or an income,
two Kids without a father,
a Sister without a brother,
and a Niece without an uncle.
Never mind that it didn’t need to happen,
‘he died doing what he loved’.

* ‘YEAH, YEAH, YEAH’.
No, no, no. Don’t try to acknowledge what I’m saying before I’ve said it.
Don’t let your caffeine, and technology, induced impatience
rush me through my thought.
And don’t try to cut me off, pretending you know what I’m going to say.
You don’t know what I’m going to say until I finish saying it.
Now have a cup of decaf, and sit on the porch for a minute.

* ‘WHATEVER’.
The only thing I can say about that is,
‘Whatever’!

* ‘BEEN THERE, DONE THAT’.
Presupposes that my experience was shared by you,
even though it wasn’t.

* ‘BACK IN THE DAY’.
Exactly which day would you be referring to?

* ‘IT’S ALL GOOD’.
That’s just unmitigated bullshit,
most often used by pseudo intellectuals
trying to seduce college girls.
No, it’s not ‘all good’. Almost nothing is ‘all good’.

* ‘THRIVE’.
Gag me, Kaiser Permanente.
Have you all had about enough of that obnoxious woman in the Kaiser ads
talking to you like she’s your own personal enlightenment advisor,
and you’re some kind of idiot male in need of feminizing?
“Follow me,” she seems to suggest, first to the granola bar,
then to the yoga studio, and then to the spiritual spa.
Oh, and don’t forget to pay a visit to the cosmetic surgeon
where you can be made-over to look ‘as good as you feel’.
Summation of the ads: Fix yourself, be your own self-absorbed best friend,
but pay Kaiser for the privilege of inspiring you.
Thrive on this!

* ‘THANK YOU SOOO MUCH’.
Can we just go back to ‘Thank you’?
That seemed to work just fine for, oh, I don’t know,
maybe several thousand years!
Not everything requires a ‘soooo much’, y’know?.

Going forward it is what it is, so don’t go there.
At the end of the day it’s not a problem,
because he died doing what he loved.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, been there, done that, back in the day.
But, it’s all good, so thrive.
And thank you sooo much (with air kiss).

Just havin’ a little serious fun!

Osama bin Laden Is My Brother

2011-05-02T05:53:00.000-07:00

This is a repost of my January 3, 2009 entry. I rarely, if ever repost, but in light of the recent killing of Osama bin Laden,
and the celebrations following the announcement of the news, I thought it would be appropriate. I, too, am glad that he
has finally been held to accountability, but it disturbs me when I see Americans celebrating in the streets, chanting
"We're Number One", as if it were some kind of sporting event that we won. As I said, I'm glad to see Bin Laden taken down,
but I do not necessarily take any joy in his death, or in the deaths that will follow.
If you're going to read this repost, I would ask that you read it in its entirety.

Osama bin Laden is my brother.
I know, that’s a very weird thing to say, at least by most standards. But OK, now that I have your attention. . . . . . . .
what I have to say is not about most standards. It’s about a greater standard, a standard beyond what we readily, and commonly, acknowledge to be our responsibility to one another. Bin Laden is merely representative of a dynamic that is fueled by each of us, and that each of us is ultimately affected by. It is the domino theory, that every action is affected by an action preceding it; that every motion sets additional motion in play. It is a law of nature. If I turn on a fan in the room it stirs up the air around me, which unsettles the dust in the room, which aggravates my breathing, which gives me the sniffles, which leads to a cold, which I pass on to someone else from the shake of a hand or the knob of a door, and so on, and so on, and so on. An unremarkable example, and one you could argue the medical/scientific merits of, but I think you get the point. Every action produces a direct effect of that action.

Prior to 9/11 Osama bin Laden (and his friends) failed to take into account the fact that we are his brothers. I will say that again. “Prior to 9/11 Osama bin Laden (and his friends) failed to take into account the fact that we are his brothers.” Long before that we failed, you can be sure, to take into account the same about him. I’m not talking about our government, or our country, I’m talking about us as individuals. 9/11 did not just happen. I believe that disrespect is the most profound shaper of negative ideology in the world today. Disrespect for one another on a minor scale always translates somewhere down the line into disrespect for one another on a major scale. I am certainly not blaming the U.S for the attack on the World Trade Center, it was an horrendous and unconscionable act. I am merely using the event to illuminate a broader personal responsibility that each of us needs to embrace if we are ever going to achieve peace on this planet. We rant and rave about countries provoking one another, waging war with one another, hating one another and why can’t things be different, but on the other hand we continue to use, slight, abuse and disrespect one another, in a myriad of ways and circumstances. “Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.” I’ve used the flow of water before to describe the cycle of wealth and poverty, and I use it here again because disrespect, like water, always flows downhill. It gathers in lakes and oceans, evaporates to form storm clouds overhead, then rains on us when the clouds can hold no more. It is a self-perpetuating cycle. Someone once said ‘the definition of insanity is doing the same thing, the same way, over and over, and expecting a different result.’

I believe that if we want to call Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., or Gandhi, or Jesus our brother, or the guy sitting next to us in church, we are also obligated to consider Osama bin Laden our brother, or the guy preaching hate on Air America, in the mosque, or with a bullhorn on a university campus. For all the perpetual George Bush haters out there who now want to embrace Barack Obama as their brother, they need to consider the Bush’s of the world in like manner. Can they do that? If not, their own disingenuousness will continue to subvert the very principals they supposedly stand for, and perpetuate, you can be sure, the horrendous divisiveness they create by their own behavior. Those on the ideologically opposite side of things need to do the same. I am not saying we need to agree with, or excuse behavior, but I am saying that love is the greatest moderator of behavior. Forgiveness is the greatest liberator from that behavior.
We are only as spiritually authentic as the measure of our love. Our love is measured in reverse proportion to our capacity for hate, and indifference falls squarely on the side of the negative.

We do not have the luxury to pick and choose who is a member of the human family, and who is not; who we would like to sit next to at the banquet, or stand behind in the food line. Unkindness comes dressed in superlatives far more often than it ever comes dressed in rags, but it comes, dressed in every pair of pants imaginable. If our exclusion of some, and inclusion of others, in our love is based on faith, ideology, political party, country, color, or social grouping, then we really amount to little more than a college fraternity rather than the supposedly enlightened and ever-evolving citizens of the world that we have all become so fond of claiming to be. Lets face it, the earth is a big house, but with more rooms than just the few that you and I happen to occupy. It holds an ever-increasing population of related individuals? If it is true that we are all Gods creatures (and I believe we are) then we must account for that reality, and not merely continue to pay lip service to it. For every major offense, or indiscretion, committed by someone, somewhere, in the world, a minor offense, or indiscretion, can be traced directly back to me. I am me, that is very clear; but you are me as well. Think about it.

Hate, disrespect, dishonor, and neglect spread like a virus to our faceless, unknown, and unimagined brothers and sisters right on down to the end of the line.

We have been commissioned to love our neighbor as our self.
If you say, ‘yeah, but my god doesn’t teach that’, then brother,
you just need to get yourself a better God.

Osama bin Laden is my brother.

Mental Chronicles, 6

2011-04-27T06:12:00.000-07:00

- Well, the Royal Wedding ‘Official Guest List’ is out, and I’m not on it. If anything would infuriate a guy, it’d be that. I can hardly believe the snub. What were they thinking?

OK, now, this column is a little political from here on, so you might want to skip it, rather than ruin the rest of your day.
I'll get back to writing about rivers and streams again, tomorrow.

- I’m getting a little tired of this whole ‘Obama Birth Certificate’ thing. Was he born in the U.S., or wasn’t he? Who cares, the fact is, he’s a fraud, no matter where he was born.
And, come to think of it, shouldn’t we be equally concerned that Donald Trump WAS born in the United States?

- Solution to Illegal Immigration. Oh, sorry, I mean ‘Undocumented Workers’. They say that if we deport the illegal immigrants we’ll have no one to pick our fruit and vegetables. “Americans,” they say, “just won’t do it.”

Well, I know some Americans we could put to work. Evict the Politicians from Congress, fire the Corporate Attorneys (thugs), Banking, and Wall Street thieves, and make them pick our fruit and vegetables in the fields. Then the Illegal Immigrants could take the jobs in Congress, and in the Corporations. It would all but ensure that there would be honest Politicians, and Businessmen. Not because the illegals are necessarily honest people (some are, some are not), but because, after getting used to the cushy life, the life of wealth, and privilege of a Politician, or a Corporate Fat Cat, they would not want to be fired, and have to go back to picking our fruit and vegetables in the fields.

- Personally, I don’t give a rat’s behind about Barry Bonds. I kind of wish he’d just go away. But his recent trial for Obstruction of Justice/Lying to a Grand Jury (steroids), leaves me confused.
Being brought to trial for lying to the Government? Why is it OK for the Government to lie to the people, continually, and without repercussion of any kind, but it’s never OK for the people to lie to the Government?
Can somebody shed some light on that for me? I think we ought to start treating them the same way they’ve been treating us.
Oh, wait, now that I think about it, who would even want to screw a politician?
Besides Rielle Hunter (John Edwards), that is.

- This is not a new train of thought, but sometimes we need to be reminded.
In our world, ‘Justice’ has been trivialized to the point where there are two forms of Justice. There is justice for the wealthy, and there is justice for the poor. ‘Justice for the Wealthy’ means that they are not subject to the same rules as the poor. And ‘Justice for the Poor’ means that they are not entitled to the same considerations as the wealthy.
Until we insist on ‘Poor Mans Justice’ for the privileged, they will continue to make the rules to suit themselves.

Now, heres’ an idea to chew on.
Saddam Hussein finally got Poor Mans Justice from the Iraqi people.
Do you think things might change if our Politicians, and Corporate crooks, had the same eventuality to look forward to?

- Laws in the following states prohibit an individual from catching rainwater for one’s own personal use. Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, and (of course) D.C.
You can’t catch rainwater in a barrel to drink, or even in a coffee can to water your plants. They consider it, or any such similar act to be ‘theft of water’, an infringement on the ‘water-rights’ of those companies that have contracted with the government to sell the water back to the people.
So, they even own the rain now.
Big surprise.
I wonder if you were lost in the desert, dying of thirst, if it’d be OK just to catch a raindrop or two on your tongue.
Or would they want to arrest you for that?

- I know, the ‘Mental Chronicles’ might lead some of you to believe that I have too much time on my hands. But I just want to say, “If you’re reading the ‘Mental Chronicles’, maybe it’s you who have too much time on your hands.”
(I hope we’re still friends).

One Need Not Believe In Jesus

2011-04-24T07:18:00.000-07:00

So, you’re probably expecting me to write about the Easter bunny, right? Well, I hate to disappoint you, but my comments are actually about suffering, death, and burial.

Many of you consider me to be a religious man, but, actually, nothing could be farther from the truth. I am a practical man, not by any religious measure, to be sure, but by almost any reasonable measure. Note, I said ‘reasonable’ measure. If your particular religion, or ideology, does not recognize my perspective as ‘reasonable’, that doesn’t necessarily make you right, but it doesn’t necessarily make me wrong either. Still, I must say, “I have confidence in my point of view.”

Some of you consider me to be irreverent because I do not necessarily subscribe to the tenants of a particular religion. But really, one can only offend the pseudo sacrosanct. That which is truly Holy is never offended by perspective. Holy is, in fact, able to absorb all that is unholy, or profane, with an assimilation that is seamless, and without reproach. So I ask you, is your belief system able to accommodate that?

Christian, or not, most of you know the story of Christ’s dilemma in the Garden, where he agonized over the prospect of a brutal future, facing systematic torture and eventual execution. Add to that the concept of Him carrying on his back the sin and iniquity of all mankind, and you can imagine his profound consternation. Consternation is much too moderate of a word, however. ‘Agony’ would be much more appropriate.

Speaking of Jesus’ torment in the Garden, the Bible says in Matthew 26:39, “He went on a little farther and bowed with his face to the ground, praying, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet, I want your will to be done, not mine.”

Now I don’t really care if you believe this account, or anything else the Bible has to say. That’s your business, and it’s really none of my business. And I don’t care if you’re of the Christian faith, the Muslim faith, the Hindu Faith, the Green Party faith, the FaceBook faith, any other faith, or no faith at all. The recounting of the life, and teachings, of Christ are worthy of examination. It’s interesting, however, that many people are afraid of Him. Many people will examine the teachings, and accounts, of almost anybody else on earth, except Christ. How many volume’s does that speak about a person?

Anyway, according to the Biblical accounting of Christ’s predicament in the Garden, He did not take an easy way out of his prescribed destiny. He offered God the option of changing His mind, but, as happens, God remained silent. Jesus did not opt out, cop out, finagle, or dance the fandango. He did not bargain, cry, whine, lie, run, or disappear. He had a choice, but he stayed to face the difficulty, and the certainty of death. He faced the problem head on. He stepped into the eventuality of further suffering, execution, and burial.

And so it is with us. If we want to get to the resurrection in our own lives, we’ve got to go through the preliminary stages first. We cannot opt out, cop out, finagle, or dance the fandango. We cannot bargain, cry, whine, lie, run, or disappear. I don’t care what it is, if a situation is in need of redemption, the suffering is already being played out. We may not call it that, but that is exactly what it is.

In any event, it all adds up to a separation from God. God does not separate Himself from us, but we do separate ourselves from Him. No matter what the situation, in order for change to manifest itself in one’s life, one must be willing to go through the suffering of separation from the old life, to die to it, and then to bury it like a bad disease. We must face the future with courage, with determination, and with the expectation of redemption.

One need not believe in Jesus to find this kind of change.
One only need believe that redemption is possible.
You see, according to the Gospel story, Christ’s death, and resurrection, were intended to enable the same in ourselves.

Regardless of what we might think about it.

I Used To Be Sensitive

2011-04-20T08:29:00.000-07:00

I need to apologize for neglecting those of you who look to this space each day for your trusted connection with the Obvious. As I’ve stated, and as you know, I’m been working very hard trying to complete my Novel, ‘Wilderness’. I’m making good progress, and am enjoying the process, but I understand that my recent neglect of ‘Coyote Tracks’ has been leaving each of you bereft of your best reason to go on living. I kid. Did I really need to say that? Well, you never know, people can be pretty sensitive these days. And that brings me to the point of this discussion.

I grew up being very sensitive. I was sensitive to other people’s feelings, and I was sensitive about my own. Shoot, (can I even say that?). OK, ‘Shoot’, I was sensitive to religion, to ideology, and to politics. I was sensitive to race, to sexuality, and to cultural differences. In short, I was sensitive to all of the things a person is supposed to be sensitive about. I was sensitive to insensitivity, even.

But y’know, it doesn’t stop there. It was never going to stop at the obvious. Now you’re expected to be sensitive to peoples psyche’s, even though a person’s psyche is invisible. It is obscure. It is unknowable. It is elusive, vague, indefinable, indescribable, and, anyway, it changes with the weather. The psyche is born of a person’s entire life experience. A person lives in different elements of the psyche at different times of their life, different days, even. It is the weakness in a person, at times, and it is the strength at other times. But we are required to protect it, always, in everyone, as if it were a three-month-premature infant in a Maternity ward. No wonder people are so weak.

There is nothing left that we are not required to be sensitive about. Besides the obvious, we are now, also, tasked to intuit what a persons psyche is, and then we are required to tip-toe, and tap-dance around it. We are required to assuage it, and to feed it pabulum for fear it could not digest solid food. It is a large part of what is weakening the lives, and resolve, of the American people.

It is not our commission in life to protect each other’s psyche’s. It is our commission in life to be honest about life. Honesty will mold the psyche naturally, to be well balanced, and of service to the person it is connected to. You don’t prepare a person for life by protecting him from the weather, from the truth, or from himself.

People will think whatever they want, about anything they want. And nobody can take that from us. But, when people begin insisting on what we are supposed to think, how we are supposed to think, and what we are supposed to be sensitive about, well, I begin to become very insensitive about that. C’mon, people. We can’t live that way. People will be as fragile as we require them to be. They will shrink to that level of expectation.

People are allowed to feel today, they are just not allowed to think . . . . . out loud, that is, or for themselves. Thinking for one’s self is the prelude to rebellion. Why are we so afraid of that? Thinking out loud is what gets us in trouble. Somehow, feelings are acceptable, even though they are the primary, and operative, domain of adolescents. Feelings are encouraged. Thinking is not.
And again, I say, “C’mon, people, we can’t live that way.

If somebody says something that you don’t agree with, it’s just somebody’s opinion!” Don’t be so frigging offended by somebody’s opinion. So what if somebody thinks make-up is dishonest (as I heard in a movie recently), and you wear make-up. That doesn’t mean the person thinks you’re a no good, dishonest, shallow bitch. It doesn’t mean the person is trying to hurt you. Stop looking to be hurt by everybody. It just means that the person thinks the idea of using make-up is dishonest. So what? He’s allowed to think that. You think differently. Does that make him a no-good, shallow, idiotic bastard? Does that mean that you must separate yourself from that person so you can feel morally superior to him. Let’s everybody get a grip. Everybody, really.

The things that people say are created by the lives and experiences those people have. Everybody has a different life, and experience. Everybody has a different way of looking at, and interpreting, the world. Why are we so afraid of, or threatened by, that?

Let’s stop pretending that someone else’s experience should bring them to the same conclusions in life that ours have brought us to.

Wilderness Update

2011-04-02T05:21:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have been following the development of
'Wilderness' on this webpage,
I'm sorry to say that I decided to remove it from the site
until completed.

The Novel has taken shape in a way that now
begs to be read in its entirety.
Posting new individual entries would diminish the impact,
and enjoyment of the Work.

I did not anticipate this happening,
but have realized that it is now
in the best interest of the story.

I expect to have the book completed
within about two months. Maybe one.
Please check back here for the final manuscript.

You will not be disappointed.

A Scene From "The Last Cafe"

2011-03-30T06:19:00.000-07:00

Some of the scenes in my novel, “Wilderness”, happen to take place in the “The Last Café”. I’ve been working hard on the novel again, and will post several more completed chapters in the next few days. Check back to see if they’ve been posted. In the meantime, here is a small excerpt from the new chapters.

Part of Chapter Nineteen:

The new artwork that had been sitting on the floor near the storeroom in the back is now hanging on the walls of the café for our enjoyment. I say enjoyment because the work truly is enjoyable. Abstract dogs and cats. Acrylics, it looks like. Not portraits, like artists usually do with animals, but dogs and cats in natural movement, in motion, some in conceptual poses, with personalities and emotion; bodies stretched, arched, and twisted in mid-stride, like if you were to pause a Nature Channel DVD, and then paint the screen.

The only thing that’s not natural is the colors. No gray’s or brown’s, no white’s, no beige, no yellow labs. But lots of offbeat colors on offbeat cats and curious dogs. Reminds me of some of the creatures I’d see with the good acid we used to do back in the 60’s before they started cutting it with Meth, and other sinister additives.

These creatures are truly dancing off the canvass, engaged in full-body celebrations of animal life. Celeste, an artist whose name I’d never heard, is also an artist I will look for in the future. You know how every once in a while you’ll find an artist you’d really like to meet? You may not even know why, just that you’d like to meet him/her? Well, I’d like to meet Celeste. I won’t be trying to meet her. I’m just saying. But I will ask Darla about her tomorrow. I’m very curious. Very curious.

Darla’s got about ten or twelve pieces of her work hanging around the cafe. I’m struck by the strength of their attitude, casting a frivolous demeanor across an, otherwise, somber afternoon. Wall to wall brilliance, lifting me like a kind of telepathic elevator, raising me up, it seems, out of my psychic delirium.

There’s a bemused bloodhound hanging near me on the wall, Cerulean-blue belly to the sky, draped unceremoniously across an old chase-lounge on the lawn, blending with it, into it, one back foot on the ground, and three flopping free like a monkey might lay on his back across a branch, or an otter on a rock. A Fuchsia kitten on the sparkling wet ground, pink, tinged with purple, rear end in the air, two front paws having caught the dog’s one earthbound foot as if it were a mouse he’d cornered by the fence. A second colorful kitten, poking fun, her scarlet nose burrowed deep inside that big overgrown puppy’s ear. The hound’s other ear is draped soft across his own eyes, protecting them from the blinding glare of a merciless afternoon sun. There’s an elated look on the old dogs face, a look that anyone might like to wear were it accompanied, also, by the pleasurable feeling that would have inspired it in the first place.

Darla’s put John Prine’s ‘Souvenirs’ album on, and Mr. Prine has been serenading the clientele this afternoon. Hearing him is like listening to grandpa sitting on a stump outside the barn, telling stories about when life was a little slower, and people were a little more important to one another than they are now.
His songs put life, and the struggle for equanimity, in a dramatic, but embraceable, perspective. “Fish and Whistle,” for example.

“Father forgive us for what we must do.
You forgive us, and we’ll forgive you.
We’ll forgive each other till we both turn blue,
then we’ll whistle and go fishing in heaven.”

They are also the best photographic collection of the human condition that a man could ever hope to find. Snapshots, all of them. “Far From Me” gives an intimate glimpse of many of those humans, concluding that there is remarkable beauty in even the most callously disregarded among us.

“And the sky is black and still now
up on the hill where the angels sing.
Ain’t it funny how an old broken bottle
looks just like a diamond ring.”
But it’s far, far, from me.

Jessie and Collette are both behind the counter today. That always makes me happy. The soul of John Prine permeates the café, casting a subtle, subdued, truth across the room. People put their pencils down to listen. They eat their cake, and sip their coffee quietly. There are no utensils clanging on plates. There is no mindless chatter. There is no scuffing and shuffling of feet, just the sound of Prine’s solitary voice, . . . . Don’t let your baby down . . . . . . . ”), and his conspicuous acoustic guitar. Simple songs, sometimes with bass, accordion, or piano, but not complicated by pretentious arrangements, or unnecessary instruments. Some people are whispering quietly, but even then, you can tell they’re whispering about the songs, or maybe how they used to wake up every morning lying next to somebody they loved. Until Marty entered my, otherwise, innocuous life, it’d been about a thousand years since I woke up with somebody like that. And John Prine reminds me. He sings,
“. . . . Down on the beach the sandman sleeps, and time don’t fly, it bounds and leaps. . . . . . .”

Brad and Angelina are here today as well. They’re usually pretty over-the- top demonstrative with each other, but a couple of songs ago “Far From Me” turned even them inward for the time being. Some people are looking up at the speakers hanging just below the ceiling in the corners of the room. It’s like people want to see the voice they’re hearing. I can totally understand that. And I can almost see his voice when I close my eyes, if you know what I mean.

Snow Falling On Life

2011-03-21T13:07:00.000-07:00

A steady snowfall for the past several days.
The corporate power has been out, and we’ve been running on generator.
The steady hum of reassurance that all will not be dark, or cold, or left undone.
But life will take a back seat to living for now,
and living will pace itself according to how living use to be.

It’s been a time of sitting back, and settling in. A time of reflection, of catching up even; not on chores, or busy work, or obligation, but on rest and regeneration. Hours spent in reflection as nature plays itself out just beyond our window. Trees clothed heavy with blankets of fresh wet snow clinging like sweaters to the trunks, like sleeves to the limbs, but eventually letting go as branches reach their limit, unable to bear more weight. That accumulated snow, ultimately continuing on its downward path, falling once again, the rest of the way to the ground, piling up there like a mound of freshly raked leaves in early Autumn.

And like the cycle of life, new snow begins to accumulate like sweaters, just like the old snow did, just outside my window, on the trunks and branches of those very same trees.

Daily walks over trails carved with our own hands, unrecognizable now from even just a few days ago. Snow, knee-high where we step, snowflakes kissing our faces like silk confetti, tickling our lips like feathers, sticking to our winter hats like decoupage.
A shroud of wet fog settling soft around us, obscuring our vision like squinting in the wind, but, even then, enhancing the distinctive pleasure of the hike.

Oh yes, and our dog, Chica; the decathlete mutt, the canine deer with floppy ears, the Maserati on four legs; running, jumping, loping, prancing, dancing, flopping in the powder, playing chasing games with imaginary critters, or the real-life kind who left their lingering scent, knowing it was bound to drive her nutty, her busy nose burrowing through the snow like a young child’s face might plow its way through a bowl of vanilla pudding.

Snow Falling On Life:
While enjoying the beauty of fresh snow, the stolen moments of pleasure and introspection, the privilege of living amid the grandeur of God’s design, I can’t help but to also think of those in Japan whose lives have been upended, whose days and nights are a continuing struggle against the cold, against the elements, and against the ravages of hunger, thirst, grief, fear, and heartbreak.

If you would, raise a hand to the heavens with me, and ask the Creator to shower our brothers and sisters in Japan with mercy, with grace, and with a miraculous means of recovery.
And contribute whatever you can, in whatever way you can, of yourself, and of your resources, for the raising up of those whose lives have fallen so tragically beneath the rubble of unexpected circumstance.

I Get Kind Of Numb

2011-03-14T12:41:00.000-07:00

I don’t know about you, but I get kind of numb to all the wars and natural devastation we have been experiencing across the globe over these past years. Just going back to the early 90’s there was Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, and the American response to it, then the succeeding Gulf war (Iraq), not to mention Afghanistan. There have been, and are, wars all around the world, it seems. There has been the continuing Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the Somali Civil War, The Chechen conflict, Kosovo, the Croatian war of Independence, Bosnia. There has been the war in North-West Pakistan, the Shiite Insurgency in Yemen, the Darfur/Sudan, and Rwandan genocides, the Cambodia/Thailand border conflicts, and now the Egyptian, and Libyan uprisings.
And these are to name just a few. It seems as if much of the planet is continually on the brink of, if not already involved in, war.

There are the Al Qaeda attacks that have been going on all around the world (New York, London, Madrid, Germany, Yemen, and many others too numerous to mention.) The continuing drug cartel, and gang wars in Mexico and South America, and in the United States. The world has become a battleground.

And then to make matters worse, there are the natural disasters.
The recent devastation in Japan, the New Zealand quake, the 8.8 in Chile in 2010, the Myanmar cyclone, the Haiti earthquake, the Indonesia Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina in the U.S., flooding and landslides in India, China, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Romania, Poland, Portugal, and in many other countries of Europe.

There are countless millions of people who have been, and are, being killed by these Geo-Political conflicts and Natural Disasters, not even to mention the untold millions who are impacted by the fallout. We watch the ‘highlights’ on our televisions and computers. We feel bad for the nameless/faceless victims of the devastation. We measure our own humanity by our internal response to the horror. We measure our sensitivity by the same standard. We might pray for those affected, the families of the deceased. We might even send money. We might be depressed for a little while, and we might feel fortunate that it wasn’t us. But we quickly return to the comfort and safety of our daily routine. Work, Facebook, sports, Judge Judy, fast food, movies and shopping.

Now, I’m not judging, or condemning, you for how you deal with these kinds of tragedies. I’m smart enough to know that most people are compassionate and well meaning. I can only assume that to be the case with you as well. But I know that when I get numb to all of the misfortune in the world that there are many others who are affected by it in the same way. I’m not saying that it’s not a natural thing to kind of freeze up inside at such an inundation of mayhem and tragedy. I’m just saying that I don’t like it when I do. It goes against all that I’d like to be as a human being.

But I am also aware of my limitations, and that I cannot afford to personalize all of the suffering in the world. I cannot hold it all, and I know I’d not be able to find a place to put it if I were to take it on, consciously, or unintended even.

Recognizing this, I find myself grateful that I don’t need to embrace the misery. It would do the world not one bit of good to add even another person to that number. The best I can do is to hold sacred those who have survived, that they may eventually find healing from the pain. That they may make the most of what remains of their own lives.

Regarding my own personal impasse, and possibly yours, I guess ‘numb’ might not be such an inappropriate condition considering that it is, most assuredly, a protective, and temporary state of being.

Say a prayer for those left suffering.
And be thankful that you are not being counted among them.

Authenticity

2011-03-10T07:24:00.000-08:00

“One life is all we have, and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are, and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.”
(Joan of Arc, 1412-1431)

Not my words, and not really even uncommon sentiment. Call it philosophy, or theology, if you will. I’ve expressed similar thoughts through the years, in various ways, but so have many people over the coarse of time, even before Joan of Arc, I’m sure.
But what is it about this concept?
Maybe these people know something.

There are three implications contained in Joan of Arc’s brief statement. 1.) The idea that we are free to live life as we believe, 2.) That there is truly someone, a person, that ‘you are’, and, 3.) To live without belief is an affront to the person that you are.
Perhaps the most important of the three is that there is a person that ‘you are’.
It is the acquiescence to this belief that the fullness of life depends.

There are, unfortunately, many people that we masquerade as, sometimes consciously, sometimes unaware. We put on different acts and faces as we move through different segments of our lives. We take on different behaviors to fit different social expectations, and different belief systems to please those who wield power or influence over us. Or to ingratiate ourselves with those we want to be like. But in moving so smoothly, and so effortlessly, through these various personas we actually become strangers to ourselves, losing touch with our very essence. We end up not really knowing who we are. We make initial compromises, and ultimately engage in the compromising, even, of our compromises.
It gets easy to lose one’s self.

But there is a ‘who’ that we are, an intrinsic ‘who’, a basic ‘who’. It is the person that we actually are, and it is the person we must protect from getting lost beneath the masquerade. That person is born with a purity of soul, since corroded, unfortunately, by profane imposition and clumsy choices. The initial clarity, and transparency, is spiritual in nature, it is embedded in our DNA, and is a direct connection to the source of who we are. It is who we were before we took on the complex, and complicated, baggage of life. That person still exists within us.

With the complexity of modern life, self-assessment is not a practice that too many people engage in these days, except maybe in the context of self-actualization workshops of some kind or another. And even then, the self-assessment is done in the framework of participation in, and measuring oneself against, that narrow modality with its accompanying agenda, rather than in the context of one’s intimacy with one’s own inner self, and one’s creator. But it is the validation, and self-validation, seekers who participate in such fruit salad endeavors. They are not the Joan of Arc’s.

Joan of Arc was martyred (murdered, really) because she lived her belief. She did not compromise who she was. She did not seek validation, or a happiness quotient to be OK with herself. She sought an honesty beyond even the apparent.
And she did not live a slow death, as some of us do. It’s true, she lived a short life, only nineteen years, but she died living honestly.

We are not asked to die for our authenticity.
We are only asked to live it.

Books

2011-03-06T12:30:00.000-08:00

Books.
We used to hold them, like a woman might grip a ticket to Maui, or a man a winning lottery pick. We used to take them with us in our backpacks, our pockets, and our purses. We used to look forward to a few stolen moments between their pages, or a lazy afternoon lost in a remarkable story somewhere between the front cover of the book and the back.

They used to be the first thing we’d be sure we had with us when packing for a trip, or the last thing we’d buy before boarding a train, or a plane at the airport. We used to relish a coast-to-coast flight for the downtime it afforded us to shut out everything else but a good read. Books were always a very personal thing, organic in nature, from the mind of a writer, from the wood of a tree; pages that would, ultimately, reflect our handling of them. Some of us were respectfully careful with them, and some of us would handle a book like a father might wrestle with his son. Don’t beat the kid up, but don’t baby him too much either. Books would take on the collective nature of their readers. Every reader would leave his own imprint. It was part of what the book became. When finished, some books still looked unread, and some as if they’d been devoured by ravenous hands, curious eyes, inquisitive minds, insatiable imaginations.

But you could always find a good story, a well-thought-out philosophy, an indulgent autobiography, a clever twist of a mystery. You could re-live history from the point of view of a lone voice in a lonely room, a weathered recluse whose cramped fingers felt compelled to pound out his meager thoughts on an old Royal typewriter.
Books were written, and fashioned in stages.
They were read sometimes in one sitting.

They have theses places called Libraries where they collect books to loan to people who like to read. Think about it; being able to select anything you want from thousands, or hundreds of thousands of titles, depending on the size of the particular library. I don’t know for sure, but whoever thought of the first library could be the single most important, and benevolent, person in the history of civilization. The wisdom, the knowledge, the motivation, the inspiration that has been imparted to so many millions of people through his vision is not only immeasurable, but incomprehensible as well. I’d go as far as to say that it was the library that gave birth to the Internet.

Moving through the world, I get feeling pretty sad when I see that the upcoming generation, the Facebook generation, if you will, never seems to have a book in their hands. I see them waiting in places, filling time (more appropriately, ‘killing time’) with Blackberries, and IPhones, and Laptops and IPads. I see them texting, and researching directions, watching streaming video, playing internet games, and keeping in constant touch with ‘friends’. I see them Googling topics germane to the moment, but germane only to the moment. I see them accessing information, constantly, but I never see them reading. I never see them with a book. There are no stolen moments between the pages, there is no getting lost in a remarkable story, or enlightened by a people’s early history. History, for this generation, is being reduced to the accounting of their on-line searches, and the number of hits on their social networking pages.
I would guess it safe to say that very few of this generation would even know where the library is in their own hometown. I don’t think these young people are reading books on line, I’m fairly confident that they are just accessing information. Information. Information. And more Information.

I’ve read some great books along the way. Books these kids are missing out on.

‘The Catcher In The Rye’, ‘The Little Prince’, Thoreau’s ‘Walden’, ‘Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee’, ‘The Bible’, ‘Animal Farm’, ‘Moby Dick’, ‘The Sun Also Rises’, ‘Cannery Row’, ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’, ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’, ‘Call Of The Wild’, ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’, ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ ‘The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn’, ‘Don Quixote’, ‘Robinson Crusoe’, ‘Lord Of The Flies’, ‘Brave New World’, ‘A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man’, ‘Roots’, ‘Gulliver’s Travels’, ‘All Quiet On The Western Front’, ‘Siddhartha’, ‘Great Expectations’, ‘Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland’, ‘1984’

And these are only a few of the classics. Include some of the more remarkable contemporary novels and there are just way too many to mention.
I still read books as often as I can. A mouse in the hand, or a thumb scan across a smart phone just doesn’t quite get it for me.

“Books. We used to hold them, like a woman might grip a ticket to Maui, or a man a winning lottery pick.”

You can call me old if you want.
I’m just saying, I don’t ever see anybody sitting, enjoying a good book anymore.

Beggars Banquet

2011-03-05T09:09:00.000-08:00

Life is a banquet of sorts, as indulgent of us as we are of it. But more frequently, it seems, a beggars banquet at best. Just being alive on this earth can make beggars of the best of us while it spins of it’s own accord, by it’s own energy, much faster even than our ability to keep up, or catch up for that matter. “Let me off, please. Just slow down and let me off.” Some folks jump, and some ride it out till the bitter end. It really happens, you know it does, that things get out of control even before we understand the difference between what’s still in control and what’s already too far gone. It happens to all of us at times, too often, and frequently without even minimal recognition. Eventually it all gets to feeling out of hand, out of sync, out of sight, out of whack, if you will.

Yes, we fail to recognize the signs, or the obvious hints we find, but, interestingly enough, we never seem to miss a day bowing at the prefab plastic temples on our way to the proverbial spa. The figurative spa. Mecca for the disconsolate, for the discontent. Majagori for the gluttonous, and the self-indulgent. A place of great expectation where we soak up our share of validation, our necessary dose of affirmation from quiet strangers, casual acquaintances, and the pretend friends who are actually bent on our eventual demise. The kind of affirmation we never actually get from one another.

A little knowledge of someone can be very dangerous. Transparency puts relationships at risk. We are so afraid of scaring ourselves, and others, so we seldom let ourselves be known, leaving very little, really, for someone else to be afraid of?
The comfort of the spa remains our cuddle buddy, and the temples our delusional mirrors, the ones that we help erect almost daily with pretentious intentions and self-adoration in spades.

The social routine gives each of us the opportunity to wallow in vague elation, psychic adoration, pleasantries and platitudes. Like Narcissus by the pond, we collect steaming hors-d’oeuvres from the ‘Members Only’ bar, wishing they’d release a list of do’s and don’ts, an instruction manual we could give to those unlike ourselves who, we suspect, might be lacking in even the most basic elements of social grace. Or Stepford protocol.
There should be one of those lists, as they say, to keep the riff-raff out.

Social grace, and Stepford protocol, the requisite down payment for admission to the dance, the mandatory contribution for the fruit salad.
Yes, life is a banquet of sorts, as indulgent of us as we are of it.
But more frequently, it seems, a beggars banquet at best

Dog and a Cat

2011-02-22T09:33:00.000-08:00

I’ve written about my dog ‘Chica’ before, but my wife and I also have a cat. We got him from a lady who rescues feral cats and abandoned dogs. We brought him home when he was about six months old. He’s now about a year old. We named him ‘Buster’. Named him that because the top of his left ear is cut off, neatly, as if it might have been done with a scissors. Makes him look like a Buster. I don’t know why that makes him look like a Buster, but it does.

Anyway, I find it interesting that people are always asking other people, “Are you a dog person, or a cat person?” People ask me that also, and the question has never made any sense to me. Why can’t you be both? Why are love of cats, and love of dogs, considered to be mutually exclusive of one another? It’s like asking, “Are you a Democrat, or a Republican?” Why can’t you be an Independent? Are you a Christian or a Jew? Why can’t you be a Born-again Jew, a Jew for Jesus, if you will?

Chica and Buster have become great friends. The big Doberman with the floppy ears, and the little kitty with the left ear lopped off. It’s been interesting to watch the development of their relationship, the boundary setting, the trust, the rules for play, etc. Buster has set most of the rules, and Chica has had to learn to respect them. It’s had to be that way since Chica is so much bigger than Buster.
Unlike the human world where the big guy, the richest, the most powerful and influential, always gets to set the rules.

The relationship between the two began as soon as I brought Buster home. Home was already Chicas domain since she’d been with us since she was a pup. She was immediately challenged with the necessity of acquiescence, even allowing Buster into her territory, and she did concede ground, albeit not so willingly at first. The second stage of the relationship amounted to the two of them just watching each other. They watched, and took note of one another’s behavior, learned each other’s body language, and other means of communication. Then came the testing of boundaries, slowly, deliberately, and ultimately, quite successfully. They each learned what was OK with the other, and what was not.

Today, just a few short months later, the two of them are the best of friends. They kiss each other all over the face, and snuggle like bunnies. Buster will put his whole head in Chicas mouth trusting Chica to be gentle and, invariably, she is. The cat will lie on his back on a table, exposing the vulnerability of his underside, and Chica will lay her snout on his belly. Buster, hanging upside down under Chica’s jaw, will wrap his paws around the top of her head, and the back of her neck while Chica licks his belly. It’s pretty cute.
Oftentimes Buster will stand on a table, on his hind legs, claws retracted, and box Chica like a fighter in the gym having his way with a speed bag. Chica will stoically absorb the friendly assault with a toothy grin, and then come back for more.

Chica gets quite concerned when neither of us can locate Buster, whether indoors or out, and will relentlessly search for him until he’s found. It’s quite poignant to see how much the two of them like, even love, one another.
Anthropomorphism, I know, but just because psychological properties can be attributed to something
doesn't mean that it can't also be true.

I think that Buster and Chica are such good friends, and get along so well,
because they don’t ever talk about politics or religion.

At least I’ve never heard them.

Don't ask me if I'm a dog person, or a cat person.
They each touch different parts of my heart and soul.

Character

2011-02-13T06:58:00.000-08:00

Well, some people are characters.
And some people have character.
Some people who have character are not characters.
And some people are characters but don’t necessarily have character.
I find the most interesting people to be those who are characters,
and have character as well.

But if ‘character’ is something you aspire to, having character is a lot more important, in my opinion, than being a character.

There are lots of pretend characters. Really, it’s pretty easy to be a pretend character. The world’s full of them, especially since the advent of such advanced technology, giving birth to mediums that can put people in our faces in a matter of seconds, and keep them there until we’re sick to death of them. Pretend characters don’t have actual character, they’re all about perception, they are all about attention. One just needs to have a gimmick, an intentionally pronounced personality quirk, along with a style and appearance that is somewhat out of the ordinary. An unusual accent, inflection, a peculiar, and cultivated manner of speaking, or laughing, for instance. A bizarre affectation.
People can pretty easily establish themselves as some sort of character or another with a cherry-picked shtick and the click of a mouse.

But those people are not real characters, they are character wannabe’s, just-add-water- microwave concoctions.

True characters, however, tend to think differently than everybody else, and be a bit out of the ordinary, out of the mainstream, as it were. They don’t just test out the unconventional, they actually live there. The mainstream tends to wash most of the un-ordinariness out of a person. That’s why authentic characters have not spent much time swimming in that river.

When I was growing up in Southern California there was a man in Laguna Beach by the name of Eiler Larson. Eiler stood out on the corner all day, every day, rain or shine, and waved to the people driving through town on the Pacific Coast Highway. He became known as ‘The Greeter’. People depended on him. They depended on seeing him, and being greeted by him with a big smile, a wave, and a loud “Hello there”. The Greeter had a really big bushy gray beard, long hair, a ruddy complexion, wore a red coat, and carried a cane. He was there on the corner in front of the Hotel Laguna for years, many years, more years than I can even remember. He was always there. He was a permanent fixture, and sometimes my friends and I would drive to Laguna Beach just to see him. He said he used to be a gardener before he realized he didn’t have enough time to garden and greet the folks.

Eiler was not on the corner begging for change, or hoping to be discovered to parlay his notoriety into a big payday, or fifteen minutes of fame. He was there because he needed to be there, he needed to greet people, to make them smile, to make a difference in their day. He was on that corner for four decades, from 1934 until 1974.
Then one day he was not there, and Laguna Beach has never been the same.
Eiler Larson died in 1975. There is now a larger-than-life-sized statue standing alongside the road where he used to greet, with equal enthusiasm, those of us he knew,
and those he’d never met.

The Greeter was an authentic character.
And I don’t know for sure, but I’d bet my life on it that he had character too.

When My Restless Sleep Is Done

2011-02-08T12:09:00.000-08:00

Some people sleep through the night.
And some do not.
I do not. I lie in bed and wait to get up.
I lay there, usually half awake, in anticipation of daylight.

Some people are night people.
They sleep during the day.

I am not a night person.
I do not like to be out at night, and I do not like to be up at night. I like to be in bed even if I don’t sleep. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s dark at night. It’s hard to see where you’re going, or who, or what, is coming your way. It’s also hard to be warm at night. I like to be warm, so I prefer the sun to the moon for that purpose. The moon is always beautiful, it’s magical, and romantic even, but it does not keep me warm. It enthralls me, it enchants me, and it captivates me, but I usually have to wear a coat if I’m going to be outside enjoying it. The same with the stars, they provoke me to dream, to daydream, as it were, to envision ways and places beyond my own means and circumstances. I like that about the stars. Stars, like the moon, stimulate my imagination.
For me, the one drawback about the moon and the stars is that they’re out at night.
I wish they were out in the daytime so I could enjoy them more than I already do.

The other thing about the night is that darkness hides an abundance of intentions. People act differently at night than in the daytime. If you haven’t noticed that, it’s probably something you just have not cared that much about noticing. I remember hearing an old axiom that simply says, “Nothing good happens after midnight.” Well, that may, or may not, be true, and probably isn’t, but I think the idea of it is true. There are a lot of statements that are not necessarily specifically true, but which are regarded as truth.
This could be one of those. In any event, it’s a cautionary axiom.
And those are important.

And speaking of the night, Keith Richards, guitar player and songwriter for The Rolling Stones, once said something to the effect of, “I feel sorry for those people who sleep at night because they miss out on a lot of good songs.” In the context of that particular interview he was implying that he writes his best songs late at night after everyone else has crashed.

I used to write my best songs late at night also, when I was younger, and had some boundless energy.
But that’s changed. Now I lie in bed at night and listen.
And when my restless sleep is done
I get up and write down what I heard.

Even though I prefer the daytime,
I guess you could say I’m still writing my songs at night.

Moving Through The Forest

2011-01-31T16:26:00.000-08:00

My wife and I, along with Chica, our two-year-old Doberman, recently went on a hike, hoping to find, what we’d heard to be, some spectacular waterfalls on Pilot Creek in El Dorado County, CA. The trail began just a few minutes from where we live, so without a considerable drive to get to the trailhead, we were able, instead, to spend the better part of our day enjoying the hike through the forest, and eventually lunch and relaxation at the river and falls.

It was about a five and a half, or six-mile, round-trip. Part of the hike was moderate in nature, and part was more difficult. The last quarter mile down to the river, the toughest section, was very steep, and to make it even more challenging there were a couple of large trees down across the path. They’d recently fallen, most likely the result of a winter storm. The trunks were still fortified thick with large limbs, leaves and tangled branches. Because of a drop-off on one side of the trail, and a steep hill on the other, there was really no convenient way around the trees. We had to crawl through them on hands and knees, wrestling with the density as we made our way. Chica, of coarse, went through first, delineating the path of least resistance for us to follow.

Chica is very protective by nature, and living in a rather secluded place in the mountains, it is one of the reasons we chose her particular breed for companionship. It’s been both enjoyable, and quite remarkable, to see the expression of her nature, her attentiveness, and her concern for our wellbeing. She is always ‘on duty’, and feels compelled to know what’s going on around us at all times. Our hike out to the falls was a preeminent example of how seriously she takes her job.

From the beginning of the hike Chica ran out about fifty yards ahead of us, and then would circle around one side, come back to the trail about fifty yards behind us, and then head out the other side, only to appear about fifty yards up the trail in front of us again. She ran a wide perimeter for the entire hike out to the falls, and back. She crashed through some very thick forest and brush, and some very steep terrain to investigate lingering scents, to maintain her vigilance, her guardianship of those she understood to be in her charge. As I mentioned, the hike was about five and a half or six miles for us, but she must have covered twenty-five or thirty by the end of the day, maybe more.

What Chica was doing was not reckless, or frenzied self-indulgence. She was, in fact, carrying out what, by instinct, she knew to be her responsibility. It was an innate response to our vulnerability in the forest. She worked a pattern that would ensure that no harm would come to my wife or me, that no threat, man or beast, would come between her and us. She was doing a job, prompted, and driven by, her nature, the absolute core of her nature, and she took the work very seriously. Chica would come back to us when we called her, but also checked back in with us every couple of minutes even when not called. She worked systematically, and kept her full attention on prevention. It was, obviously, quite fulfilling for her, and quite satisfying.
It was also quite endearing.

Watching Chica throughout the course of the day, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the responsibility parents have to safeguard their children in today’s world, a responsibility not only to know where they are, but also to manage who, or what, gets into their lives. I found myself thinking that if every parent took an instinctual approach to their children’s welfare (like Chica has with her protection of us), rather than a relative, and compromised approach, it would be a very different, and much less painful world for the kids to embrace. It is the parent’s commission to set up a perimeter around their children, to run a pattern of protection, as it were, to ensure that no harm would come to them, that no threat, man or beast, would come between the parent and the child.
Some are quite adept at the practice, some learn along the way, and, unfortunately, some just don’t want to be bothered.

There are many beasts not of the two, (or the four) legged variety. With our cultural addiction to Television, Cell phones, the Internet, Video games and such, young people have a pretty perilous terrain to navigate through these days. The parent’s protection gene tends to get worn out, or at least worn down, pretty quickly. But parents must go the extra mile, they must find it within themselves to be vigilant, to be alert, to be sober, to be adult. Even when they don’t feel like it.

Life is a forest, of sorts, and the forest doesn’t really care what happens to our children.
I wish I could send Chica with every child moving through the forest.

Poetic Awakening

2011-01-23T19:02:00.000-08:00

It was dark outside, in the early morning, the very early morning, before dawn, before wakefulness, before nature had yet come to life, or the mountain taken its position of grandeur in the greater assemblage that is the Sierra Nevada.
I sat in warm water, in wet comfort, while shivering cold and frost blanketed all that was not sheltered by immersion, as I was. All that was not encompassed by, protected by, 102 degrees of separation. A welcoming tub. A figurative womb, if you will.

Quietly enmeshed in the process of selective rebirth, I watched humbly from the deck as the contrast of dark earth and a tranquil, gradually lightening sky played itself out like an old black and white movie, calmly, slowly, but confidently, developing a brilliant and exceptional script. It was not plodding in any way, or accidental. It was purposeful. It was deliberate.
Being part of the emergence, part of the awakening, I waited. And I watched. I was an extra, a stand-in, a bit player, really, in the grand scheme of things, in a plan that was the enhanced intention of a fine director.

The trees, and the mountain, stood strong, stood sturdy, silhouetted, coal black, cold and foreboding against the rising heavens. Against the possibility, the probability even, of redemption. I remained transfixed, spellbound in the grip of its magnificence, and its dramatic splendor.

And then, vaguely, faintly, as if a mirage, the slightest touch of pink, wanting, waiting, to kiss the distant horizon. Inaudibly, cautiously, but eventually touching the sky like an adolescent boy might contemplate, and then realize, a reluctant first kiss with the young girl sitting next to him at the movies.
As I remember, he would have sat through the remainder of the film with an erection pressing hard to be relieved.

I finished my tub as the sky burst forth, flamboyant with color, the mountain gradually clothing itself for the day in traditional shades of green, yellow, brown, orange and red.
Awakening again my sense of the poetic.

Where My Fingers Go

2011-01-12T10:03:00.000-08:00

I don’t really feel like writing this morning, but I thought I should kick off the New Year by writing. Because writing is a practice, and a discipline, it’s a good thing to do even when I’m not feeling particularly inclined. However, since I don’t actually have any interesting thoughts for you today, I decided, instead, that I would just start typing and see where my fingers go. I know, if my fingers go where my thinking goes, that could get me in a lot of trouble. But, what’s a little trouble among friends? Right?
Maybe what I have to say will prove to be interesting to you.
And maybe it won’t.

I don’t really know.

Like the rest of you, I’m still trying to figure out this whole ‘life’ thing, whether consciously, or otherwise.
But one thing I do know is that every life is different, but equally important.
And every time of life is different as well, for each of us.

One kind of has to figure out one’s own life, one’s own path. Besides the application of our own personal experience, and the wisdom gained from it, the best any of us can really do is to take the wisdom and experience of those who’ve walked the road ahead of us (ancient, or otherwise) and apply some of the more meaningful, and useful, lessons (of their experience) to ourselves, wherever, and however, they best fit. Some of it will fit fairly well, and some of it will be a little baggy, or just a bit too tight for our liking.

Some things will not fit at a certain time of our lives, but will at others. And conversely, some will fit at certain times, but not so well at others. It all depends on timing, psychic metabolism, and how we happen to be living at the time. We gain and lose spiritual, and intellectual, dimension in life just as we do physical weight. Maybe the biggest decisions we face in life are in just deciding what to keep, and what to discard from our proverbial closet.
And when.

I dress myself in what fits. If it doesn’t fit I don’t leave it hanging too long in my closet wishing that it would. I like to save the closet space for what I can actually wear.

What fit in 1967, 1975, 1985, 98, or 2010, whether it be social, political, religious, or ideological, does not necessarily work for me today. I will keep the parts that continue to make sense, and eliminate the parts that don’t.
Today has never been here before, and I have never faced life with the same degree of accumulated knowledge, wisdom, and experience as I face it with today. Even yesterday I was a day short of what I have now.
The same can be said of each of us.

Every life is different, but equally important.
And every time of life is different as well.
What we do with that accumulation of living is our own choice.

And that, friends, is where my fingers have gone today.

My New Years Revolutions 2011

2011-01-01T07:00:00.000-08:00

* This coming year I resolve to overlook any major disagreements I might have with anybody, and concentrate, instead, on all the petty little differences.

* I’m going to be good to my feet this winter.
I will change my socks twice a day until I run out of socks. Then I’ll borrow some from my neighbor until he runs out. By then it should be summer, and I can begin going barefoot again.

* I will not look anyone in the eye this year when I’m talking to them.
It just makes people way too uncomfortable.

* It seems that my songs make people uncomfortable also.
So I will only write songs about cars. And girls.
In bikini’s. On the beach.
Or for the more mature among us,
rides, bitches and ho’s.

* I will disregard the flooding of our skies with chem-trails, the gathering storm, if you will, choosing instead to accept the ‘weather modification’, and the poisoning of our air, soil (crops), and water as proof that our beloved government is just trying to save us all from the indignity of old age.

* I remember a song from 1968 (MacArthur Park), with lyrics that said “. . . Someone left the cake out in the rain. I don’t think that I can take it, cause it took so long to bake it, and I’ll never have that recipe again. . . . .”
I’m going to leave a cake out in the rain this year, to see if I can take it.
Just for the hell of it.

* I will no longer express my thoughts. I will not express any opinions about honesty, courage, ethics, morality, politics, religion, society, celebrities, reality shows, or social networking sites.
Fortunately, honesty, courage, ethics, morality, politics, religion, society, celebrities, reality shows, and social networking sites all speak very clearly for themselves.

* I will formally establish the Cult of Spiritual Illumination (CSI). I will be its guiding influence, and only member. Meetings will be held in my own head, in random places, and at random times.
I will donate all the profits from my seminars, workshops, and CD’s to a rehab facility for former members. I will be the only former member.

* I will not evaluate, appraise, opinionate, weigh, assess, critique, or exercise deductive reasoning in any way, about any thing.
Then I will not be judged for being judgmental.

* I will compromise every viewpoint in order to achieve a respectable, acceptable, and non-objectionable, blend of relativity.
Something we can all live with.

* (For you Pop Culture aficionados) I will make my best effort to watch the new Oprah Winfrey Network every day of the year. Us ‘regular’ people can never get enough of the kind of guidance, and balanced perspective on life, that we can now get daily from the obscenely rich, who know our struggles, and, of course, our pain.
After all, Oprah did make her own toast once, two years ago,
when her dietitian, her chef, her secretary, her maid, her butler, her chauffeur, her personal trainer, her manicurist, her beautician, her food taster, her errand boy, her masseur, psychotherapist, and all their backups, were given the morning off to go vote.

Actually, I believe she has her own toast flown in from Paris now.
But, hey, that’s beside the point.

* I will no longer encourage our culture to rise to a level of self-respect.
After all, there’s no money in that.

* I will give leaders ‘the benefit of the doubt’. That is, I will continue to doubt them and they will continue to benefit by my detachment and inaction.

* I will no longer divulge my personal secrets, and guilty pleasures.
I will only disclose yours.
And, of course, your choice of fruit.

* I will quit calling for the elimination of pretension.
That would require the elimination of politicians, celebrities, celebrity wannabe’s and, of course, ‘spiritual’ leaders.
God knows we couldn’t live without these pillars of virtue.

* I will only offer advice when it is not asked for.
People only ask for advice when they don’t really want it in the first place, and have no intention of taking it anyway.

* I will only take advice from those who admit their failures.
Only they know how they got there.
Everybody else just pretends to be successful,
since success is the main criteria by which people like to identify potential friends and associates.

* This year I will encourage social climbers to keep both feet on the ground.
Except, of course, when they’re groveling on hands and knees. Then I will encourage them to keep two hands, both knees, and the toes of each foot on the ground.

* This year I intend to let sleeping dogs lie,
rather than insisting that they sleep standing up.

Footnote: For those of you who don’t read my blogs, could you please forward a short text, or email, to let me know that you’re not reading?
Then, when calculating my readership, I can take the six billion, 890 million, 597 thousand, one hundred and twenty people currently living in the world, subtract the number of people who say they’re not reading, and be confident that everyone else I have not heard from is continuing to read every word I have to say.
I can then solicit advertising deals for my website based on that number of readers.

Disclaimer: Any resemblance of any of these comments to people who are either living or dead (myself included) is purely coincidental, and is not intended to be reminiscent of, or an indictment of, anybody that I know, or do not know.
Or anybody I used to know.
Or might one day know.
Or might never know.
In either my former life, in this life,
or the next.

Wishing a remarkable and unusual New Year to all of you.

Selections From The Collection III - 2010

2010-12-30T11:19:00.000-08:00

End of the year compilation of excerpts from my writings over the past twelve months. If any of these selections inspire you to go back and re-read the individual entries in their entirety, you can find them by Name, or Date, on the menu to the right of this posting.

224. Blowing In The Wind: 12/29/10
I saw a flag this morning. It was blowing in the wind.
It reminded me of people flapping their lips, unprovoked by anything other than their own need for validation, or maybe for their need to be reminded that they are, in fact, still alive. Flags are typically prompted by a quiet breeze, a steady wind, or some kind of storm. People, at times, talk just because they’re afraid not to, because they’re uncomfortable with silence. The sound of their own voice somehow mitigates the emptiness, minimizes the discomfort, manages and moderates the environment for them. I don’t begrudge them that. I only wish, at times, that they would choose their audience a little more carefully, and maybe their subject matter. I’m not a very good audience for incessant blather.

223. An Avenging Angel: 12/16/10
Last night I was reminded that life, however it happens,
gets inside of us, and lives there.
It becomes the blood from which we draw
the remainder of our lives.
To the degree that we can manage our own filters,
we should.
Enough of life gets on, and in, us that is completely out of our control.
But it all stays with us.

222. Life’s Re-occurring Dilemma’s: 12/10/10
It is practically built into our DNA to make determinations about whether or not someone is ‘deserving’ of our attention, charity, kindness or time. And it’s especially easy to do when we don’t actually know them. I had no conscious reason to not give the guy some gas, so I guess I may have unconsciously determined him to be unworthy of my contribution, for whatever reason.
And that’s what bothered me.
I don’t want to think that about myself.
And I don’t want to think that about him either.

221. Whatever Happened To Dennis McIntosh?: 12/9/10
For my life to be monitored, and moderated, by others is anathema to everything that my soul is really about. I monitor and moderate myself. It is an internal mechanism that we all have. For me to be measured by a culture that I do not recognize as particularly thoughtful, reflective, necessary, or fulfilling is of little importance to me. I gravitate towards nature, without prompting, and without provocation. The more unnatural our culture becomes, the less interest I have in embracing it, and the less inclined I am to seek acceptance there. In fact, I have no desire to seek acceptance there. I have a healthy degree of self-acceptance that requires little validation from external forces. To the degree I can be free of those concerns, I will be.

220. There Was A Time: 12/1/10
Many things began changing for kids with the creation of new Psychiatric Disorders to cover every nuanced human behavior. With the invent of such disorders, a drug could then be prescribed for every condition.
Not without consequence, this excess of ready-made diagnoses’, and ‘drug therapy’ has been robbing young people of the will to fight through their pain, accepting the pronouncements of ‘professionals’ instead.
Unaware of the arsenic in the comfort food.

219. Thanks Giving: 11/25/10
Giving thanks is not obligatory, but it does make life better.
I feel bad for people who don’t believe in God.
They have no one to be thankful to.

218. Seven Things I Think: 11/19/10
1. If you never question your faith you’re not worthy of it.
2. If you don’t also have faith in yourself you will probably follow someone else.
3. If you follow someone else you undermine yourself.
4. If you can’t trust your own instincts you don’t really trust yourself.
5. If you follow the lead of someone else you sabotage your own instincts.
Unless, of course, your instincts are to follow someone else. (See #2)
6. If your instincts lead you away from the core of your inner self you better develop some better instincts.
And finally. . . . . . . . .
7. If you trust a politician, any politician, you invalidate the meaning of the words ‘trust’, and ‘politician’. (Look them up).

217. A Wire In The Way: 11/11/10
There’s a telephone wire that borders the back of my property, just beyond the property line. It’s clearly visible from the deck, and from many of the windows.
A telephone pole is situated behind some trees, so it is not visible. There is beautiful lush forest continuing beyond the telephone line, displaying a variety of trees. Oak, Cedar, Madrone, Douglas Fir, and Pine. The mountains, ridges, and canyons, stretch for miles into the distance, encompassing many different elevations of topography, and lush blankets of growth. The colors are stunning, and the view is spectacular. The first snow of the year has recently settled upon the highest, and most distant, peak. It will probably be gone in a couple of days if we don’t get another storm passing through.

216. Some Rise by Wrong: 11/5/10
“Some rise by wrong, and some by virtue fall.”
Those words were written by Bruce Hornsby.
I don’t know the name of the song. Maybe you do.
I can’t get over this Lyric.
As a songwriter, I appreciate the difficulty of expressing a thought, a concept, an illumination, with the simple turn of a phrase.
“Some rise by wrong.”
These four short words point out perfectly the inequities in life.
As fallible, often shallow and insensitive people, we too often tend to view, as successful, those who have money, who have an impressive collection of possessions, and maybe a trophy wife to present as the ultimate evidence of that success.
And we are equally inclined to view the poor, the disenfranchised, the struggling, and painfully affected, who go without, as failures, as losers.

215. Trust, and Confidence: 10/30/10
I do not look for life-lessons in the living of my daily life. I do not necessarily even consciously seek to find the hidden in the, otherwise, transparent. When I watch a baseball game I really just intend to enjoy the game for the intrinsic pleasure of the game itself. But life-lessons present themselves to me wherever I am, in whatever I’m doing, and with whomever I happen to be with at the time. I can’t just turn away from those illuminations as if they were a second helping of banana cream pie. That would be foolish on my part. And, furthermore, it would be hypocritical of me to teach if I am not also willing to learn.

214. Mental Chronicles 5: 10/25/10
* Question: “What’s the difference between ‘here’ and ‘there’?
Answer: There really is no difference.
No matter where you go, or how long it takes to get there, once you arrive there you’ll have to say, “I’m here”.
Which is where you started out from in the first place.
Might as well enjoy the ride.

213. Speaking Of Profanity: 10/18/10
“God damn!”
I don’t really like using that exclamation, but
it’s the perfect marriage of the holy and the profane.
Religion, as you well know, seems to create such profound contentiousness between people. The use of religious terminology does the same. I continue to experience
radioactive fallout for something as innocuous as expressing an opinion with words that even imply a connection with religion, no matter how vague, or abstract. I find it kind of disconcerting, and disheartening, that we live in a world where people are not entitled to opinions, where people are knocked down for having one, or for the words they use, like a clay pigeon being blasted out of the sky with a shotgun.
I find it very disturbing, but hey, like it’s gonna keep me from discussing anything?

212. A Certain Lineage: 10/12/10
The forest is a good parallel for life.
There are some aspects of it that we can count on. There is a certain sameness. Generally speaking, the trees are rooted where they’ve always been, the topography is constant, and the rocks continue to lie partially buried like pimples on the surface of the earth. The trails remain in place, wearing into the ground, like a good pair of shoes, over time, conforms to your feet.
It’s what we can depend on, a few of the things that we can anticipate being there tomorrow. Tomorrow is never promised to anybody, but there’s a reasonable expectation that the landscape will be then as it is now, or at least very similar. The constancy, the reliability, the fidelity of nature, as it were, is something that gives security to us in an otherwise undependable, and unpredictable, world. It is, I think, part of the reason I’m so drawn to it.

211. Natureing: 10/6/10
I’ve coined a new word. Natureing.
There are activities associated with words that affect, and impact, our lives.
Meditating, praying, studying, working, exercising, etc. These words, and many others, engage the practitioner in the process that is known as ‘cause and effect’.
A ‘cause’ is something that makes something else happen.
An ‘effect’ is what happens as a result of the cause.
And, obviously, the ‘effect is why people participate in the cause.
I engage in ‘Natureing’ almost every day, and on many days, many times throughout the day. It is simply the process of engaging with nature. Some call it ‘communing’. I don’t really commune, that’s just not my style. But I do participate in, and with, nature. And I fully engage my sense of appreciation when I do.

210. Balance: 9/23/10
There is a natural balance in life. We see, and experience it, in nature. It is a very important aspect of life, an aspect that, if missing from our own lives, leaves us at the mercy of the emotional, psychological, and physical elements of its absence.
In one’s personal life nobody just happens upon balance, or finds it by accident. There is a process of ‘finding’ it, just as there was with my little grandson. And then there is the practice of ‘keeping’ it. Finding, and keeping. Both require some knowledge, some wisdom, and some experience. Experience produces knowledge. Knowledge, when blended with experience, generates wisdom. Wisdom enables us to measure intangibles. And it gives us the wherewithal to deal with them.

209. The Honesty Of Intention: 9/12/10
It may not really matter to you, but I want to say that I have always been someone whom others have been perfectly comfortable projecting their own ideologies on to, their own belief systems. So-called Conservatives have considered me to be either ‘one of them’, or ‘one of those liberals’, depending on what they’ve needed me to be to validate their own position.
And So-called Liberals have done the same, only in reverse on the issues. Truth is, I am neither of those. It’s not good to view people in those terms. I sometimes do, but I try not to. Like you, sometimes I get caught up in the anger, or the immediacy, of an issue, but I don’t subscribe to anybody else’s idea of what’s right, and what’s wrong. I know what’s right, and I know what’s wrong. And so do you. I don’t need an ideology to instruct me.

208. Let’s Stop Throwing Shit At The Wall: 9/7/10
People have disagreements on ‘moral’ issues. They always have. They also disagree on social issues, the need for, and manner of, addressing them, and even the necessity for solutions. People make social issues into moral issues, and they make moral issues into social issues. Maybe every moral issue is also a social issue, and every social issue a moral one, I don’t know. But perspectives do overlap, and it is seldom that part of an issue cannot be shared by both points of view. It is also seldom, however, that one position will allow room for the other. That’s a shame. We are all diminished by that disallowance.
Disagreement is no cause for alignment in totally separate camps, which end up throwing insults at one another like some incarcerated crazies might throw shit at the wall.

207. Relationships 2: 8/31/10
I know we’d all like to consider ourselves as independent of our parents, but whether we want to admit it or not, relationships are modeled by parents.
We grow up learning how to conduct relationships by watching how our parents conduct them. Children grow up to imitate, and perpetuate those behaviors. If we grow up in a healthy family, where honesty trumps deceit, where openness overrides secrecy, where courage conquers pretension, we are much better equipped to enter into adult relationships than if the opposite would have prevailed in the family.
If parents are open and honest with each other, as well as with their children, those children have a good start on having similar kinds of relationships as adults.

206. Relationships: 8/18/10
Relationships take effort, a lot of effort. They must be defined, and they must be negotiated, otherwise they tend to fold in on themselves like a parachute catching a downdraft. They can be an expansive element of one’s life, but can also become a dangerous inversion of one’s expectations. Relationships, to be successful, require that both parties play by the same set of rules. And if they don’t, it is only a matter of time before they implode.

205. The Tranquil Sky: 8/3/10
The tranquil sky, stretching wide across a lingering horizon, painted with the loving hand, and expertise, of one who knows what stimulates, and invigorates, the soul of a man such as myself. I do not suppose the Artist chose to paint it for my pleasure alone (although I’d like to think that) but for you as well. I can only hope that you are awake this morning to embrace it. The expanse that is my view from where I write creates, and enables, a similar expanse from inside me, from deep within the hidden recesses of my faith, and of my sometimes pain, extending outward now, opening my arms to the possibility of the unforeseen, the unexpected, and the mostly undeserved.

204. It’s Really Not That Important: 6/28/10
I used to think there are a lot of things in life that are important. Too many things, maybe. I used to think that it was important to determine what is important, and then to add those things to my priority list. But the list would keep growing, and there would always be something of priority waiting to be addressed. I guess it’s good to pay attention to things, but not necessarily to everything that might end up on the list. Anything, really, could find its way to the list, and then once it’s there it would become a priority, no matter how far down the list it might happen to be. After all, if it’s on the list it takes on the mantle of importance, and that makes it important whether it’s actually important or not.

203. Trails: 6/19/10
Over the past year my wife and I have spent considerable time cutting in walking trails through the forested land that we are fortunate enough to ‘own’ (as if the earth can actually be owned by someone). But the sections we worked were those that, by virtue of their natural flow, kind of designed themselves. We just had to follow their lead and do the clearing. Of course there was some decision making in the process because there were many junctures where the trail could have gone this way or that, or the other way even. Although most of the options appeared to be good, ultimately, we had to decide on the direction. When those trails were finished we could walk them, pleased with, and somewhat proud of, the outcome because it truly was a partnership with nature. Nature, in a sense, quietly guided our willing hands.

202. I Don’t Trust Happiness: 6/7/10
Unhappiness is something you can depend on. It will never leave you as long as you continue to embrace it. It will be your constant companion, through thick and thin, through brief moments of elation even. It will be waiting to comfort you as those occasional, but fleeting, feelings of happiness return you to its care. Unhappiness takes little effort, and it comes quite easily to those who seek the familiarity of its presence. It can be like a warm blanket, or an old friend. It can be shelter from the world, or from the wind. Unhappiness will follow you like a shadow, without invitation, and without argument or disagreement. It will cling to your soul like molasses.

201. Clearing Out The Clutter: 5/3/10
A man I know has recently been working around his property, clearing brush, trimming trees, cutting down the dying, the dead, and the unproductive, and opening space to provide himself with some breathing room and a better view.
I have been doing the same since becoming owner, and caretaker, of some beautiful acreage in the mountains. When property is neglected, left unattended, it becomes whatever it will become by virtue of its own untamed nature. However, in order to coexist comfortably with nature, one must be, undoubtedly, amenable to compromise. One must allow for the natural world to exist partially on its own terms, but require it to exist partially on the terms that he decides on for himself. To allow the full force of nature would prove to be overwhelming, and eventually threatening, to the sensibility and wellbeing of any individual. To succumb to the will of nature would not, could not, ever turn out for the better. But, conversely, to subjugate nature entirely to one’s own will would, ultimately, reduce a persons life to confinement in an over-controlled, finely manicured ‘natural’ prison of one’s own making. A gated community, if you will. A place where you pay other people to control the wild around you, to protect you from the natural world.

200. Number 2 Hundred: 5/18/10
I like that number. I like the way it looks, and I like the way it sounds. When I was younger, playing on different sports teams I always wanted to be Number 2. I never wanted to be ‘1’, or ‘#1’, or even ‘Number 1’. Being ‘Number 1’ would be way too much pressure. And it’s kind of a self-aggrandizing number anyway. But, actually, I wouldn’t mind being ‘Number Won’. That would be kind of cool. I like the implication of that.

Anyway, back to my point. I didn’t really want to be ‘2’, or ‘#2’ either. But I always wanted to be ‘Number 2’. I never could be. They don’t allow special numbers like that for guys like me. Maybe for LeBron James, if he wanted it, but not for me.
If I’d had to settle for ‘2’, or ‘#2’, I’d rather have been ‘two’, or ‘too’ even. Or better yet, ‘Also’. Being ‘Also’ would be awesome. ‘Also’ means ‘too’, which sounds the same as ‘two’, which actually is ‘2’.
Well, it gets complicated.

199. An Ode To Spring: 5/13/10
Here in North America Spring is rapidly approaching, there is an amorous arousal on the Continent, and with it comes the inclination, compulsion even, for humans to do what most humans do to ensure that we, as a species, continue to exist.
Friending on our Facebooks, and Tweeting on our Twitters.

198. Loving / Being Loved: 4/30/10
Loving is not necessarily always doing what somebody else would like, or even what they think might satisfy them. Sometimes it is being, for them, the voice of reason, the solid ground from which their soul can take root and grow.
Sometimes love is coming to the rescue.
And sometimes love is doing nothing at all.
In many respects it takes the love of others to enable our own ability to love. But it can also be said that loving enables ones ability to be loved.
It works both ways.
Personally, I think that when we cultivate loving, the love of others finds us.
It just finds us, usually unexpectedly,
but it finds us.

197. It’s Really More Simple Than It Seems: 4/15/10
Life is never easy, but there is a less complicated way to live, there is a general guide to live by, a means of keeping ones equilibrium in life. It is often the second choice of any given individual, but it is, ultimately, the best choice. It is a tried, true, and historically tested manner of being. It is ancient wisdom, and it is applicable in contemporary life as well. It is not complicated, and it is embraceable by all but the truly self-indulgent. It is for those wishing to live in harmony with consciousness, and for those simply wanting not to stray too far from what they know to be of value and importance. It is a principle that allows the pleasure, and the enjoyment of life, but holds at bay the temptations that call to us like sirens in an enveloping fog. It is a place where honesty trumps deception, and where kindness supercedes self-service. It is a place of self-denial by choice, rather than by imposition. It is where integrity resides, and self-importance falls away like dead skin.

196. What Are We Thinking? 4/11/10
You’ve probably been reading about the sexual abuse scandal involving U.S. swim coaches who have been molesting, groping, and secretly taping numerous young female swimmers around the country. Thirty-six coaches have been banned for life. Now I bet that really makes us feel good about ourselves! Not that they’re going to go coach somewhere else, or anything like that!!!
Question: If all the so-called ‘authorities’ are so motivated to prevent the devastation in these children’s lives, why do they not have the courage to make changes that actually work?
Answer: Oh, I don’t know, could it be that ‘harmless’ little Political Correctness (Personal Cowardice) gene I’m always talking about? Just wondering.

195. PoliTricks: 4/7/10
Don’t read this if idealism creates, and governs, your ideology. It’ll only make you mad.
Idealism used to be the social/political domain of Hollywood, thirteen year-old girls, and fifteen year-old boys. Unfortunately, it has now infected a disproportionate number of actual adults. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the pot we’ve been smoking like tobacco, or the pharmaceuticals we’ve been chewing like candy.

194. They Sense Us: 4/2/10
After receiving my Census survey, which contains questions that are none of the Governments friggin’ concern, is it any big surprise that the form is supposed to be returned to the “2010 Census Data CAPTURE Center”? What, do they want to know where to find me just in case I happen to disagree with their policies? They’ve asked for my name, and my phone number. My phone number? Why would they need to call me? Are they afraid that maybe I counted the number of persons living at my residence wrong? Or might they just want to chat? They’re not entitled to my name, or my phone number. I am entitled to anonymity. I, personally, am none of the Governments business.

193. There’s Something To Be Said: 3/23/10
It’s been said, “When you have nothing to say, it’s usually best to say nothing.” Most people, typically, do have something to say, but most people, also, will usually say nothing. Something is often better said than nothing being said because saying something can give someone else’s deafening silence some illuminating context. Are you following me? It can reveal the silence to be what it frequently is, insecurity, fear, or intimidation. The spoken also gives the silent an opportunity for its own expression, to move beyond its, otherwise, timid and invisible nature. It can give silence an opportunity to speak, or, if need be, to hunker down and embrace its own timidity. Some people can remain silent forever, and some people just need the expression of others to initiate their own. Saying nothing seemingly implies, albeit wrongly, that there is nothing to be said. That will sometimes be the case, but there is almost always something to be said.

192. Pride of the Irish: 1/17/10
They call it Saint Patricks day
but I can’t see where the man did me no good.
Who made him a saint
anyway?

Is that something like
an uncle?

Just because he wore a big hat,
carried a long staff,
was white, had a beard
and drove some weird snakes
outa town
don’t mean nothin’ where I live.

Sounds to me like
he must have been a maniac
or somethin’
Besides,
he’d prob’ly get arrested
if they caught him doin’ that
today.

191. Chica, the Dog: 3/13/10
Starting out, I have to say I recognize that listening to someone talk about their own dog is not much different from listening to a parent talking about their child, or even showing slides of the family vacation. If you’re not intimately acquainted with the object of affection, or if you weren’t there, you’re probably going to be bored with hearing about it. “My little Amber is the cutest, smartest, most unique child I’ve ever known. She’s only a year old, and she can already count to three.” Never mind that little Amber is actually the only child the parent has ever really known. But, it is almost impossible to separate those sentiments from the larger reality of who little Amber, or in this case, Chica, actually is. So, if you don’t want to hear about my dog this would be a good place to stop reading.

190. The Honesty Of Anger: 3/10/10
He is not an honest man, and I do not intend to entertain his disingenuousness throughout the future. I take to heart many of those valuable historical parables so many of us were raised with, and this one in particular.
“Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
No matter how many times they might mention God, or their church.

If he were in trouble, or in need, yes, I would offer him assistance.
He is a fellow traveler on this planet, and our commission as humans is to love one another. But sometimes love requires that a situation be dealt with directly, that one not protect another’s fraudulent position. Sometimes love requires taking the more difficult stand. And yes, sometimes love requires the honesty of anger.

189. My Fathers Desk: 3/3/10
I have my fathers desk. He gave it to me when it became apparent that he would never be using it again. My dad has gotten very old. It’s an old desk too, an old school teachers desk; ironic, because my dad was never really a teacher. Didn’t have the patience for it. There is a lot of wear and tear on this desk. That’s one of the things I like about it. I also like that it was his desk. I don’t like new things very much. They lack depth and character. Old things always contain a lot of interesting assimilation. Assimilation is the process of becoming part of, or more like, something greater. This desk is greater than it was when it was made. It has a lot of living engrained in its finish, and in its wood.

188. Life Is A Three Act Play: 3/1/10
Life has a beginning, a middle, and an end. We tend to think of life as a one-act play, but actually, we’re born, we live, and we die. Those, I believe, are three separate acts. If we include the Beyond, there are four. We tend not to see the ‘born’ part as a segment of our life, nor do we see the ‘die’ part that way. We only see the ‘life’ part as significant to living. I see all three of these acts as separate and independent of each other, but fundamentally intertwined with one another, and equally significant as well.

187. I Have A Good Wife: 2/25/10
There’s a difference between being a good woman, and being a good wife. I have known many good women over the years who would not necessarily be very good wives. But, to be a good wife one has to first be a good woman, the two are very inter-related.
I’m not an expert on wives, or women, for that matter. But I am an expert on what applies to, and relates to, me. My wife certainly fits well within those parameters. And she is a good wife. Some women consider being described as ‘a good wife’ to be an insult. I suppose that’s because they, myopically, choose to relate to the description as the totality of what they are seen to be. But I don’t think anyone ever meant to describe their own wife as ‘only’ a good wife, and nothing else, at least not anybody you’d really care to know.

186. Avatar, The Movie: 2/22/10
I saw ‘Avatar’ yesterday. If I’m not mistaken, it took eight years to make, and cost about 250 million dollars, and sometime before I even get this blog posted, it will break the all-time record for dollars earned, breaking the record set by ‘Titanic’, which was also made by James Cameron. It’s been reported that many people leave the movie feeling dizzy, disoriented, and depressed. Although I understand why so many leave depressed, I just left angry. The movie’s feelings-based politics, and social ideology, were insulting to anybody with the courage to subjugate their feelings to the reality, and truth, of historical context.

185. I Wish Him All The Best: 2/19/10
I just finished watching the Tiger apology on TV.
I’m sure many of you saw it as well.
I have been critical of Tiger Woods. He has been a man that I have never respected because of his Diva, arrogant, egocentric behavior on the golf course. I have respected his dedication, and the hard work he devoted to his craft, but I never respected him as a person, or as a man.
Until Now.

184. Mental Chronicles 4: 2/18/10
As some of you know, I like to watch the auditions of American Idol. I stop watching when the competition gets to Hollywood and everybody starts pretending that they totally support their competition.
But I remember one young American Idol wannabe’s audition, who, before her song, stated that she thinks she ‘deserves to be’ the next American Idol because if she were chosen she thinks she’d make ‘a good role model’. She went on to say, “You know, I’d recycle, and I’d care about the people in Africa, and stuff like that.”
Huh! I was under the impression that I was watching American Idol,
not the Miss America pageant.

183. Thought Casserole: 2/13/10
I’ve probably never had an original thought.
But, most likely, I think of different things than you do.
And that makes my thoughts worth expressing. The same is true of yours.
You think of different things than me.

182. Internal Congestion: 2/10/10
Writing takes me out of myself. Out of my internal congestion, you might say.
Now, those of you who know me would probably agree that it’s a good thing for me to get out of myself. I wouldn’t say that I’m ‘into’ myself, per-se, it’s just that I do live ‘within’ myself. That would be a very comfortable place for some people to live, but not necessarily for me. Kind of scary in there sometimes, kind of confusing at other times. I might even say ‘exasperating’. But, nevertheless, writing takes me out of myself.
And that’s all I’m going to say about me.

181. Love: 1/26/08
I was watching a movie the other night. I would not call it a particularly good movie, in fact, I won’t even bother to mention the title because it is not really the point of these thoughts. However, there was a line in the film that got me thinking. I know, you’re probably wondering, “OK, what’s he thinking about now?” But here’s the deal. One of the characters was saying that he had heard from several Hospice workers he knew that, when on their deathbed, the two questions the dying seemed to ask themselves were, 1) “Have I ever loved anybody?” And 2) “Has anybody ever loved me?”
Interesting questions.
Interesting because they are the kind of questions that, I think, we would seem to take for granted. “Of course I’ve loved somebody, and of course somebody has loved me.” Seems like a no-brainer, the kinds of questions one could answer without really even having to think about it. But are they really?
If love is so prevalent, and so common in an individual, why is it that one of the two deathbed questions just happens to be “Have I ever loved anybody?”

180. Only For Today: 1/21/10
Snow covers the ground today like hope clothes the faith of pilgrims. Icicles hang low from eaves left frozen overnight. My warm breath rises in the morning chill like prayer seeking the mind of God, or His ear, to be more exact. Trees droop heavy with the weight of change, the sky having quietly dumped its own burden when it became too much for its weakening arms to hold. Some of that load now left clinging to Pine branches high above the ground, wishing, like the sky, for a little relief of their own.

179. Such Unimaginable Happenstance: 1/14/10
Pray for the people of Haiti, particularly for the children who lost their parents,
and the parents who lost their children.
And while you’re at it, give some thought to the misdirected importance we give the privileged in our own county. Tell me that, in Gods eyes, there is not a broken, wounded, misplaced, or suffering child in Haiti that is not equally, or more, important than the spoiled royalty we serve with our money and adoration. Tell me that Michael Jackson’s life, or Anna Nicole Smith’s, or Farrah Faucet’s, for that matter, was of greater importance than was the baby of a poverty stricken mother whose shantytown shack has fallen down in shambles around her, her child lost to the rubble of such unimaginable happenstance.

178. Dirty Little Secret: 1/13/10
I don’t normally write about my business dealings, or personal health issues, except maybe to illuminate a particular behavior, or to demonstrate some aspect or another of human nature. But I feel rather compelled to let you in on a situation I encountered yesterday in the course of attending to an illness I’ve been struggling with for the past two weeks. I’ve been laying low with a bronchial infection, which began as a mild cold, progressed to a persistent cough, and ultimately, became the bronchial infection that I ended up seeking treatment for. It’s a serious, but not life threatening condition, unless left untreated, in which case it could develop into pneumonia. I should have obtained a prescription of antibiotics earlier, but like many men do, I put it off until it became very apparent that I better do something about it.

177. Parking Meters: 1/10/10
I’ve been thinking about Parking Meters.
Don’t ask me why. I just think about what presents itself.
So, let me see if I have this right. In the City, the taxpayers pay for the construction of the streets, their maintenance and repair. They pay for the installation and maintenance of the parking meters. They pay the salaries of the parking police who are employed to catch them parked with expired meters. They pay to park there, then they pay the expired meter fines (taxes) that can range up to a couple of hundred dollars, depending on the location and time of day.

176. The Hole We’ve Been Digging For Ourselves: 1/8/10
The hole we’ve been digging for ourselves is the hole we’ll eventually bury ourselves in.
Our society has gradually become so dismissive of the dishonest, inappropriate and reckless actions of one another that we find ourselves slowly burying ourselves alive in our own behaviors. If it seems to you that things have gotten too far out of control, it’s only because things have gotten too far out of control. By ‘out of control’, I’m not speaking of being independent of the control of others; I’m referring to the alarming loss of self-control so evident in the lives, manners, and actions of so many, including our supposed leaders and ‘role models’. The younger generation is mimicking the behavior of the older generation who in turn are mimicking the behavior of the younger generation.

175. My Continuing New Years Revolutions, 2010: 1/1/10
This is a personal inventory of the New Years Revolutions I made for 2009.
I’ve graded myself to see where I stand. To my way of thinking, there’s no reason to make new revolutions as long as I can keep making excuses for not keeping
the ones that I’ve already made.

Blowing In The Wind

2010-12-29T16:10:00.000-08:00

I saw a flag this morning. It was blowing in the wind.
It reminded me of people flapping their lips, unprovoked by anything other than their own need for validation, or maybe for their need to be reminded that they are, in fact, still alive.
Flags are typically prompted by a quiet breeze, a steady wind, or some kind of storm. People, at times, talk just because they’re afraid not to, because they’re uncomfortable with silence. The sound of their own voice somehow mitigates the emptiness, minimizes the discomfort, manages, and moderates the environment for them. I don’t begrudge them that. I only wish, at times, that they would choose their audience a little more carefully, and maybe their subject matter. I’m not a very good audience for incessant blather.

I know, some of you might feel like I do the same thing with my writing, but the difference is that you don’t need to read what I write. Those of you who choose to can shut it down at any time. But, far too often, social protocol requires that one listen to the sound of the flapping, whether it be solo, or part of a group.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about interactive social conversation, or even the exchange of information, I’m talking about people flapping their lips simply because they can, holding everybody else hostage to their indulgence. You know what I’m talking about. We’ve all been in those situations. We’ve even contributed to them.

A flag is content to be still, to not display its colors, or even its capability. It, in a sense, trusts what it is, and speaks only in response to the prodding of the elements. It does not flap to kill time, to trumpet itself, or even to keep its own company.

More flags, and less nervous chatter, would be nice.

An Avenging Angel

2010-12-16T05:57:00.001-08:00

The sky was ablaze this morning.
I was recovering from the lingering remnants of a bad dream.
It was a long night as I was visited by a once-faded memory.

The sky enabled my recovery, not in any conscious way,
but recovery, nevertheless,
like an avenging angel reaching out of the sky
to slay the inner demon.

Dreams happen.
Sometimes they’re pleasant, and sometimes they’re not.
I learn something about life, and about myself,
in my dreams.

Last night I was reminded that life, however it happens,
gets inside of us, and lives there.
It becomes the blood from which we draw
the remainder of our lives.

To the degree that we can manage our own filters,
we should.
Enough of life gets on, and in, us that is completely out of our control.
But it all stays with us.
Of that we can be sure.

There will not always be an avenging angel reaching out of the sky
to slay the inner demon.

Life’s Re-Occurring Dilemma’s

2010-12-10T20:47:00.000-08:00

I was getting out of my car at a service station the other day when a guy carrying a gas can came up to me and asked if I could give him some gas.
I’d had many of these requests in the past. It’s always an uncomfortable situation because it’s hard to know if the guy really just needs some gas to get somewhere, or if he’s running a scam to collect money.

I think the dilemma, for me, is that soliciting gas at a gas station is kind of like someone asking you for money at an ATM machine. It makes perfect sense for the asker (there’s gas available at the gas station, and there’s money available at the ATM machine), but it’s pretty off-putting for the person being solicited. It puts you on the spot. It makes you feel like you don’t really have the option of not giving. After all, you’re filling your tank, so what’s the big deal about donating another gallon of gas to somebody else?

Having been driving for seven hours straight, tired, and pre-occupied, I simply said to the guy “Not today”, and he quietly walked away to ask somebody else. There were no bad vibes, there was no further interaction, and I don’t think he put any more weight on the exchange than I did at the time.

But while I was pumping my gas I thought about the guy, the way he approached me, the look in his eye. I also thought about my response to him. I was not dismissive of him, or rude, I just didn’t give him any gas. I wondered what had made me arrive at my decision. I really didn’t know. But I could afford a gallon of gas for him, and it bothered me that I didn’t give him some.

It is practically built into our DNA to make determinations about whether or not someone is ‘deserving’ of our attention, charity, kindness or time. And it’s especially easy to do when we don’t actually know them. I had no conscious reason to not give the guy some gas, so I guess I may have unconsciously determined him to be unworthy of my contribution, for whatever reason.
And that’s what bothered me.

I don’t want to think that about myself.
And I don’t want to think that about him either.

I’d lost sight of the guy, and went to find him to give him some gas,
but he was gone.

We need to take care of each other.

Whatever Happened To Dennis McIntosh?

2010-12-09T08:18:00.000-08:00

A little bit about the position in life that I have, in a sense, so circuitously arrived at,
and why.

So this is a good place to stop reading if you’re so inclined.

People have wondered why I changed the spelling of my first name to ‘Denes’.
Well, a new beginning, that’s all. Just a new beginning.
Nothing to get away from.
Nothing to hide.
I was finished with the old business of my life, and the pain that clung to me like molasses.
And ready to get on with the process of living.

And people have wondered, over the years, why I have been gradually stepping further away from a once active, involved, socially ‘meaningful’ kind of life, and gravitating towards a more independent, contemplative, peaceful life, now in the mountains. And all I can say is, “It’s just a natural progression.” My soul and spirit do not stand up well to the imposed standards, and expectations, of people, parties, social groups, organizations, and religions that I would not, and do not, gravitate naturally towards.

For my life to be monitored, and moderated, by others is anathema to everything that my soul is really about. I monitor and moderate myself. It is an internal mechanism that we all have. For me to be measured by a culture that I do not recognize as particularly thoughtful, reflective, necessary, or fulfilling is of little importance to me. I gravitate towards nature, without prompting, and without provocation. The more unnatural our culture becomes, the less interest I have in embracing it, and the less inclined I am to seek acceptance there. In fact, I have no desire to seek acceptance there. I have a healthy degree of self-acceptance that requires little validation from external forces. To the degree I can be free of those concerns, I will be.

And I’m sure many of you would make the same decision if given the option.

The deeper side of separation from my former life is that, I have, for too many years, been available to too many people, people who have (in a sense) wanted me to be their Jesus. But I’m not him, never have been. Don’t want to be . . . . . .
and never did.

There’s a pretty profound truism in regards to someone wanting someone else to be their rock. Something I’ve experienced first hand, many times. If someone adopts (ordains) you to be their savior, healer, guide, guru, counselor, teacher, minister, mentor, or lap dog, and they don’t get what they want from you, they eventually then want to punish you. In some fashion or another.
Sometimes unconsciously, and sometimes not.
Unfortunately, it seems to be a basic tenant of human nature.

I’ve grown a little weary of being punished for pointing people back to themselves as the source of their own strength, their own healing. And to the force of life that dwells within them. I don’t have a pill for them to take, a quick psychological makeover kit, a just-add-water life-plan, a confessional they can visit, or a salvation strategy they can casually indulge in.
I just suggest to people that they be honest, with themselves, and with others. For some reason they don’t like that suggestion. They find it to be inconvenient, unnecessary, too compromising, too foreign of a concept.

Well, people didn’t get what they wanted from Jesus either, and they crucified Him.
I don’t compare myself to Him, just to the dynamic of having been the target of other people’s expectations. Now, just so you don’t start accusing me of comparing myself to Jesus, let me repeat what I actually said. “I don’t compare myself to Him, just to the dynamic of being the target of other people’s expectations.”
I could have made the comparison to that of Joseph Templeton, rather than Jesus, but you don’t know Joseph Templeton. Probably never heard of him.
So what would have been the point of that?

Too many people have, over the years, had too many preconceptions, false impressions, and expectations, about who, and what, I was. People have measured me by their own social, religious, and political leanings, or by the kind, and degree, of attention they may have, at one time, received from me. They have measured me by their own assumptions, rather than by my own spiritual imprint. Consequently, I have been gradually disappearing from their world, choosing instead to live in my own.
I don’t really see anything the matter with that. In fact, I like it better here.
And I think you would too.

But the interesting part about it is that most people seem to have liked me better in that other life, when they had me stereotyped, defined, labeled, and confined in a very harmless and predictable little box. Of course, who wouldn’t like it better that way? It’s more comfortable for us to keep other people assigned to places where we feel secure with them, where they don’t threaten our status quo, our belief system, our psychic inadequacy, where a person can remain in an image of our making. I must admit, I may have played a part in that creation of myself, but only in unintended collusion with the actual engineers.

I have actually always lived in an alternate space, in a broader expanse of the visible, of the unspoken, the unbroken even, and certainly the unadorned. It’s just that not everybody has known that about me. People have always mistaken my quiet for agreement, my tolerance for affirmation, my moderation for timidity, my compassion for weakness, and my modesty for apprehension.

And they have always been wrong about me.

I will no longer, even inadvertently, reinforce that illusion.
It would not be an honest thing for me to do.
And I think you might know that by now.

So, what ever happened to ‘Dennis’ McIntosh?
Well, to put it simply,
the boy became a man.

I understand the general discomfort with that.
Boys are, in fact, less threatening than men.

There Was A Time

2010-12-01T09:42:00.000-08:00

You may not agree with the following cultural observations.
That wouldn't be the first time.
But they are my observations, and just because you may not see them in your own community does not mean that it is not a serious cultural trend in our country.
One does not see a flood until it is upon them.
Perhaps your particular community is more conscious, or more protected, than the culture at large.
Perhaps not, I don’t know.

In regards to teens, and twenty something’s.
An age of self-discovery. An age of development.
An age of importance.
It is a very confusing world for them to connect to now.

Many things began changing for kids with the creation of new Psychiatric Disorders to cover every nuanced human behavior. With the invent of such disorders, a drug could then be prescribed for every condition.
Not without consequence, this excess of ready-made diagnoses’, and ‘drug therapy’ has been robbing young people of the will to fight through their pain, accepting the pronouncements of ‘professionals’ instead.
Unaware of the arsenic in the comfort food.

There was a time in our history when young people suffering from the torment of disassociation, the pain of internal isolation, the confusion of identity, would be offered meaningful and significant help, assistance towards finding themselves, and getting their lives on track.
Rather than be encouraged to embrace their own ‘peculiarity’.

There was a time when the pain of one’s particular childhood was to be acknowledged, faced, sorted out, dealt with, risen above, and used as motivation for self-improvement.
Rather than to be used as justification for what one has become.

There was a time when doctors, psychologists, and psychiatrists, in particular, but school counselors as well, would encourage, and help facilitate for young people, the discovery, or rediscovery, of self, of one’s true and honest nature, of one’s essential humanity, of the best a person has within themselves.
Rather than to fall back on personal compromise.

There was a time when High School coaches would teach, and model, fortitude and perseverance for their players, then step back and watch as pride, and dignity, would emerge in the discovery of the individual’s own inner will.
Rather than accommodating the subjugation of self to one’s own weakness.

There was a time when teachers would quite naturally incorporate life, and character, lessons into the teaching of their particular topic of expertise.
Rather than the vague and ambiguous relativity they are now so fond of dispensing to our children.

There was a time when the reintegration of a person with himself was of prominent importance towards the health and well-being of the individual, when the outward direction of one’s best intentions would enable the internal identity to right itself, and when we, as a culture, were able to recognize the importance of such meaningful achievements.
Rather than giving out awards for the acceptance of self in a perpetually wounded, and compromised, condition.

There was a time when personality disorders, and self-absorbed deviance, would be recognized as personality disorders and self-absorption. There was a time when arrogant and pompous narcissism (which young people learn from pretend-adults) would be recognized as a disassociation from one’s inner compass, from one’s own inner core.
Rather than it being celebrated as courageous individualism.

There was a time when arrogance, and pompous affectation (which is also learned from pretend-adults), would be recognized for what it actually is . . . . . . . . . sad and pathetic self-loathing, the consequence of continued behavior that diminishes the human spirit.
Rather than as a sign of one having finally achieved self-acceptance.

Live with the lie, and you live with the life.

I find it quite interesting that some of the most glaring and serious psychiatric disorders have conveniently been purged from the list to further enable the behaviors they support. In many cases, the very behaviors the psychiatrists and ‘therapists’ engage in themselves. How convenient.
Oh yes, and the drugs they prescribe for every condition?
Follow the money.
And wouldn’t you like to know which drugs these therapists are on in order to make it possible for them to continue to live with themselves?

We no longer seek to repair the broken,
but to integrate it, to redefine it.
Everybody is afraid of being branded as ‘intolerant’.
Eventually, everybody will be broken.

I think that we should not be fooled by Psychiatric labels that are so readily adopted by adults, and even more readily imposed upon young people. We should not be fooled by the elevation of self-interest groups in our culture, by the subjugation of value, by the inundation of increasingly compromised social, political, and personal deviance.

It is the young people who are most affected by our disingenuous lead,
and who will continue to be long into the future.
They are our responsibility.

If we want to celebrate deviance, lets celebrate deviating from these poisonous cultural trends. That would be deviance worthy of recognition.

There was a time when we would call a spade a spade.
I think we should still call a spade a spade.
I don’t think we should call a spade a heart.
A spade is not a heart.

Thanks Giving

2010-11-25T06:54:00.000-08:00

The obligatory Thanksgiving blog?
Giving thanks is not obligatory, but it does make life better.
I feel bad for people who don’t believe in God.
They have no one to be thankful to.

It’s been said many times, and by many different ‘authorities’, that people are considerably happier when they have an attitude of gratitude. There have been studies done on the matter, but one doesn’t really need to consult a study to know if the conclusion is true. One only needs to put the matter into practice in one’s own life to test the validity of its claim.

Going to bed with a thankful heart is the pre-curser to waking up in the morning with one. Waking up in the morning with a thankful heart is the key to ‘having a good day’.
This is not difficult, or complicated, psychology, nor is it Eat-Pray-Love privileged pop indulgence. It is simply the way our human psyches work.
One does not need to search the world for what will make them happy.
Happiness in inherent in giving thanks.

The dictionary defines ‘Psyche’ as “the human spirit, or soul; the human mind as the center of thought and behavior”.

There are a myriad of things in one’s life, or throughout one’s day, to be thankful for.
Do yourself a favor, and choose one.

Choose a different one every day if you dare.

Seven Things I Think

2010-11-19T06:05:00.000-08:00

1. If you never question your faith you’re not worthy of it.

2. If you don’t also have faith in yourself you will probably follow someone else.

3. If you follow someone else you undermine yourself.

4. If you can’t trust your own instincts you don’t really trust yourself.

5. If you follow the lead of someone else you sabotage your own instincts.
Unless, of course, your instincts are to follow someone else.
(See #2)

6. If your instincts lead you away from the core of your inner self you better develop some better instincts.

And finally. . . . . . . . .

7. If you trust a politician, any politician, you invalidate the meaning of the words ‘trust’, and ‘politician’. (Look them up).

A Wire In The Way

2010-11-11T18:22:00.000-08:00

There’s a telephone wire that borders the back of my property, just beyond the property line. It’s clearly visible from the deck, and from many of the windows.

A telephone pole is situated behind some trees, so it is not visible. There is beautiful lush forest continuing beyond the telephone line, displaying a variety of trees. Oak, Cedar, Madrone, Douglas Fir, and Pine. The mountains, ridges, and canyons, stretch for miles into the distance, encompassing many different elevations of topography, and lush blankets of growth. The colors are stunning, and the view is spectacular. The first snow of the year has recently settled upon the highest, and most distant, peak. It will probably be gone in a couple of days if we don’t get another storm passing through.

The telephone wire changes its appearance, and its prominence, depending on the light, and the time of day. Sometimes it is reflective of the light, and sometimes it disappears altogether.

When the wire is visible I often find myself looking at it, rather at the forested mountains beyond it. Sometimes I look out from my deck and the wire truly is the only thing I can see. I become fixated on it, if you will, and I cannot see anything else. There is all of this beauty above, below, around, and beyond the wire, and yet my eyes see nothing but the wire. There must be a name for that. Tunnel vision, near sightedness, myopia, or something like that.

Then, as I mentioned, there are times when I cannot even see the wire at all. This very moment is one of those times. I cannot tell that the wire is even there. The light disguises it as if it were sky. All I see is the beauty.

There was an astonishing rainbow the other day, brilliant as the depth and breadth of a child’s imagination. It bent across the sky like the stroke of a brush, or a Technicolor embrace by the arms of God. A Waterfall of color tumbling to the ground, in front of me, but beyond the wire.

I could not see the telephone wire, only the rainbow.

People are enhanced when we see their beauty,
rather than their faults.

Don’t let the wire get in your way.

Some Rise by Wrong

2010-11-05T14:11:00.000-07:00

“Some rise by wrong,
and some by virtue fall.”

Those words were written by Bruce Hornsby.
I don’t know the name of the song.
Maybe you do.

I can’t get over this Lyric.
As a songwriter, I appreciate the difficulty of expressing a thought, a concept, an illumination, with the simple turn of a phrase.

“Some rise by wrong.”
These four short words point out perfectly the inequities in life.
As fallible, often shallow and insensitive people, we too often tend to view, as successful, those who have money, who have an impressive collection of possessions, and maybe a trophy wife to present as the ultimate evidence of that success.
And we are equally inclined to view the poor, the disenfranchised, the struggling, and painfully affected, who go without, as failures, as losers.

We don’t necessarily make the choice to view people that way, we just tend to exercise the insensitivity of our own human nature. And it is that nature that can skew even the most thoughtfully developed consciousness.

But, in truth, some, do, ‘rise by wrong’.
Fortunes have been made, popularity and ‘success’ has been achieved, quite often on the outcome of dishonorable, deceitful, immoral or unethical decisions, with the habitual practice of such choices. Nobody sees, or even cares about, the manner in which that supposed success has been achieved. We only see the results, and then consider the individual to be successful.

And then, conversely, some, do, ‘by virtue fall’.
The obvious example is the fallen Televangelist who preaches, but, ultimately, pretends at, virtue, as he gets caught up in the benefits that his virtue brings him.
And many others are not so terribly different.
Good people sometimes tend to trade upon their goodness to achieve their own ends.
The unfortunate outcome of that is that their goodness, their virtue, if you will, eventually leaks out of them like blood from a severed vein.

Some, in life, have chosen honorable, ethical, and moral positions that have, invariably, thwarted their own financial rise, and circumstantial well-being.
Far too often those positions, and people, are considered to be weak.
Some have lived by virtue from the beginning, and have never had access to easy money, power, or possessions because of it. And some have ascended to virtue later in life, after having found ‘success’, but have eventually fallen from that position, from their temporal security, with the ultimate embrace of an honorable existence.

And of course, those who have chosen to live a virtuous life often get caught up in the cycle of poverty, making the choice between wrong, and virtue, even more difficult for them, and more compelling.
God bless those whose strength and determination, whose efficacy, enables their own virtue to live.

“Some rise by wrong,
and some by virtue fall.”

Nothing we don’t really already know,
but a reminder for us to ‘SEE what we’re actually looking at’.
And to be the best people that we can.

Trust, and Confidence

2010-10-30T09:56:00.000-07:00

The other night I watched what could have been the best baseball game I’d ever seen. Not necessarily the best game ever played, I wouldn’t know about that, but perhaps the best game I’ve ever seen.

Game 4 of the National League Championship Series; the San Francisco Giants vs. the Philadelphia Phillies.

The Giants won the game in the bottom of the ninth inning. I’m a Giants fan, but acknowledging my bias, the fact that they won is not the reason for my profound appreciation for this particular game. Sure, that was part of it, but it goes beyond the actual lead changes, the ‘come-from-ahead’, and then ‘come-from-behind’ dynamics of the game. It really goes to the triumph and redemption of some disappointing players. It goes to a manager’s belief in some players that the fans, myself included, had lost confidence in. It goes to still believing in somebody when that somebody has not demonstrated recently that he is necessarily someone to be ‘believed in’. It goes to a manager trusting in the players that have been entrusted into his care.

All of the players.
And I believe that is a significant reason why his players are succeeding through some big time underdog adversity.

I do not look for life-lessons in the living of my daily life. I do not necessarily even consciously seek to find the hidden in the, otherwise, transparent. When I watch a baseball game I really just intend to enjoy the game for the intrinsic pleasure of the game itself. But life-lessons present themselves to me wherever I am, in whatever I’m doing, and with whomever I happen to be with at the time. I can’t just turn away from those illuminations as if they were a second helping of banana cream pie. That would be foolish on my part. And, furthermore, it would be hypocritical of me to teach if I am not also willing to learn.

Every family will have its own share of difficulties in life, challenges, and failures, just as every player on a baseball team will throughout the course of a long season. It’s often been said that the very best hitters in the game still fail at least seven out of ten times. A batting average of .333 (three hits out of every ten at-bats) is a phenomenal achievement. Very few All-Stars even have that good of an average. Failure is commonplace, in baseball, and in life.

In game four of the National League Championship Series the manager of the Giants showed confidence in his players, as he’d demonstrated all year, even towards those who had not been doing very well at the time. Two players, in particular, were the glaring recipients of his trust. He did not give up on them. He showed that he believed in them.

Not only did he play them, but he put both of them in the starting lineup as well. It was a profound vote of confidence, and they made the difference in the game.
One of them threw out a runner at the plate from center field, and the other hit a double that drove in two runs. Both plays came at critical times in the game.

Those were redemptive moments for the two players.
A couple of months ago I’d given up on both of them, but their manager showed an unwavering belief in them throughout the season. He rested them when they were struggling, but always brought them back to allow them an opportunity to succeed.

As people struggling to make our way in this world, the odds tilt considerably in our favor when we are shown that same trust and confidence by the people we love.
Even when we might not be at our best.

As of this writing, the Giants are two games up in the best-of-seven-games of the 2010 World Series.
But game four of the National League Championship Series was perhaps the best game that I’ve ever seen.

Mental Chronicles 5

2010-10-25T07:56:00.000-07:00

And now for some serious reading:

* I recently opened a box of Good & Plenty, and noticed that the White ones outnumbered the Pink ones by about ten to one. Didn’t use to be that way.
So, if there are ‘Plenty’ of White ones, does that mean that the Pink ones are supposed to be the ‘Good’ ones?

And if the Pink ones are the good ones, then why don’t they put more of them in the box?
Just wondering.

* And are they not putting prizes in cereal boxes any more?
Or am I just not buying the right cereal?

* I’m looking forward to winter.
Snuggling up in a blanket and getting away from the glare of celebrity for a while.
Smile.

* Question: “What’s the difference between ‘here’ and ‘there’?
Answer: There really is no difference.
No matter where you go, or how long it takes to get there, once you arrive there
you’ll have to say, “I’m here”.
Which is where you started out from in the first place.

Might as well enjoy the ride.

* Every once in a while I’ll stumble upon an original thought that I can share with you.
Like this one.
“If you happen to stumble upon an original thought,
get back up on your feet and try to avoid it the next time it gets in your way.
The people in line behind you don’t take kindly to the distraction.”

* If trees could speak they’d probably say, “I’ve given you shade, oxygen, firewood, fruit, and shelter.”
If we could speak we’d probably say, “Yeah, but what have you done for me lately.”

PoliTricks
I’ve been trying to stay away from politics, but hey, some things just need to be said.

* I like all these political ads on TV where the politicians are finally coming out and calling their opponent a liar,
rather than the usual clever insinuations.
But what I like most about the ads is that one politician calling another politician a liar
just might be the only honest thing either one of them has ever said.

Kind of like a vulture calling a buzzard a bird.

Speaking Of Profanity

2010-10-18T09:44:00.000-07:00

“God damn!”

I don’t really like using that exclamation, but
it’s the perfect marriage of the sacred and the profane.

Religion, as you well know, seems to create such profound contentiousness between people. The use of religious terminology does the same. I continue to experience
radioactive fallout for something as innocuous as expressing an opinion with words that even imply a connection with religion, no matter how vague, or abstract. I find it kind of disconcerting, and disheartening, that we live in a world where people are not entitled to opinions, where people are knocked down for having one, or for the words they use, like a clay pigeon being blasted out of the sky with a shotgun.

I find it very disturbing, but hey, like it’s gonna keep me from discussing anything?

Here are some thoughts that will be dressed in religious terminology. Reject me for the ideas, if you must, but not for the terminology. Words are simply tools to use to communicate thoughts.

I know life in religion, and out of it as well. Having come from a religious background, first Catholic, then Protestant, then without religion altogether, most religious people today consider me to be ‘backslidden’, or at the very least, a heretic. Although I abhor labels, heretic is one that I am actually willing to wear. The dictionary defines ‘heretic’ as “Somebody who holds or adheres to an opinion, or belief, that contradicts established religious teaching, especially one that is officially condemned by religious authorities.”

I can think of no one I’d rather be condemned by than some of our so-called ‘Religious Authorities’. And those I’ve known,
or who have known me, tend to view my beliefs as profane.
But those adverse to religion, well, they usually consider me to be too ‘righteous’.
Well “God damn”, that’s a pretty good balance to have, if you ask me.

And backslidden? Well, having slidden-back from someone else’s prescribed dogma, unfounded theology, and shallow ritual, sure.
I’ll admit to that.

In truth, I am not subject to religious ideological divisions. And it is something that makes many people very ill at ease. But none of us are really subject to those divisions unless we want to wear the labels.

I believe that righteousness exists in one’s willingness to risk the profane.
Going against the grain, or against an existing majority belief system would be considered profane in the eyes of those who’ve traded their own objective capabilities, and perspectives, for inclusion in a group.
Living outside of ‘religious law’, or religious ‘expectation’, even when abiding by ‘internal spiritual principals’, is, more often than not, enough to brand one as ‘profane’, even though those same spiritual principals might be the standard that practitioners of religion actually aspire to.
Just so happens that maybe their religiosity is what has actually gotten in the way of that ascendancy.

In my mind there is a big difference between religion and religious.
‘Religion’, reverence for a set of principles, the practice of a belief system, can be beneficial to both the individual and to society as a whole.
But the ‘religious’ tend to very easily morph into self-righteousness.

Someone who chooses to live by a moral, or ethical, code often runs the very real risk of being lumped in with them as well, invariably branded as ‘self-righteous’. But that kind of myopic perspective, and judgment, is not what I’m talking about here. The branding is, more often than not, just a self-serving attempt to subjugate and diminish another to puff up and exalt one’s self. And that is self-righteousness in spades.

Living life, an honorable life even, does not require membership in a particular religion, although most religions do require membership for acceptance, and authentication, as a ‘good’ person, a person of value.
Oh, I know they say they don’t, but let’s be real here.

To me, the self-righteous are actually the ‘un-righteous’, as it were, whether they be the religious Pharisee, or the secular self-indulgent. Self-righteousness is most commonly associated with followers of religion, but it seems that the secular perspective, and its inversion of good and evil, right and wrong, acceptable and abhorrent, is more the personification of self-righteousness, even, than the demonstratively pious. Not every ‘religious’ person descends into self-righteousness, but the vain and narcissistic, whether religious or not, tend to find their way there with very little obstruction.

The irony is that it is actually the ‘un-righteous’ considering those who have a heart towards true righteousness to be ‘self-righteous’, thus making the seekers of righteousness out to be profane.

Wrap your head around that profanity for a few minutes.

I believe that self-righteousness is the greatest profanity of all.
And there is a very fine line between the religious and the secular. They are more alike than one might imagine. People who are comfortable with their own stagnation, who are living below even the minimal standards they set for themselves, like to proclaim others to be self righteous, just as the religious self-righteous, living with their own ‘spiritual’ narcissism, like to proclaim others to be sinners. It somehow validates each of their failures and makes them all feel better about themselves.

It is really one in the same.

Speaking of profanity, I know that I’ve been kind of ‘all over the place’ with these comments,
but I’m sure that anyone wanting to make sense of them,
will.

For the rest of you,
Oh well!

Catch me next time around.

A Certain Lineage

2010-10-12T09:17:00.000-07:00

The forest was familiar this morning.
Different enough from yesterday to keep it interesting,
but familiar enough to perpetuate the deep connection.

The morning hike held new signs of a visitation from animals usually hidden from view. Our dog, Chica, put her nose to the ground and did her best imitation of a Hoover, taking in the scents to determine the kind, and size, of the creatures we shared the land with last night. She was unusually obsessed with the smells today. It was pretty obvious that we’d had some new visitors. She led me to fresh bear scat, and the tracks of a good-sized mother and cub. I followed them around the trails, which ultimately led up to the water trough I’d buried in the ground for the vagabond critters to refresh themselves.

This was not a particularly remarkable morning, by any means, just a pretty cool way to start the day, any day really.

The forest is a good parallel for life.
There are some aspects of it that we can count on. There is a certain sameness. Generally speaking, the trees are rooted where they’ve always been, the topography is constant, and the rocks continue to lie partially buried like pimples on the surface of the earth. The trails remain in place, wearing into the ground, like a good pair of shoes, over time, conforms to your feet.

It’s what we can depend on, a few of the things that we can anticipate being there tomorrow. Tomorrow is never promised to anybody, but there’s a reasonable expectation that the landscape will be then as it is now, or at least very similar. The constancy, the reliability, the fidelity of nature, as it were, is something that gives security to us in an otherwise undependable, and unpredictable, world. It is, I think, part of the reason I’m so drawn to it.

Sure, nature changes, just like people do. You often can’t trust it, sometimes it rises up suddenly, and unexpectedly, to hurt you (a tsunami, an earthquake, a hurricane), and sometimes it even hurts you inadvertently (a drought, the heat, the cold). Some say you can never trust nature. But, by and large, you know the rocks will be there tomorrow just as they were today. And you know that if you carve your lovers initials in a tree (if the developers don’t carve their own initials in the forest) you’ll be able to sit under that same tree in thirty years and remember what you were feeling way back then.

The trees change colors, they drop their leaves, some even shed their bark, but they remain as markers, they remain as sentinels against the threat of everything being in flux. Kind of like your old elementary school. Every year it admits, and graduates another group of kids, but it was there before you ever began attending way back then, and it’s still there, and still the same, all these years since you’ve been gone.

But maybe with a fresh coat of paint.

There’s a certain comfort in that.
A lineage, if you will.

Natureing

2010-10-04T08:40:00.000-07:00

I’ve coined a new word.
Natureing.

There are activities associated with words that affect, and impact, our lives.
Meditating, praying, studying, working, exercising, etc. These words, and many others, engage the practitioner in the process that is known as ‘cause and effect’.
A ‘cause’ is something that makes something else happen.
An ‘effect’ is what happens as a result of the cause.
And, obviously, the ‘effect' is why people participate in the cause.

I engage in ‘Natureing’ almost every day, and on many days, many times throughout the day. It is simply the process of engaging with nature. Some call it ‘communing’. I don’t really commune, that’s just not my style. But I do participate in, and with, nature. And I fully engage my sense of appreciation when I do.

Back in the 70’s, as a new Christian, I remember hearing many sermons about the ‘Worship of Nature’, as opposed to the ‘Worship of God’. I remember being taught that we must monitor our participation with nature, our love of it, and our indulgence in it. God forbid that it replace the Creator as the object of our affection.

Not an unworthy concept, or topic of attention, but I also remember that most of those sermons were preached by men who had little-to-no involvement with nature, whatsoever.

I do not worship nature. That would be foolish. I wear it like one would wear a comfortable coat. Some do worship it, but, obviously, they have not progressed to the point of appreciating the musician through the song, or the artist through the painting.

I have always immersed myself in the natural world. It has always provided me respite from the hypocrisy of the socio/political world, and of religion. It has never taken the place of my appreciation of God. In fact, it has enhanced my appreciation a thousand times over. I think those people who rail against the worship of nature are not only afraid of the natural world, but are afraid of themselves, and of their own faith, as well. The beauty, and order, of nature has always pointed mankind to the existence of the Divine, and to an appreciation of God.

Natureing is my meditation, it is my time of prayer, it is my work, it is my exercise and education. Much more, even.

Building, and gathering, in religious ivory towers has never been my idea of worshipping God. It is not necessarily even a good pathway to understanding our own purpose, and position, in life. It seems to me, however, and I’m sure you’re quite aware, that the most glorious cathedral ever imagined already exists, above us, below us, and all around us.

In order to connect with the Divine, and even with our own inner selves, it couldn’t hurt to spend a little time in the Garden.
With our eyes open, our ears, our minds, and our hearts.
On our (figurative) knees, as it were.

No standard of dress, or character, required.
Come as you are.

Balance

2010-09-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

My grandson is almost five now.
Time flies.
Since close to the beginning of his life I’d been taking him out regularly for some grandpa/grandson time. It started by just taking him out in his own back yard, and then it gradually worked into his dad bringing him to meet me at the park for some playtime. Eventually he was old enough for his parents to be comfortable with me taking him places alone. You know how that process goes.

From the time he became confident enough to walk around I’d spend as much time outside with him as possible. And during our outings I’d always make sure to spend some of that time walking with him on logs, on rocks, or curbs, low retaining walls, planter boxes, lines on the pavement, or whatever else required focus, and, ultimately, balance. My grandson loved doing it. He liked the challenge, and he liked the continuing development of his balance. As a father would, I know my son was doing many of the same things with him as well. Mom too.
And others.

When stepping up onto a log, or something, I’d always take my grandson’s hand and encourage him to ‘find your balance’. He enjoyed the concept of ‘balance’, was visibly pleased when he’d ‘find’ it, and even more pleased when I’d let go of his hand and he still had his balance. If he’d start to lose it I’d encourage him to ‘keep your balance’. He would concentrate, focus, and, ultimately, regain the balance that he was in jeopardy of losing. Sure, he’d lose it sometimes in the beginning, but grandpa was there to catch him, or at least to soften his fall, and he knew that. It led to him being able to readjust his balance during the fall so that he would either land on his feet, or minimize the effect of the landing. It was a lot of fun watching, and being part of, this important development in his life.

A couple of months ago I took my grandson to the park with his bike. We took his training wheels off. Actually, feeling ready to take on the challenge of balancing the bike on his own, he took the wheels off himself. I just provided the wrench.

It was fun seeing him find his balance on the bike, drawing on all the experience he’d had on the logs, the rocks, the curbs, retaining walls, planter boxes, and lines on the pavement. It was satisfying to see that when he began to lose his balance he’d usually find a way to keep it. Sometimes he couldn’t, but even then he would orchestrate a pretty graceful landing, often laying the bike down while he stepped off of it, or kind of sliding on the grass in unison with it. We practiced the dismounts as much as the riding. And he was as proud of a successful landing as he was of a successful ride.

A week or two later his dad sent me a video of my grandson riding his bike like an old pro. Both dad and son were excited, and proud of the accomplishment. It was pretty cool. Made me smile, and made me laugh out loud.

OK now, here’s what I’m getting at. And you’ve got to admit you knew I was going somewhere with this. That’s what I do.

There is a natural balance in life. We see, and experience it, in nature. It is a very important aspect of life, an aspect that, if missing from our own lives, leaves us at the mercy of the emotional, psychological, and physical elements of its absence.

In one’s personal life nobody just happens upon balance, or finds it by accident. There is a process of ‘finding’ it, just as there was with my little grandson. And then there is the practice of ‘keeping’ it. Finding, and keeping. Both require some knowledge, some wisdom, and some experience. Experience produces knowledge. Knowledge, when blended with experience, generates wisdom. Wisdom enables us to measure intangibles. And it gives us the wherewithal to deal with them.

Intangibles are the part of life we have to face within ourselves. They are the inner challenges that we must face alone, without grandpa being there to hold us up, or soften our fall. They are the inner demons we must confront, the assaults on our belief system that we must contend with, the moral and ethical dilemma’s we must reflect upon, and the secret places we harbor that we must be willing to illuminate to, and for, ourselves.
And they are the character issues that we must conquer.

Once you truly find balance it becomes something you never wish to lose. One eventually learns that a steady ride is much more satisfying than a continuing series of unforeseen, but otherwise predictable mishaps.

Only as we are willing to embrace the process will we be successful in finding our balance. And only as we are willing to practice that balance will we be successful in keeping it.

You know what I’m talking about.

The Honesty Of Intention

2010-09-12T17:37:00.000-07:00

It may not really matter to you, but I want to say that I have always been someone whom others have been perfectly comfortable projecting their own ideologies on to, their own belief systems. So-called Conservatives have considered me to be either ‘one of them’, or ‘one of those liberals’, depending on what they’ve needed me to be to validate their own position.

And So-called Liberals have done the same, only in reverse on the issues. Truth is, I am neither of those. It’s not good to view people in those terms. I sometimes do, but I try not to. Like you, sometimes I get caught up in the anger, or the immediacy, of an issue, but I don’t subscribe to anybody else’s idea of what’s right, and what’s wrong. I know what’s right, and I know what’s wrong. And so do you. I don’t need an ideology to instruct me. Just because life is not black and white does not mean that right and wrong straddles the middle of the gray scale. It usually resides closer to one end of the spectrum or the other. It always leaves room for us to rationalize our position, however. And we do. Actually, we seem to take full advantage of the opportunities. Adherents of political ideology like to dress every issue in the rightness, or wrongness of it. But not only do I not view political issues as right or wrong, I don’t even subscribe to the idea that a point of view is either liberal or conservative. It all depends on what you match the perspective up against.

For example, take the issue of gun ownership, one of the most hot-button issues in our culture today. Most people line up pretty strongly on one side or the other. And I do too. But, for me it is not a matter of conservative vs. liberal. And it is not a matter of right and wrong. It is a matter of pragmatism vs. idealism, and each has validity to the holder of the perspective. The sides are even interchangeable. But to paint them with a conservative vs. liberal brush is just wrong.
Here’s what I mean.

If I live in a community of gun owners, who could, because of that action alone, be widely considered to be conservatives, and I happen to not own a gun, (perceived as a liberal point of view), doesn’t my not owning a gun actually make me a conservative to the liberal ownership of guns? And on the other hand, if I live in a community that strongly frowns on the ownership of guns, (perceived as a liberal point of view), and yet I happen to own a gun, doesn’t that make me liberal to the conservative community standard of not owning one?
Do you see what I mean?

I believe that one’s actual socio/political leanings can only be determined by one’s willingness to honestly consider the merits of the other side, and to embrace those positions which are authentic, and more importantly, which make sense. Notice I did not say “embrace those positions which FEEL authentic, but which ARE authentic.” Rather than aligning with an ideology, one must align themselves with reason, even though reason may contradict one’s own preconceptions, or those of one’s friends. However, you must already know that when one can effectively do that it will leave those who are left embracing a particular ideology very uncomfortable. When it comes right down to it, the refusal to be labeled effectively eliminates division within one’s self because, in truth, most of us hold elastic principles, stretching the gamut of belief.
For instance, you might believe that somebody caught possessing hard drugs should go to jail. But if your nineteen-year-old daughter is caught with those same drugs, all of a sudden maybe you don’t believe that. Maybe you believe she should be offered some help.

In any event, I think ideology has become the bane of our existence. And I think that many young people, in particular, have got it right in eschewing such division. Sure, they got it wrong in believing that Obama represented that ideal (many adults got it wrong as well), but their idealism does not yet allow for them to effectively differentiate between what is honest, and what is a politically calculated manipulation of their good intentions. Deceit, if you will. Although I disagree with Obama on many of his policies, I have disagreed with George Bush on many of his as well.

I believe that as hard as many people try to bridge the divide, politicians, and others, work even harder to enlarge it. It works for them.
For me, personally, It is not so much about an ideological divide
as it is about the honesty of intention.

Young people may not have life figured out yet, but they know what divides their country, their state, their communities, and their families. And they want no part of the charade. Hopefully, the ageing process will help to merge their youthful idealism with an informed and seasoned pragmatism.

My guess is that it wouldn’t hurt the rest of us either.

Let's Stop Throwing Shit At The Wall

2010-09-07T10:55:00.000-07:00

In today’s world, there is tremendous pressure to line up on one side or the other of the socio/political, and even religious, divide. It is no longer a spectrum; it is, rather, a tangible divide. The shades of gray that make up the actual realities of our lives are forsaken for the socially expedient alignment of ourselves on the ‘appropriate’ side of an issue. And appropriate is determined more by ones affiliation of friends and acquaintances than it is by one’s inner compass. Compromise is considered weak, and independent thinking is viewed as betrayal. It permeates our government like a bad disease, and filters right on down to the neighborhoods.

People have disagreements on ‘moral’ issues. They always have. They also disagree on social issues, the need for, and manner of, addressing them, and even the necessity for solutions. People make social issues into moral issues, and they make moral issues into social issues. Maybe every moral issue is also a social issue, and every social issue a moral one, I don’t know. But perspectives do overlap, and it is seldom that part of an issue cannot be shared by both points of view. It is also seldom, however, that one position will allow room for the other. That’s a shame. We are all diminished by that disallowance.

Disagreement is no cause for alignment in totally separate camps, which end up throwing insults at one another like some incarcerated crazies might throw shit at the wall.

Life is not black and white, except to someone of limited capacity. It really does consist of shades of gray. It’s funny how one will be so quick to adopt an issue as black and white, but will be more than willing for personal integrity to move around in shades of gray, landing on whichever shade may prove to be financially or socially expedient, and thus, beneficial to that person.

Integrity, however, is the one intention that does need to be expressed in black and white. It is the scale upon which everything can be weighed and measured. If integrity is intact the rest tends to take care of itself. It becomes no longer about being right, but rather about being true, true to ones core values, and, thus, true to oneself. It does not allow for a whole lot of gray. Were integrity to rule our lives, our politics, and our religion, it would be surprising how many of us would find common ground.
Regarding personal integrity, as clichéd as the phrase is today, it bears repeating. “It Is What It Is”; a true reflection of one’s alignment with their own soul.

Many people would like to reprogram the inner core of others, but effectively deny the voice that quietly speaks to them from within themselves. It is really just evidence of one’s own deficiency. I’m not talking about behavior. Behavior can turn a deaf ear to that inner voice. I’m talking about the inner voice itself, the living conscience from which integrity emerges like a sunrise out of the darkness.

If honesty reigns on the inside, then, to be sure, integrity will rain on the outside.

To be continued:

Relationships 2

2010-08-31T05:34:00.000-07:00

I know we’d all like to consider ourselves as independent of our parents,
but whether we want to admit it or not, relationships are modeled by parents.

We grow up learning how to conduct relationships by watching how our parents conduct them. Children grow up to imitate, and perpetuate those behaviors. If we grow up in a healthy family, where honesty trumps deceit, where openness overrides secrecy, where courage conquers pretension, we are much better equipped to enter into adult relationships than if the opposite would have prevailed in the family.

If parents are open and honest with each other, as well as with their children, those children have a good start on having similar kinds of relationships as adults.

If, however, a child grows up in a family where one, or both, of the parents are evasive, dishonest, or indirect, that child will learn to protect himself with a host of somewhat other-than-forthright relationships. He, or she, may not necessarily become stunted to the same degree as the parents, but will, more likely than not, conduct their developing relationships in a manner innately designed to provide the greatest level of self-protection. The child learns to deflect, avoid, or ignore anything (or anybody) that challenges (intentionally or not) the comfort of their status quo. They will not take risks in relation to their comfort zone. The fear is carried with them long into their adult lives. They remain afraid of being transparent, of being judged, of being thought of as lesser than how they would hope to be perceived.

Children of alcoholic, or drug-indulging parents face the same set of challenges. Those self-destructive behaviors create a compromised foundation that the parent models throughout their daily lives. The same can be said about divorce or abuse. The child learns very quickly not to trust the parent, withholds their true self from the parent, and continues that manner of relating on into their other adult relationships. Self-protection is always at the forefront. It takes a lot of hard work and a lifetime of continuing self-assessment to break down the need for self-protection.
Some of you have done the hard work, and know what I’m talking about.
Others won’t even begin to engage the work until their lives are demanding it of them.

Obviously, children of dysfunctional relationships often gravitate towards their own addictions, effectively diminishing their ability for healthy and honest relationships. They might even end up embracing some sort of religious fundamentalism. When that dynamic takes hold in their lives, honesty of exchange gets filtered through the prism of one’s own buried pain or unworthiness, often culminating in a stunted ability to be honest and transparent. With the religious person’s honorable, but misguided, attempt to be a ‘shining light’, an example of righteousness, that person is far-too-often just practicing a ‘spiritual’ form of self-protection. It is not courageous, and it becomes almost impossible for that person to see themselves from the perspective of another, less indoctrinated point of view. It is a cloak of invisibility, and it becomes their way of life. It is very difficult, if not unachievable, for someone operating on a more pragmatic level to sustain any kind of honest, continuing, relationship with them.
Sure, some who grow up in healthy families also find the exercise of their faith in religious fundamentalism, but they have the experience of strong bonds, honest communication, and family support to supplement them.

As adults, it is in our own best interest to recognize the relationships from which we have emerged, from which we have been molded, and, if negative, to summon the courage to deny them their continuing influence in our lives. It is not only in our best interest, but it is imperative that we break the chain of self-protection so that our children and grandchildren can be free to function fully, and without inhibition, in this very difficult and demanding world.

I know that nobody likes to be told to 'tell the truth'. But, Tell the Truth, friends. Say what you mean, and mean what you say. Make it your own meditation. Do not be afraid. I dare you. It is the most important step towards the enabling of health in your relationships, and for the generations downstream of your own lives.

Of course you might be asking, “What makes you such an expert on matters of relationships?”
And I say, “I’m not an expert. I never have been, and I probably never will be, but I do pay attention. In fact, I’ve paid attention almost every day of my life. I know what I know, from personal experience, as well as from my observance of human nature and human behavior. I see what I see. I choose to relate to life as it is, rather than how I might prefer for it to be. I will never wear the proverbial rose-colored glasses.
I think you know that.

And that is exactly why you continue to read me.”

Relationships

2010-08-18T10:39:00.000-07:00

Relationships are never easy. They’ve never been easy for me, and I’m sure they’ve never been very easy for you either. After all, they do involve another person, besides ourselves. Most of us don’t have much trouble having a relationship with ourselves, but throw another person in the mix and things can become problematic. Relationships have their ups and downs. They have prolonged periods of both. And they have their periods of dormancy. They have periods of intense mutual interest, and they have times of relative disinterest. Relationships wax and wane, as it were, like the tide.

Relationships. They get complicated. They’re kind of like sex. It’s much easier for one to have an intimate relationship with one’s self than it is to have a personal, intimate relationship with another person. And if you think that’s not true, you haven’t been paying attention to the staggering increase in the world’s consumption of pornography. It is, without question, one of the largest, if not THE largest industry on the planet today.

With the availability of ‘social networking’ sites on the Internet, we live under the illusion that we are connecting with other people. We live under the misconception that these exchanges are bringing us together, that they encourage relationship. But in reality, these sites keep us separate from each other, under the delusion that we are connected. It is far too easy to ‘be friends’ in cyber space, and it is equally effortless to dismiss friends and acquaintances, or to simply ignore the involvement should it require some degree of personal investment. The Internet gives us full control of our ‘relationships’, something we do not have with real associations, and many people have allowed these relationships to replace, or at least minimize, actual ones.
Consequently, more and more people find themselves settling for alternate ways to meet their needs. They have simply given up on real relationships. And with the complexity of maintaining a relationship in today’s world, I frequently have to ask myself, “Who can really blame them?”

Relationships take effort, a lot of effort. They must be defined, and they must be negotiated, otherwise they tend to fold in on themselves like a parachute catching a downdraft. They can be an expansive element of one’s life, but can also become a dangerous inversion of one’s expectations. Relationships, to be successful, require that both parties play by the same set of rules. And if they don’t, it is only a matter of time before they implode.

It’s not as important what the rules are, as it is that they are agreed upon in the development of the relationship. The rules can be tacit, (understood, or implied, without being stated openly), but they must exist for the relationship to prosper. And they must be understood and embraced equally, with honesty of intention, and commitment to upholding the integrity of their purpose.
Something that is sorely lacking with Internet friendships.

For harmony to exist in any relationship, honesty must prevail. Otherwise the relationship is reduced to two people pretending that everything is OK. OK, however, is pretty transparent, even to the least observant among us, and over time even it becomes compromised, reduced to the relationship equivalent of two people talking about the weather. If that is the relationship that is agreed upon, fine. And the weather changes regularly, so there will always be cause for new discussion. A nice safe, formulaic relationship where each party is equally protected from the other. Neither party takes any risks, expands the parameters of the relationship, or ever has to confront their own fears and insecurities. Nobody gets hurt.

And the relationship doesn’t grow.
I’m sure you have your share of those.

But my question is, “Why would someone even want to be in a relationship with someone they feel they need to protect themselves from?” A person could have that kind of relationship on the Internet, or with a box of cereal, or with the order-taker at a drive-thru fast food restaurant.
Why pretend at relationship?

If both parties intend to have a real relationship, they cannot, as people are want to do, pretend that everything is fine when it’s not. Pretension breeds resentment, resentment breeds silence, and silence breeds distance. It takes courage not to pretend that everything is OK, but it takes more courage to see that things don’t get there in the first place. Courage is a quality always in high demand, but, unfortunately, it is also a quality in scarce supply in our modern day culture.

Relationships are never easy, but, unfortunately, we’re learning to replace courage with the simple ‘click of a mouse’.
That’s very sad,
I think.

To be continued:

The Tranquil Sky

2010-08-03T07:51:00.000-07:00

The tranquil sky, stretching wide across a lingering horizon, painted with the loving hand, and expertise, of one who knows what stimulates, and invigorates, the soul of a man such as myself. I do not suppose the Artist chose to paint it for my pleasure alone (although I’d like to think that) but for you as well. I can only hope that you are awake this morning to embrace it. The expanse that is my view from where I write creates, and enables, a similar expanse from inside me, from deep within the hidden recesses of my faith, and of my sometimes pain, extending outward now, opening my arms to the possibility of the unforeseen, the unexpected, and the mostly undeserved.

The tranquil sky. It is an expanse that moves me to move beyond that which is hidden, that which is broken, in disrepair, or disarray. It is a provocation to rise above the weakness that is my tired body, and the bitterness that is too often in my heart; above that which is frail, that which is decayed (and decaying), that which lays dormant collecting the insincere accolades of its own apathy, and that which seeks to extract the divine from its partnership with my emerging soul.

It is not every morning that the sky opens itself so willingly to me. But when it does, it announces itself like a trumpet call from across the canyon. A man would be a fool not to pay attention.

Thankfully, the heavens are transparent, allowing light to pass through them with little or no interruption or distortion so that objects in the depth of its existence, like the sun, the moon, or the other planets, can be clearly seen, visible for what they are. The sky, I believe, seeks to interweave its nature with our own.
Were the sky, however, to be opaque, like so many people in their self-protective world, it would be impervious to light, dull, impenetrable, and without luster, obscuring even the most significant aspects of its own beauty.

The tranquil sky.
That we all might seek the same transparency.

It's Really Not That Important

2010-06-28T14:07:00.000-07:00

I used to think there are a lot of things in life that are important. Too many things, maybe. I used to think that it was important to determine what is important, and then to add those things to my priority list. But the list would keep growing, and there would always be something of priority waiting to be addressed. I guess it’s good to pay attention to things, but not necessarily to everything that might end up on the list. Anything, really, could find its way to the list, and then once it’s there it would become a priority, no matter how far down the list it might happen to be. After all, if it’s on the list it takes on the mantle of importance, and that makes it important whether it’s actually important or not. Sometimes my list has been written, and sometimes mental, but a list, nevertheless.

Today I think it’s important to sit on the porch and listen to a baseball game on the radio.
I would never put the game on a priority list, but I will make a point to listen sometimes. There’s something about a time out, time away, a break, of sorts, in the middle of the day. Something I’ve not only come to enjoy, but seem to need as well.

Sometimes all that other important stuff can just wait.
People too.

Trails

2010-06-19T18:32:00.000-07:00

Over the past year my wife and I have spent considerable time cutting in walking trails through the forested land that we are fortunate enough to ‘own’ (as if the earth can actually be owned by someone). But the sections we worked were those that, by virtue of their natural flow, kind of designed themselves. We just had to follow their lead and do the clearing. Of course there was some decision making in the process because there were many junctures where the trail could have gone this way or that, or the other way even. Although most of the options appeared to be good, ultimately, we had to decide on the direction. When those trails were finished we could walk them, pleased with, and somewhat proud of, the outcome because it truly was a partnership with nature. Nature, in a sense, quietly guided our willing hands.

But there is an area of our property that is so thickly forested that I have not even had the inclination to explore it.
Until recently.
We took on the laborious task of creating trails through the thick undergrowth of its secluded beauty, and opening that part of the land for our enjoyment. We are, at the same time, creating better access, and easier passage, for the different animals that traverse the property. It’s different than the previous section that we worked. There is no path of least resistance, there is no natural flow of the topography. We pretty much have had to navigate our way on instinct, but instinct gained by the experience of creating the former trails. Even at that, our best guesswork has been playing an important part in the process.

With the kind of density we’ve been cutting through it has often been difficult to see more than a few feet ahead of us, and consequently almost impossible to know if we’re taking the trail in the best direction, even a good direction for that matter, one that will eventually connect with the other paths we made. Every step of the way has been challenging, but rewarding, as we break into a small clearing, or make a turn that feels like it is in harmony with the land. Starting out it had all been pretty harrowing, and somewhat overwhelming, but retracing our steps on a new path, with increasing distance, back to the starting point has enabled us to realize the beauty of our accomplishment. The walk feels natural, the path does feel like it conforms to the lay of the land, almost as if it were set into the forest from above, as if it were created by someone who could see where he wanted to go, and not by someone simply navigating blindly, or relying only on instinct and experience.
At the outset it would have been easy to face this particular section of forest and conclude that it would be too difficult to tackle, too encompassing of a task, too time consuming, with no guarantee of a satisfactory outcome. It would have been easy to forego the challenge and just enjoy the trails we were already using.
And it would have denied us the enjoyment of this part of our land.

Life brings with it a certain natural flow. Like the first section of forest we worked, life kind of designs itself at times, and in ways that requires very little of us but to follow its lead. And we do so, at least most of us, willingly, and without concern. We ‘fall’ into jobs, relationships, communities etc. Life and opportunities present themselves along the way, but it is up to us to choose the ‘what’ the ‘where’, the ‘when’, and the ‘how’. That is kind of our partnership with life. That is our privilege.
But, as you know, it is not always quite that smooth.

Sometimes the future looks very complicated, it feels unpredictable, confusing, and tangled. We fear it at times, are intimidated by it, and we put off approaching it as if it were that thick forest with dense undergrowth, an as yet unknown part of our lives that might be easier left undisturbed. It feels like it would be futile to engage with it, too much work, or too much of a mystery, a particularly daunting endeavor were we to enter its beckoning landscape. We are often left paralyzed, unable to take a step forward.
But in considering the future, and what it might ask of us, we must understand that there is no qualification necessary for motivation, or for intent. There is no skill required for desire, or for courage. These are internal qualities we can call on to the same degree that we have cultivated them in the past. They are qualities we can wrap in faith to move us in, and through, an otherwise unapproachable future.
Life calls each of us to carve out our own path at times.

I am enjoying our new hiking trails.
What once seemed like an impossible task has now become a source of great pleasure for my wife and I.

It began with our first step into the forest.

I Don't Trust Happiness

2010-06-07T09:14:00.000-07:00

Unhappiness is something you can depend on. It will never leave you as long as you continue to embrace it. It will be your constant companion, through thick and thin, through brief moments of elation even. It will be waiting to comfort you as those occasional, but fleeting, feelings of happiness return you to its care. Unhappiness takes little effort, and it comes quite easily to those who seek the familiarity of its presence. It can be like a warm blanket, or an old friend. It can be shelter from the world, or from the wind. Unhappiness will follow you like a shadow, without invitation, and without argument or disagreement. It will cling to your soul like molasses.
Unhappiness can find you unexpectedly, like a package from FedEx sent to you by someone you love, or by a stranger. You only need to sign for it to own it. You could turn it away, I suppose, but how many people really do that? Unhappiness is very difficult to turn away, or to turn away from.
You can trust it.

Happiness, on the other hand, is fickle, it is unreliable, and it is cruel. It will tease you with promise, and try to lure you with faith. Every time you think you find happiness it turns out to be a temporary condition. Every time you think happiness has landed in your lap an unexpected trauma, or calamitous event, will visit you like an uninvited neighbor. Just when you get comfortable with it someone will hurt you, something will overwhelm you, or some unforeseen circumstance will arrive to ensure that your happiness cannot be sustained. Someone will acquire the keys to steal your bliss.
Happiness will only disappoint you.

I don’t trust happiness.
You have to work at happiness, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and even circumstantially. You have to work to overcome the natural gravitation towards its opposition. Happiness doesn’t ever just arrive, at least not freely. There is always some deal it wants to make with you. Happiness is sometimes promised in exchange for your soul, but they say the devil is the one who wants to make that deal.
As far as I can tell, God doesn’t promise happiness. I think He just promises to be with us through the struggle.

Unhappiness comes naturally.
But I think happiness is a learned experience.
It’s not for the indolent, or the unprepared.
As I said before, “It never just happens”.

I’m happy. At least for now.
I don’t trust happiness.
But I do trust God.

Clearing Out The Clutter

2010-05-30T10:58:00.000-07:00

A man I know has recently been working around his property, clearing brush, trimming trees, cutting down the dying, the dead, and the unproductive, and opening space to provide himself with some breathing room and a better view.

I have been doing the same since becoming owner, and caretaker, of some beautiful acreage in the mountains. When property is neglected, left unattended, it becomes whatever it will become by virtue of its own untamed nature. However, in order to coexist comfortably with nature, one must be, undoubtedly, amenable to compromise. One must allow for the natural world to exist partially on its own terms, but require it to exist partially on the terms that he decides on for himself. To allow the full force of nature would prove to be overwhelming, and eventually threatening, to the sensibility and wellbeing of any individual. To succumb to the will of nature would not, could not, ever turn out for the better. But, conversely, to subjugate nature entirely to one’s own will would, ultimately, reduce a persons life to confinement in an over-controlled, finely manicured ‘natural’ prison of one’s own making. A gated community, if you will. A place where you pay other people to control the wild around you, to protect you from the natural world.

And so it is within us. It is important for us as individuals to clear the clutter, to establish open space on the inside, within our mind, within our soul, and yes, within our hearts, to eliminate the dead, the dying, and the unproductive, to provide some breathing room, to allow ourselves an unfettered and fresh perspective, to create for ourselves, as it were, a better view.
Clearing the clutter can mean moving away from addictions, from self-destructive behaviors, from stubborn points of view, from family drama, religious dogma, social conformity, intellectual bigotry, or ‘spiritual’ or political righteousness. It can mean letting go of baggage that weds you to inherent self-defeat. It can mean the severing of a lifestyle, or relationship. It is when we hang on to all the people we’ve ever known, and all the habits and concerns that we have collected over the years, that our lives, and relationships, become like that of the hoarder who ends up buried alive in the accumulation of his own unremarkable junk.

We must find compromise with our own nature. We must channel its raw energy into productive forms of expression, rather than enabling it to have its way within us, growing unencumbered, exponentially, like bacteria in need of antibiotics. We must draw parameters for growth and then cultivate that which we have allowed to take root. We must disallow the brush and weeds from gaining control of our lives.
Only then will we be able to co-exist with our own nature. Only then will we be free
of those we pay to help control the wild within us, and who we ultimately rely on to protect us from ourselves.

There is freedom in a clear perspective.
And in an organized life.

Number 2 Hundred

2010-05-19T05:37:00.000-07:00

I like that number. I like the way it looks, and I like the way it sounds. When I was younger, playing on different sports teams I always wanted to be Number 2. I never wanted to be ‘1’, or ‘#1’, or even ‘Number 1’. Being ‘Number 1’ would be way too much pressure. And it’s kind of a self-aggrandizing number anyway. But, actually, I wouldn’t mind being ‘Number Won’. That would be kind of cool. I like the implication of that.

Anyway, back to my point. I didn’t really want to be ‘2’, or ‘#2’ either. But I always wanted to be ‘Number 2’. I never could be. They don’t allow special numbers like that for guys like me. Maybe for LeBron James, if he wanted it, but not for me.
If I’d had to settle for ‘2’, or ‘#2’, I’d rather have been ‘two’, or ‘too’ even. Or better yet, ‘Also’. Being ‘Also’ would be awesome. ‘Also’ means ‘too’, which sounds the same as ‘two’, which actually is ‘2’.
Well, it gets complicated.

This is my two hundredth blog, ‘Number 2 Hundred’, if you will. I like that even more than ‘Number 2’. It kind of rhymes, it looks balanced when it’s written out like that, and it kind of rolls off the tongue if you roll the R’s with a foreign accent.

Over these past 199 blogs I’ve always tried to give you writing of some substance, or at least of some interest. It has often been introspective, sometimes controversial, sometimes silly, angry, or convoluted. I have expressed psychological and spiritual dynamics that you may, or may not, have agreed with, but you have at least had the opportunity to embrace, or reject, a point of view. I just put out there what I know, or think I know, illuminating the obvious. My truth is how I see a very complicated world, the picture through my lens. Your truth, obviously, is just as valid as mine.

I have given political perspectives that might have made you mad, that might have caused you to consider me to be a nut, or an ideologue (same difference, I guess), or even worse, a ‘conservative’. But, along the way, I hope you have been wise enough not to pigeon-hole me, or marry me to a specific perspective. That would be a convenient rationale to enable you to disregard, or even outright reject, anything of value that I might have left to say. That would be your loss, as the disregard, or rejection, of you would be mine.
Perspective is a living organism. It changes and evolves. At least mine does, and I hope that’s true of yours as well. And even though my thoughts have always made sense to me, I acknowledge that they may not have necessarily always made sense to you.
But the beauty of thought is that it takes thinking to figure it out.

In writing those past 199 blogs, I have, admittedly, not always been successful in my attempt to communicate my thoughts and feelings, and some of it might even be considered to be mundane drivel. But I can say, without equivocation, that I have always tried to write honestly. That is what has always been important to me.
Drivel, or even Profundity, be damned.

I will keep writing as long as you keep reading. And probably even if you don’t.

Number 2 Hundred.
And they said it wouldn’t last.

As I’ve already mentioned, I used to want to be ‘Number 2’.
But, if I were on a sports team today, I’d want to be ‘Number 2 Hundred’.
I like that number.
I like the way it looks.
And I like the way it sounds.

An Ode To Spring

2010-05-13T10:33:00.000-07:00

Here in North America Spring is rapidly approaching, there is an amorous arousal on the Continent, and with it comes the inclination, compulsion even, for humans to do what most humans do to ensure that we, as a species, continue to exist.
Friending on our Facebooks, and Tweeting on our Twitters.

I thought the weather was going to hold for Spring, when we had a weeks worth of high 70’s / low 80’s sunny days. But a snowstorm snuck its way in here a couple of days ago, covering the trees, and the ground, with a beautiful fresh blanket of sweet surreal virgin–white mountain foam. An image to die for. Nothing digital, or technical, in the visitation. Purely natural, a cool exhaled breath from the mouth of nature’s own magnificence. An unexpected pleasure, like a postcard from an old friend, or a kiss on the forehead from one’s lover. The snow lasted only through the next day, and then was gone, melting into the earth like a heart melts into the arms of a warm embrace; winter, having quietly exited stage left, with clear skies, and that glorious sunshine, emerging to enchant the restless patrons with its own particular brilliance.

This change of season has enabled the canoe to find its way out of the barn, and the fishing poles to jump into the hands of eager anglers. At least with an amateur like me the fish should be safe for another season. Portions of the day can now be spent, gratefully, beneath an ever-expanding sky. Lake-time like no other time, and taking time to love it makes for harmony in, and of, a far-too-often flat and dissonant soul such as myself.

The buds (not those kind) are popping out on trees and bushes like measles on a six-year-old boy. Some have already begun to bloom, our dogwood trees, typically, running well ahead of the others. The Dogwood’s know when Spring’s about ready to emerge. I think the Grand Designer may text them ahead of time, allowing them the pleasure of the first display.

Early morning time writing, after-breakfast walks in the forest, or cruising the pristine shore of the lake, working on the land, evenings sitting on the porch, then laying awake all night in anticipation of being able to get up early tomorrow to enjoy it all again.
It’s a good time of life for me. I’m very thankful for that.

But as I sit here writing there’s a buzzard perched on an old Oak branch just outside my window. Ironically, he’s probably waiting for me to die. Although some may argue that I’m already dead, Spring indicates to me otherwise. I can feel helium in my blood again, and life in my creaking bones. I’m hoping you can feel that too.

Not the ‘creaking’ part, of course, but the ‘life’ part, for sure.

Loving / Being Loved

2010-04-30T09:22:00.000-07:00

Humans spend an inordinate amount of time wanting, wishing, waiting, and trying to be loved. Many of the untold decisions that we make are made with the hope of being loved. Many of the seemingly inconsequential actions we take are for the same reason. We feel incomplete when we lack the love of someone we hope to be loved by. We feel alone, we feel unwanted, we feel insignificant. Our self-esteem plummets. We are minimized, and become marginalized by our own experience, in our own eyes, and in the perception of others. Those of you who have been without love understand that all too clearly.

However, many people are controlled by their need to be loved, and some even try to control others regarding the manner in which they wish to be loved. Many suffer serious debilitating illnesses when those expectations are not adequately met. I knew a woman who, in an attempt to be loved ‘the way she wanted to be loved’ took on a mysterious illness as a means of getting the love (attention) that she was lacking. Doctors never found anything wrong with her, but for many years they appeased her in that need by sending her to a myriad of different specialists, and prescribing a pharmacies worth of different medications to make her feel better. She welcomed those drugs like a fish welcomes water. It has, over the years, been a horrendous abuse of the Health Care system, and an even worse (self-generated) collapse of her own dignity. Of course, her basic need for control continued to prevail. It was easier for her to be sick than to be honest. That, obviously, was the actual illness. It was easier to illicit sympathy than to embrace reality. It was just easier for her.
Eventually the illness will kill her. It is the case with many people.
Dishonesty kills.

Love takes courage.

Lacking that courage, it is very common for people to make themselves unlovable, rejecting the love of others because it is not the ‘kind’ of love they want, and then resenting not being loved by the same ones whose love they have dismissed. That resentment, ultimately, leads to depression and eventual personal deterioration. Defining how one wants to be loved, rather than accepting someone else’s love for what it is, is, also, often what drives people to seek compromised solutions, becoming willing to settle for a semblance of love, oftentimes in the forbidden, in the mysterious, or the profane. Some will embrace a substitute as if it were love itself.

Love is something we don’t really want to live without. The modern day ‘love yourself’ theology, and movement, emerged as a comfortable way to compensate for our own un-loveliness, for our own compromised position in the world, and for the ever deepening void of authentic love in our lives. Those lacking a fundamental love will eventually embrace either self-loathing or self-love to fill the emptiness. Love is a very powerful thing. I believe that we should respect ourselves, we should love that we are diverse, unique, interesting and complex individuals, and that we should embrace the presence, and growth, of love within ourselves; not ‘of’ ourselves, but ‘within’ ourselves. The ‘I love myself’ way of thinking seems just a little creepy to me. I know people who are in love with themselves, and believe me, it’s not very pretty.

Then there are those who want to be loved by everyone; everyone they know, and everyone they meet. They can’t be happy unless they feel loved by all. But if everybody loves you based on how you act in seeking their approval, more likely than not, you have some deep, secret, and serious issues, some honesty avoidance issues, or some kind of chameleon personality. No one really knows another like they think they do, and love seekers are not really known by anyone. They conceal their faults and failures like a cheap suit covers a flawed body. If one’s consuming focus is on being loved, one will never really love somebody else, they can only pretend at it. When one seeks to just meet their own needs, to the exclusion of the needs of others, they compromise the act of receiving love, they subvert it, and they invalidate it. They seek to take love, rather than to be given it. They cheapen love, and they overthrow its basic intent. Love will not be taken. It is always given because that’s what love does. That’s what love is.
It gives of itself.

Loving is not necessarily always doing what somebody else would like, or even what they think might satisfy them. Sometimes it is being, for them, the voice of reason, the solid ground from which their soul can take root and grow.
Sometimes love is coming to the rescue.
And sometimes love is doing nothing at all.

In many respects it takes the love of others to enable our own ability to love. But it can also be said that loving enables ones ability to be loved.
It works both ways.
Personally, I think that when we cultivate loving, the love of others finds us.
It just finds us, usually unexpectedly,
but it finds us.

It’s Really More Simple Than It Seems

2010-04-15T06:43:00.000-07:00

Life is never easy, but there is a less complicated way to live, there is a general guide to live by, a means of keeping ones equilibrium in life. It is often the second choice of any given individual, but it is, ultimately, the best choice. It is a tried, true, and historically tested manner of being. It is ancient wisdom, and it is applicable in contemporary life as well. It is not complicated, and it is embraceable by all but the truly self-indulgent. It is for those wishing to live in harmony with consciousness, and for those simply wanting not to stray too far from what they know to be of value and importance. It is a principle that allows the pleasure, and the enjoyment of life, but holds at bay the temptations that call to us like sirens in an enveloping fog. It is a place where honesty trumps deception, and where kindness supercedes self-service. It is a place of self-denial by choice, rather than by imposition. It is where integrity resides, and self-importance falls away like dead skin.

There is satisfaction in the process, and reward in itself. It is an automatic system of checks and balances that does not really need to be checked, or balanced. It is moving in the slipstream, and it is living in the blessing. It is a state of mind, and of practice. It is being comfortable with the intention of one’s life, and uncomfortable with one’s adversarial nature. It is what enables a thankful heart, and perpetuates a sense of gratitude. It incubates faith. It encourages liberty, and provides sanctuary. It allows for the expansion of the soul.

As I said, “Life is never easy, but there is a less complicated way to live.
It’s really more simple than it seems.”

Be IN the world,
but not OF the world.

What Are We Thinking?

2010-04-11T17:39:00.000-07:00

You’ve probably been reading about the sexual abuse scandal involving U.S. swim coaches who have been molesting, groping, and secretly taping numerous young female swimmers around the country. Thirty-six coaches have been banned for life. Now I bet that really makes us feel good about ourselves! Not that they’re going to go coach somewhere else, or anything like that!!!

Have you had about enough of the phony righteous concern being expressed by the U.S. Governing body, and other presiding authorities, who pretend they want to ‘clean up the sport’? Don’t we go through this every year? With swimming, gymnastics, ice-skating? And, obviously, not only with U.S. Olympic sanctioned sports. It happens every day in youth soccer, Little League baseball, girls softball, wrestling, and other sports as well. Oh, they’re intent on catching the perpetrators. . . . . . . . . . .yeah, after the f***ing molestations have already occurred! That does the kids a lot of good.

Question: If all these so-called ‘authorities’ are so motivated to prevent the devastation in these children’s lives, why do they not have the courage to make changes that actually work?
Answer: Oh, I don’t know, could it be that ‘harmless’ little Political Correctness (Personal Cowardice) gene I’m always talking about? Just wondering.

Solutions? Hey, I’ve got an idea. Of course it would have taken a genius, like myself, to think of it. It’s not like any ordinary intelligent adult could conceive of such a solution!

NO MORE MEN COACHING YOUNG GIRLS. ANYWHERE. EVER.
(Oh, did I say that out loud?)

Let me repeat. EVER. Not in youth sports, not in High School. Not until girls are Juniors in College, or at least an equivalent age. Not until girls are old enough to read the intentions of their coaches, and experienced enough, and confident enough, to navigate that minefield, or at least mature enough to make their own choices in the matter. That means they must be ADULTS. Do you hear me? There is just too heightened of a sexual presence in today’s world. Does anybody think that these coaches do not indulge their fantasies on the Internet, and then not succumb to the compulsion to ‘play them out’ with the kids on their teams? Predators almost always gravitate towards the youngest, the weakest, the most vulnerable and clueless. That means children and adolescents. Is there anybody responsible for Youth Sports in our country that does not understand that?

You say, “But what about the boys?” Simple, until boys are juniors in High School every male coach must be complimented by an equal number of female coaches present on the team. Let me say that again. For every male coach on a Youth Sports team there must also be a female coach on the same team. I don’t care if all she does is bring snacks (that is not a comment on women as coaches, it is a comment on the importance of having a female presence). To further ensure the protection of our children, no male coach should have any contact with a child, or teen, away from the court, or playing field, for any reason, unless the child is accompanied by a parent, or another female coach. You say, “But what about sleepovers? They’re a tradition for youth sports teams” Yeah, they are, and I say, “Exactly what kind of adult male coach (married, or not) wants to have his team sleep over at his house?”
Please!

By the time a boy is in his third year in High School, he is, by and large, through the most difficult part of his adolescence, the most vulnerable time of his young life. The male coaches of Junior and Senior High School boys should, still, be closely monitored; and then, beginning with College, the boys could be under the guidance of male coaches without the presence of a female. Hopefully, by then, they will be seasoned, and savvy enough to fend for themselves.

And the locker room? Keep the friggin’ coaches out of the locker rooms until the boys are finished dressing. They don’t need to ‘supervise’ boys taking showers. If they’re already predisposed towards adolescent boys, they shouldn’t also have a free pass to ogle them.

Now, are these concepts that difficult to understand, or implement? You say, “But no ‘male-only’ coaches up until the Junior year in High School for boys, but the junior year of College for girls; that’s treating boys and girls differently.”
Well, let me just say this about that. “BOYS AND GIRLS ARE DIFFERENT.” And I’m sorry to have to offend you, but if you don’t understand that, if you’ve bought into the PC lie that boys and girls are the same, then you should not be raising kids.

Mothers, do you think you know the men coaching your kids? For that matter, do you think you know your Pastor, or Priest? Do you think you know their teacher? I know you’d like to think you do. Well, I don’t mean to alarm you unnecessarily, and you’re likely to hate me for this, but you probably don’t even really know your own husband.
Put that in the context of a coach who ‘seems like such a nice guy’.

OK, I’m ready to be arrested by the PC police (hands extended, ready for handcuffs). Better me for what I think, and what I say, than the men who are actually molesting the kids, or the ‘governing bodies’ who perpetuate it. Right?

I’m really just the messenger, but we like to get mad at the messenger. Makes us feel like we’re doing something to solve the problem.

People, this is not our grandparents world. And if we don’t wake up and understand that, the incidents of molestation of our children are going to continue to rise exponentially. Wake up, stop hiding behind Political Correctness, and insist that these solutions, or similar ones, be instituted, post haste, in your own communities.

In today’s world, Men, unsupervised, coaching children, or adolescent boys?
Men coaching young girls?

What are we thinking?

PoliTricks

2010-04-07T11:24:00.000-07:00

Warning: Don’t read this if idealism creates, and governs, your ideology. It’ll only make you mad.
Idealism used to be the social/political domain of Hollywood, thirteen year-old girls, and fifteen year-old boys. Unfortunately, it has now infected a disproportionate number of actual adults. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the pot we’ve been smoking like tobacco, or the pharmaceuticals we’ve been chewing like candy.

* Obama has pretty much just invalidated our nuclear deterrent by saying that the U.S will not use nuclear weapons, even in self-defense. Isn’t that like putting a sign on the front door of your house that reads, “I have an arsenal of guns in my closet, but come on in, take whatever you want; rape, torture, and murder my family, and, because I want to be perceived as an enlightened man, you have my word that I will not raise a single weapon against you? I will lead by example.”

Oh, and concerning deterrence, when you’ve given someone carte blanche to use a nuclear first-strike against you, hasn’t the concept of ‘not using nuclear weapons, even in self-defense’, really just become a ridiculous oxymoron? Like you’d actually be alive to defend yourself?

I know, if Obama is such a trusting soul, how bout he take a walk through any city in America, or the world for that matter, without the deterrent of his Secret Service protection. I think he’d learn (just a little too late) how important it is to have that deterrent in place.

* Well, Obama promised ‘transparency’, and it is becoming quite ‘apparent’ that his administration is interested not so much in what the people want as they are in what they want for the people. That has become very transparent.

* Have had some time to let this really sink in now, so let me see; after suffering devastating, and debilitating depression, and unwanted, and unwarranted intrusion by the government into his life and finances, the suicidal guy who flew his plane into the IRS building in Texas is, by that same government, branded a terrorist.
But the Muslim psychiatrist, who murdered all those soldiers at Fort Hood, and who acted under the guidance of one of the most extreme Imams in the country today, is labeled a criminal?
I’m not telling you anything you’re not already aware of. I just want to remind you of the profound disinformation policy this administration operates under.

* And now you can’t call a government official a liar, a hypocrite, or refer to them as ‘intellectually dishonest’. That’s pretty good protection ‘progressives’ have designed for themselves. If you can’t call them what they are, God forbid, what can you call them?

* Concerning the Tea Party movement, of which I am not a member; how interesting is it that a grass-roots movement raised up in response to the unbearable tax burden being imposed upon the American people, is being made out to be, by the politicians, and by the media that controls them, a ‘dangerous radical extremist fringe group’?

Protest a liberal Government? Not unless you want to be targeted. As you may have already realized, when liberals protested George Bush, threatened him, disrupted speeches etc., they were referred to as ‘patriots’. But when Tea Party members protest Obama’s policies, well, hmmm, ‘dangerous radical extremist fringe group’? Funny how one’s particular political ideology determines whether or not they actually believe in free speech for somebody else.
In my mind, and in my experience, the Government is a ‘dangerous radical extremist fringe group’.

The Tea Party movement, in case you don’t know, evolved as a result of an unreasonable, and unbearable, tax burden on the American people, and citizens being forced to submit to Taxation without Representation.
Do you really think any of those politicians in Washington actually represent you?
No wonder Washington is afraid of the people.
They ought to be.

* I am also not a member of the Democratic, Republican, Socialist, or Communist Party.
Oh, same Party? Sorry, my bad.

* Free Health Care?
I remember reading a Twitter comment posted by an actual twit, which read, “Yeah, free health care, a helping hand.” And who exactly was given the choice to help you?
Let’s see if I have this right. According to the Health Care bill, they’re going to take (steal) money from everybody who they think has too much, no matter how hard they worked to earn it, and they’re going to give it to all the people who sit on their couch drinking beer all day, smoking their ‘medicine’, anesthetizing themselves with The View, Oprah, Ellen, Tyra, ET, and TMZ? Sounds fair to me.
ObamaCare?
RobamaHood.

* And Barney Frank? Lovely. What a piece of work. He gives ‘sleaze’ a bad name.
Do you realize that people actually elected him?

* And speaking of drugs, if you have to take a drug test to work in a warehouse (or wherever), don’tcha think its only fair that we know what chemicals are influencing the thinking, and behavior, of these Congressional imposters?

Just sayin’.

OK, I got all that out of my system.

*But the good news is that There Are Humans Among Us.
I know, because every once in awhile I’ll run across one.

They Sense Us

2010-04-02T11:07:00.000-07:00

After receiving my Census survey, which contains questions that are none of the Governments friggin’ concern, is it any big surprise that the form is supposed to be returned to the “2010 Census Data CAPTURE Center”? What, do they want to know where to find me just in case I happen to disagree with their policies? They’ve asked for my name, and my phone number. My phone number? Why would they need to call me? Are they afraid that maybe I counted the number of persons living at my residence wrong? Or might they just want to chat? They’re not entitled to my name, or my phone number. I am entitled to anonymity. I, personally, am none of the Governments business.

The government is entitled to know how many people live at my residence, and nothing more. Constitutionally, the Census is taken in order to determine how many Representatives each State is to have in the U.S. Congress. It is not intended to determine my ethnicity. The survey states that it needs to know my ethnicity in order for the government to be able to ‘establish bi-lingual education programs’ for people of Hispanic origin. They want to know if I’m “Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish; Mexican, Mexican American, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Argentinean, Columbian, Dominican, Nicaraguan, Salvadoran, and so on.” They’re not really interested in knowing if I’m French, Greek, Italian, Danish, Swiss, Swedish, Dutch, German, Austrian, Norwegian, Icelandic, Flemish, Czech, Polish, Slovakian, Sorbian, Russian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Serbian, Hungarian, Romanian, Macedonian, Slovenian, Latvian, Lithuanian, etc. etc. etc. I guess these (mostly) Caucasian immigrants don’t need bi-lingual education programs. They can just make do on their own.
Do you get the feeling that the government is trying to target a certain voting block? Just wondering.

And why is it that they want to know whether or not I rent, or own, have a mortgage, or an outstanding loan, etc? They are not entitled to know that. That’s my business, not theirs. Besides, if they must know, they can already check with the IRS. Like me, do you find it just a little disturbing that the government is so interested in knowing who’s White, and who’s “OF Color? Who’s Poor, and who has Assets?

The Census was never intended to be used by sociologists, economists, and other ‘researchers’ to ‘analyze social and economic trends’; although the government freely admits that it’s used for that purpose. Code, really, for wanting to know which districts to send the entitlement bribes (I mean the ‘stimulus packages’) to. Again, a pretty blatant, and transparent, attempt to ‘stimulate’ the voters in those particular regions.
And their ‘Privacy/Confidentiality’ claim? Well, if you believe that, you might also like the Government to manage your Health Care.

I would never encourage anyone to defy their own Government, unless, of course, their government was dishonest, deceitful, with a Fascist agenda, and attempting to usurp your individual rights; but, personally, I answered ‘2’ to the question about ‘How many people live at your residence’?, and NOYB (None Of Your Business) in response to the rest of the questions.
Do what you think is right.

There's Something To Be Said

2010-03-23T08:07:00.000-07:00

It’s been said, “When you have nothing to say, it’s usually best to say nothing.” Most people, typically, do have something to say, but most people, also, will usually say nothing. Something is often better said than nothing being said because saying something can give someone else’s deafening silence some illuminating context. Are you following me? It can reveal the silence to be what it frequently is, insecurity, fear, or intimidation. The spoken also gives the silent an opportunity for its own expression, to move beyond its, otherwise, timid and invisible nature. It can give silence an opportunity to speak, or, if need be, to hunker down and embrace its own timidity. Some people can remain silent forever, and some people just need the expression of others to initiate their own. Saying nothing seemingly implies, albeit wrongly, that there is nothing to be said. That will sometimes be the case, but there is almost always something to be said.

Silence is often a blanket that we hide behind. Sometimes saying nothing is the wise and prudent thing to do, but more often than not it is actually just the more comfortable thing to do. Silence can also be a powerful means of control. If you express an opinion, or perspective, and I express nothing, then I can feel in control because I know what you think, but you have no idea what I think. I guess that works for people who need to feel in control, but it makes for dishonest, and disingenuous, relationships. Unfortunately, those are the kind of relationships that many people seek, and are satisfied with today.
The thing about not speaking up is that it tends to become a habit. Those who don’t speak up, by their silence, practice not speaking up, and that practice becomes their manner of being, their lifestyle, and ultimately, their personality. That’s fine, but it’s also kind of sad.

Over the past twenty years or so, and the past decade in particular, PC (Political Correctness, I call it Personal Cowardice) has taken such root, and spread so silently across our culture, like the Swine Flu was supposed to have done, that many people have lost, not only their ability, but also their inclination, to even express themselves anymore. And the thought police, the social and political fascists, who determine for us what we may, or may not, believe, do, or say, find it all to be quite satisfying. It leaves their voice as the only voice left to be heard.

You say that I’m exaggerating the dynamic? But if you think so, then ask yourself, when is the last time you spoke an unpopular opinion, or a point of view that you knew would not be embraced by the person, or group, that you happened to be with at the time? Or that would cause them to raise an eyebrow about who you are, or what you believe?
Fear. It governs us like gravity governs the earth.

What is that Thomas Jefferson quote that we all seem to have heard, and like to think we take to heart, but, honestly, never do?
Oh yeah, “All tyranny really needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”

Does that remind anybody of what’s going on today?
In our Culture? In our Government?

Just asking.

Pride Of The Irish

2010-03-17T08:34:00.000-07:00

They call it Saint Patricks day
but I can’t see where the man did me
no good.
Who made him a saint
anyway?

Is that something like
an uncle?

Just because he wore a big hat,
carried a long staff,
was white, had a beard
and drove some weird snakes
outa town
don’t mean nothin’
where I live.

Sounds to me like
he must have been insane,
or somethin’.
Besides,
he’d prob’ly get arrested
if they caught him doin’ that
today.

Chica, the Dog

2010-03-13T05:52:00.000-08:00

Starting out, I have to say I recognize that listening to someone talk about their own dog is not much different from listening to a parent talking about their child, or even showing slides of the family vacation. If you’re not intimately acquainted with the object of affection, or if you weren’t there, you’re probably going to be bored with hearing about it. “My little Amber is the cutest, smartest, most unique child I’ve ever known. She’s only a year old, and she can already count to three.” Never mind that little Amber is actually the only child the parent has ever really known. But, it is almost impossible to separate those sentiments from the larger reality of who little Amber, or in this case, Chica, actually is. So, if you don’t want to hear about my dog this would be a good place to stop reading.

Chica is a one-year-old Doberman. She is more than our family pet, she is an enormous part of our family, and is treated as such, with love, with kindness, with appreciation, and with respect. My wife and I do everything we can to see that her needs are met. Her primary needs, like those of people, are for love, acceptance, trust, some exercise, and a consistency in meeting those needs. Oh yeah, and of course, some snacks and a good meal.

I get mad at her sometimes, and I am elated with her at other times. She is young, and still a puppy, she is finding her way, but Chica is also a mirror. Plain and simple, she mirrors life around her. I don’t think she knows that about herself, but we certainly see it clearly. And in this case, my wife and I are the life that is around her. She is a check and balance system for our own behavior, and for our attitude. At home, when we are excited about something, she is excited with us. When we are calm, she is calm as well. When we are concerned about something, she shares that concern, and even magnifies it. She goes on hyper alert, and pushes vigilance to the max. When we are content, she is generally satisfied; she is at her most docile, her most agreeable, and yes, her most obedient. When we are unhappy, she is a little unruly, undisciplined, and, yes, unsatisfied. We try not to be unhappy, because unhappiness is not good for us, but we try even harder because we know that our unhappiness is not good for her either.

Because we live alone, when other people, or animals, are thrown into the mix, a whole different dynamic is created, one that Chica is not as used to, and that makes for a more awkward, and challenging, environment for her. She does mirror that environment as well, but we have less control over the big picture, and thus, less influence on her demeanor. As she gets older, however, we are finding that she is becoming better suited to dealing with change, and better able to remain more independent of its sway.

Where I am, where my wife is, where we are, that is where Chica wants to be, always. She will ride in the truck with us for hours, just to be with us. She will lay on her bed in the luggage compartment behind the seats, quietly, calmly, waiting for us to return from whatever it is we’re doing. Upon our return to the truck there is only gladness, there is a brightness in her eyes, there is only joy. This is not an anthropomorphic projection of mine, it is the reality of this creature, this companion, this giver of pleasure, and of life.
Chica never asks for much; she only wants to play sometimes, or go for a walk, or be petted or brushed. Sometimes she wants to snuggle her head in a warm lap. Who am I to deny her these pleasures, especially when it gets returned ten-fold.

This dog, I recognize, is a gift from the invisible hand of God. She was given to meet some of the needs in our own lives; some unspoken, and even unknown, needs. She did not just happen into our lives. And even if she appeared to have ‘just happened’ by, it would be very clear by now, that our connection is no coincidence. She is a creature, perhaps not unlike your own pet, who brings with her a certain necessity that we be at our best, that we be aware of her, that we be conscious of her feelings.

If we take Chica’s needs to heart, if we consider her, if we really, truly see her, we will also be seeing the best in, and of, ourselves.

“My dog is the cutest, smartest, most unique animal I’ve ever known. She’s only a year old, and she can already count to three.”
Now, if you have an extra minute, I’d like to show you some slides of my family vacation.

The Honesty Of Anger

2010-03-10T09:27:00.000-08:00

Two neighbors. I’ll call them Neighbor #1, and Neighbor #2.
Neighbor #1 presented himself as a good, church-going, righteous man who was all about being neighborly. And so did his wife. Neighbor #2 presented himself as a regular guy who happened to be my neighbor. Neighbor #1, and his wife, talked about how good, and how righteous they were, and ‘their church this’, and ‘their church that’; and ‘the Lord this’, and ‘the Lord that’, while neighbor #2 helped me move a log.

Neighbor #2 showed his neighborliness by seeking to accommodate, as best he could, the expectations of the obstinate, narcissistic, and manipulative, neighbor #1. Neighbor #1 exploited, leveraged, and extorted the good nature of neighbor #2. As neighbor #2 began to see the true nature of neighbor #1, and hold his ground against it, neighbor #1, and his wife, began frequently mentioning ‘the advice of their attorney’. “Our church this, our church that, the Lord this, the Lord that, and yes, our attorney this, our attorney that”. Seems incongruous, but, maybe that’s just me!

Meanwhile, neighbor #2 was quietly improving, and trying to make right, a situation that, inadvertently, affected me. Neighbor #1 continued to manipulate, and attempt to control, everything about that same situation that he possibly could, to his own benefit, I might add. Neighbor #2 just shook his head at the nastiness of neighbor #1.

Neighbor #1, the ‘righteous’ man, came to me to get me on his side of the supposed ‘misunderstanding’. He lied to me with the very first words out of his mouth, and continued lying as he kept talking. I listened patiently, and as he continued to paint himself in a most favorable but, actually, quite deceitful, light, it reminded me of something I remembered reading somewhere in the Bible.
“Your righteousness is like filthy rags.”

When I finally chose to speak I told him exactly who he is, what he is, what I think of him, and why I will have nothing to do with him in the future.
Then I threw him off my land, and told him to never come back.

He is not an honest man, and I do not intend to entertain his disingenuousness throughout the future.
I take to heart many of those valuable historical parables so many of us were raised with, and this one in particular.
“Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
No matter how many times they might mention God, or their church.

If he were in trouble, or in need, yes, I would offer him assistance.
He is a fellow traveler on this planet, and our commission as humans is to love one another.
But sometimes love requires that a situation be dealt with directly, that one not protect another’s fraudulent position. Sometimes love requires taking the more difficult stand.
And yes, sometimes love requires the honesty of anger.

My Fathers Desk

2010-03-03T15:20:00.000-08:00

I have my fathers desk. He gave it to me when it became apparent that he would never be using it again. My dad has gotten very old. It’s an old desk too, an old school teachers desk; ironic, because my dad was never really a teacher. Didn’t have the patience for it. There is a lot of wear and tear on this desk. That’s one of the things I like about it. I also like that it was his desk. I don’t like new things very much. They lack depth and character. Old things always contain a lot of interesting assimilation. Assimilation is the process of becoming part of, or more like, something greater. This desk is greater than it was when it was made. It has a lot of living engrained in its finish, and in its wood.

Yes, this was my fathers desk. There are scratches on the face of the center drawer. My fathers belt buckle left its mark there over the years, carving his initials, as it were, into this once formidable tree. My father gave me the belt buckle also. It’s the head of an eagle, with eyes to pierce the deepest fear one might still secretly embrace. I have yet to find a belt to do it justice, but I will. There’s a ring on the desk-top where my father set his coffee cup every morning, and another one where he set his beer, a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon, every afternoon; another one, still, where he kept his Gin and Tonic in the evening. I am conscious of putting my coffee cup on the same ring that he did. There’s some kind of psychic connection to him when I do. I’m also conscious of leaving the Gin ring just as it is, fully worn well into the grain of my fathers own history.

The finish on the desktop is rubbed thin where he, habitually, rested his forearms and elbows, the sheen having long ago gone from gloss to matt without intention. It makes me wonder what the sleeves of his shirts and sweaters ended up looking like after all those years. There are many scratches from untold, and unknown, accidents, some other marks and grooves as well, maybe from the carelessness of inebriation, or compulsive digging and tapping, lost in creative thought, or lost, even deeper, in an endless sea of paperwork. The scars of battle with the outer world, and from wrestling, persistently, with his solitary inner self.

When this desk was made they made a thousand others like it, but through the years it has become the only one of its kind.
Maybe some day one of my sons will be able to say, “This was my fathers desk. This desk is greater than it was when it was made. It has a lot of living engrained in its finish, and in its wood.”

Life Is A Three Act Play

2010-03-01T06:13:00.000-08:00

Life has a beginning, a middle, and an end. We tend to think of life as a one-act play, but actually, we’re born, we live, and we die. Those, I believe, are three separate acts. If we include the Beyond, there are four. We tend not to see the ‘born’ part as a segment of our life, nor do we see the ‘die’ part that way. We only see the ‘life’ part as significant to living. I see all three of these acts as separate and independent of each other, but fundamentally intertwined with one another, and equally significant as well.

It’s important that we are able to see, and consider, each. If we are not in touch with being born, we are, most likely, not in touch with having purpose for our life. Everything that is created, made, built, fashioned, or constructed in any way, is done so with a purpose in mind. Humans, as creators, never make something without purpose. Even the most abstract idea, fashioned physically with paint, clay, sticks, plastic, or whatever, is created with a certain purpose for its existence. You might say, “No, I made that thing just to see if I could make it”, or something like that. Well, that is purposeful, and its existence is what gives meaning to you for having made it. Furthermore, its very existence gives it its own purpose. It has purpose simply by the fact that it was created with a purpose. The fact that it has dimension, shape, color, scent, or some other means of interacting with you is what gives you satisfaction. So, one might say that your satisfaction is its intended purpose. It is important that one discover one’s purpose for living. But, it can only be realized by understanding ones purpose for being born.

Living is the second act. It is where the first act finds its significance. It is where the author of the script feeds and clothes his creation. It is where the creation finds its legs, where the intent of the author plays itself out. It is where the purpose of the first act is revealed. It is the place where the creation develops itself, in keeping with the creator’s intent; or, unfortunately, it could also be the part of the play where the whole thing wanders hopelessly off course, resulting in the author no longer even being able to recognize his own work, a life whose own purpose has been, tragically, left undiscovered.

Without the beginning, the middle would have no context, or cogent sensibility. The second act of life is the transition between being born, and dying, but, in addition, it is also the continuation of being born.

Death is usually thought of as the End of life. However, the process of dying is actually the end of life. It is the third act in the play. Death is the beginning of the afterlife. Dying is the process of closing out life, as we know it. Even those who die suddenly, and unexpectedly, go through the process of dying, they are just, most likely, relatively unaware of the gradual transition. A person who dies in an auto accident, for instance, didn’t know he was going to die at that moment, but the process had been in play for quite some time. It involved a complex series of decisions, and events, that conspired together to lead up to the accident. That series of events constitutes the third act, the last act. It could have been playing out for weeks, months, or even years. The point where a person reaches the peak of his existence is the point where that person begins the process of dying. No one knows where, or when, that peak is actually reached. There is no feeling of being at the zenith of one’s life, there is no reasoning that enables us to know that ‘it’s all down hill from here’. No, it happens to all of us, at a different age, and it happens unaware.

The question I have about this three-act play is, “Will its ultimate completion illicit, within one’s self, disappointment, indifference, or a quiet satisfaction?” And, “Will it illicit, from the Author, silence, moderate approval, or perhaps, even, the much coveted acknowledgment of a life well lived, a job well done?”

And what of the beyond? Well, I don’t really know about that. But, to quote myself,
“Life is where they keep you while they’re making up your room”.

I Have A Good Wife

2010-02-25T08:31:00.000-08:00

There’s a difference between being a good woman, and being a good wife. I have known many good women over the years who would not necessarily be very good wives. But, to be a good wife one has to first be a good woman, the two are very inter-related.

I’m not an expert on wives, or women, for that matter. But I am an expert on what applies to, and relates to, me. My wife certainly fits well within those parameters. And she is a good wife. Some women consider being described as ‘a good wife’ to be an insult. I suppose that’s because they, myopically, choose to relate to the description as the totality of what they are seen to be. But I don’t think anyone ever meant to describe their own wife as ‘only’ a good wife, and nothing else, at least not anybody you’d really care to know. I think being a good wife is one of the highest callings a woman can aspire to, not necessarily the highest calling, but surely one of the highest. I would say the same about a good husband, but I don’t have one of those. I try to be one of those, but I’ve never had one of those, so I can’t really speak to that.

I’m not really sure I can even define ‘a good wife’, let alone describe, what makes a good wife. I think a man just knows it when he has one. My wife and I don’t agree on everything all of the time, we don’t see eye to eye on everything, and we don’t even necessarily like all of the same things. We are frequently in good moods at different times, in bad moods at different times, in unpredictable moods even, and, consequently, we don’t always find ourselves to be in sync with one another. But I guess not being in sync is the byproduct of two individuals with different physical, emotional, and psychic chemistries. Sometimes we are in sync. Being in sync with one’s husband, however, is not really the primary criteria for being a good wife. That much I do know. I think being a good wife has more to do with wanting to be a good wife, than in knowing how to be one. I think it has to do with the intent of the heart.

I am fortunate enough to be married to a woman whose intentions are born in, and of, a very good heart.

Avatar, The Movie

2010-02-22T08:33:00.000-08:00

This is not a movie review. It is an impression of a creative endeavor.

I can see why ‘Avatar’ was nominated for nine Academy Awards. It’s a visually stunning masterpiece. Yes, it’s a masterpiece visually, but the movie itself is really nothing more than an expensive propaganda poster intended to insult and demean America, and the American military. And had it not been visually stunning it probably would have still been nominated for its politics. Hollywood loves this self-loathing, America-hating political pablum, but claims that the awards are given on merit alone, that there are no social politics involved whatsoever.
And the sun doesn’t set in the West.

I saw ‘Avatar’ yesterday. If I’m not mistaken, it took eight years to make, and cost about 250 million dollars, and sometime before I even get this blog posted, it will break the all-time record for dollars earned, breaking the record set by ‘Titanic’, which was also made by James Cameron. It’s been reported that many people leave the movie feeling dizzy, disoriented, and depressed. Although I understand why so many leave depressed, I just left angry. The movie’s feelings-based politics, and social ideology, were insulting to anybody with the courage to subjugate their feelings to the reality, and truth, of historical context.

Let’s see, according to the film, the American military has invaded, plundered, and permanently occupied almost every other under-developed country and territory on the face of the earth; and now they have begun to plunder the wealth of indigenous populations on other planets as well. Of course, every other civilization on earth, and in the universe, is comprised of sensitive, loving, kind and compassionate people; enlightened people who just want to live in peace. It is only America that is ignorant. It is only America who oppresses, enslaves, and slaughters the innocent. It is only America who intends to dominate every living creature, and to subjugate them to its own will. It is only America that is too stupid to learn anything of value about itself.

Well, I remember thinking the same thing . . . . . . . . . when I was about fourteen or fifteen years old. I’d lapped up all the anti-America/anti-military propaganda that was floating around the fringes of my world at that time. I was anxious to believe it. After all, I had an oppressive father also, so it suited me well to extrapolate that oppression, that re-pression, and place it squarely on the shoulders of my country (Big Daddy), and embed it in the brutal fist that he, supposedly, so indiscriminately wielded (The Military).

But you know what? I grew up over the years, something James Cameron , obviously has, as of yet, failed to do; and his adolescent ideology is perpetually reinforced by the Hollywood community. In fact, they probably consider him to be heroic for having had the ‘courage’ to make such a ‘bold’, political statement. Courage? Bold? Please! It’s bold, and it’s courageous, in today’s world, to actually tell the truth. See how long he’d be a Hollywood darling if he were ever to do that.
Hollywood is dishonest, but no less dishonest than anybody else who clings to, and propagates, ideology over logic, reason, experience, and historical accountability.

Yes, I grew up, I read history, I listened (and listen) to the wisdom and perspective of my elders, and I research what I don’t know until I’m satisfied that I’m no longer as stupid as Mr. Cameron still seems to be today.

America is, quite simply, the greatest defender of the oppressed, and the greatest contributor to the welfare of mankind, in the history of recorded civilization. If you don’t believe me, take your own walk back through history. And should anybody tell you different, it is your moral imperative to insist that they do their own honest research, rather than simply continuing to parrot the shallow bias of the ignorant, and the misinformed.

Mr. Cameron thinks nothing of indoctrinating a whole new generation of impressionable young people to his own myopic, and dishonest perspective. This, from a man who has become filthy rich plundering the wallets, but now the minds, of Americans with his movies. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you? Talk about self-loathing? Talk about a guilt complex driving an ideology? I feel sorry for the man.

Yes, Mr. Cameron probably should win an Academy Award for Avatar’s visual brilliance, and for other creative aspects of the movie, but the script should be acknowledged for what it is. It could have been written by a thirteen-year-old girl who was mad at her daddy for hurting her precious feelings.
Creative thinking? Or shameless Propaganda?

You say, "C’mon, it’s just a movie."
And I say, “Oh really?"

I Wish Him All The Best

2010-02-19T09:03:00.000-08:00

I just finished watching the Tiger apology on TV.
I’m sure many of you saw it as well.

I have been critical of Tiger Woods. He has been a man that I have never respected because of his Diva, arrogant, egocentric behavior on the golf course. I have respected his dedication, and the hard work he devoted to his craft, but I never respected him as a person, or as a man.

Until Now.

I have always felt that people of privilege should hold themselves to a higher standard of behavior, even, than the rest of us, if for no other reason than as an acknowledgment of gratitude for the elevated, and comfortable, position they have been fortunate enough to inhabit. Humility, rather than arrogance, ought to be the coat they choose to wear every day of their lives. It seems that Tiger Woods has finally begun the process of dressing himself in such a coat.

I listened carefully to the things he said this morning, and I watched his body language.
He rang true for me. Not that that matters to anybody, but it matters to me. I would rather see one man find redemption, than see a thousand men find riches and fame. There is no wealth that compares to living honestly with one’s self. I believe that Tiger Woods finally understands that.

I was wrong about him not needing to apologize. We didn't need it, but he did.
I understand that now.

I wish him all the best.

Mental Chronicles 4

2010-02-18T04:35:00.000-08:00

* If you haven’t heard the new version of “We Are The World”, or seen the video, I would encourage you to check it out. I’m not real big on these ‘gathering of superstars’ benefits because I think many of the artists would just like to advance their own careers, and be seen as heroes. And there is also the issue of where the money actually goes. But there is a soft spot in my heart for all the contributors who were in it for the actual benefit of the Haitian people, rather than for their own self-aggrandizement. Since it’s impossible for anyone to know exactly who is in it for what reason, I’m choosing to give them all the benefit of the doubt, and honor their participation with a great big acknowledgement of thanks, and appreciation.

But, let’s hope the money raised through this song, and video, will be managed responsibly so that it affects the lives of those most in need, rather than just lining the pockets of Haitian government hacks and phony relief agencies.

And, by the way, the song is, again, a remarkable blending of old and new artists, with a myriad of styles represented, enhancing the power of the song, without getting in the way of its message.

Having said that, I must say I do miss Springsteen, and Dylan, from the original version.

* As some of you know, I like to watch the auditions of American Idol. I stop watching when the competition gets to Hollywood and everybody starts pretending that they totally support their competition.
But I remember one young American Idol wannabe’s audition, who, before her song, stated that she thinks she ‘deserves to be’ the next American Idol because if she were chosen she thinks she’d make ‘a good role model’. She went on to say, “You know, I’d recycle, and I’d care about the people in Africa, and stuff like that.”
Huh! I was under the impression that I was watching American Idol,
not the Miss America pageant.

* Tiger in the Woods. Yeah, Tiger’s still in the woods, but maybe not quite as lost in them now as he has been. It’s all over the news that he’s going to read a ‘statement of apology’ at a press conference on Friday. A ‘statement of apology’? Tiger never did anything to me. What does he have to apologize to me for? Has he ever done anything to you? Who the hell is he actually intending to apologize to, anyway? Far as I can tell, he owes an apology to his wife, which he’s probably already done, and will continue to do for about the next thirty-five years. I’d sure like to see him just keep his mouth shut about his personal life, but I’m also sure there are a lot of people who’d love to see him cry in a public apology. I think there’s something wrong with those people.
If Tiger wants to apologize to anybody other than his wife, maybe he should apologize to all those other golfers he’s been competing against while all puffed up on HGH, and other illegal performance enhancing drugs.
Yeah, that would be an apology that means something.

* And speaking of sports, I am not one who supports the idea of women competing against men in, what have traditionally been, ‘male’ sports. Not because I am opposed to women in sports, but because I think women have an unfair advantage competing against men. Take NASCAR, and Danica Patrick, for example. It is quite common for drivers to bump each other out of position in a race, to aggressively jockey for position, and to exploit the weaknesses of the other drivers. All fine and good, that’s the nature of the sport. But it is embedded in a man’s DNA to treat women differently in competition than they would treat each other. The NASCAR drivers must be more ‘gentlemanly’ in their approach to Ms. Patrick. To use the same tactics on her that they use on each other would cause them to be seen as bullies. They know it. She knows it. Everybody knows it. The men are competing with one hand tied behind their back when she’s in the race.
Do you think Danica Patrick is going to be ‘gentlemanly’ in her approach to the other male drivers? I don’t think so.
Unfair competition.
Oh, and by the way, I noticed that at the NASCAR race last week at Daytona, she was handing out semi-naked posters of herself in suggestive poses to the other drivers just before the start of the race.
Brilliant strategy, don’tcha think?

* Just wondering who you think is the better person?
The person who sets a fairly high degree of moral and ethical standards for themselves, tries their best to live up to them, but because of their own weakness and fallibility, sometimes falls short, resulting in being labeled as a hypocrite?
Or:
The person who sets minimally low standards to live by, never failing to measure up to them, assuring that they will not be labeled as a hypocrite?

* My eyes can reflect what another’s eyes seek to project, or they can reflect what’s actually in there. These days I always choose the latter. It does no one any good to just reinforce an illusion.

* The Climate Mafia?
Criminals, all of them. Global Warming, the biggest secular-religious/economic fraud ever perpetrated on the American people, the world, really!
I warned you that it was really just about your money, and, of course,
your allegiance to the ‘cause’.
Again, I say, “Vote them all out of office. Every one of them.”
I’m still waiting for Al Gore to return that Academy award.
Oh yeah, and that Nobel ‘Peace’ prize.

When do you think that’s gonna happen?

* Common sense is not very common.
It used to be, but not so much any more.

*The Olympics.
How bout broadcasting them live so that a viewer can actually care about the outcome of a particular event? In lieu of that, they ought to make them the naked Olympics. At least people would stay up for that.

* AVATAR, The Movie.
The avaTar and Feathering of America, and the American military.
(More on this shameful, and exploitive, fiasco later).

_______________________________________________________________

New Segment of "Wilderness", the Novel posted 2/17/10.
Access it by clicking on "Wilderness"
on the Home page of The Old Coyote website.

Thought Casserole

2010-02-13T07:19:00.000-08:00

I’ve probably never had an original thought.
But, most likely, I think of different things than you do.
And that makes my thoughts worth expressing. The same is true of yours.
You think of different things than me.

I know a lot of smart people, but I’m not sure I know anybody who’s ever expressed an original thought. Those kinds of thoughts are hard to come by. Every once in a while, what I think is one, will emerge, and I’ll pause to consider it, thinking it actually might be mine, but really, inside, I know it’s not. I know it must have escaped from the ‘Vault of Original Thought’ somewhere along the way, and I picked up on it, or it picked up on me. I’m not sure which.

Thinking is like one’s relationship to color. In determining what color somebody might like to paint something, that person will scan his memory for the colors he has seen before, the colors he is already aware of, and then he’ll choose one that expresses his intent. We paint with the colors already on our mental pallet. Occasionally we’ll ‘create’ a new color, but it is always the result of mixing two or more colors that are already in existence for us.

Our thoughts are most always built the same way. They are created from what we already know. We pick up thoughts from many people, and from many different places. We recycle them in our daily mental process. We mix many of them together as well, but the resultant thinking is always a product of those pre-existing thoughts. Some could argue that the ‘thought casserole’ is, in itself, now, original thought.
But I don’t think so.

Maybe the one original thought I HAVE had is that ‘I’ve probably never had an original thought’.

Not that any of this matters.

_______________________________________________________________

Internal Congestion

2010-02-10T12:00:00.000-08:00

Writing takes me out of myself. Out of my internal congestion, you might say.
Now, those of you who know me would probably agree that it’s a good thing for me to get out of myself. I wouldn’t say that I’m ‘into’ myself, per-se, it’s just that I do live ‘within’ myself. That would be a very comfortable place for some people to live, but not necessarily for me. Kind of scary in there sometimes, kind of confusing at other times. I might even say ‘exasperating’. But, nevertheless, writing takes me out of myself.
And that’s all I’m going to say about me.

Reminds me of an old joke, or it might have been a scene from Seinfeld, I can’t remember. But, a man and a woman are sitting together having a ‘conversation’. The man is talking about himself incessantly, while the woman is just listening. After going on and on about himself, oblivious to the feelings of the woman, for what seemed, to her, like an eternity, he finally looks at the woman and says, “Well that’s enough about me. What do YOU think about me?”

It’s good to have something that takes us out of ourselves. Some people have a particular hobby, avocation, interest, or practice that gets them away from the, otherwise, pressing concerns of the day, or of their lives. Some people have several, and that’s great, but others have none, and seem to be confined by their own lack of interest in anything but, maybe, television. Television seems to take us out of ourselves, to be sure, but studies show that too much TV actually causes stress and anxiety, rather than providing the much-needed escape, or relief, we so often seek. The illusion is that it makes us think of it as escape, when it’s really not. Of course, it also depends on the kind of programming we choose to participate in.
So how much TV is too much TV? I don’t know. I can only answer that for myself, and I’ve already said that I’m not going to say anything more about myself. I don’t want to end up being in that ‘conversation’ joke.

Getting out of ourselves is increasingly important in these trying, and uncertain, times. Different people have different options, but getting outdoors is an option most of us have, and it is, perhaps, the most renewing of all the choices we might have available to us. Almost doesn’t matter what the outdoor activity is, even just a walk, feeling the sunshine, the wind, or the rain. Seeing the sky, the blue sky of daylight, the deep sky, the boundless expanse of space, the clouds crawling quietly across eternity like foam adrift on an open sea. Or the night sky, the dark sky, pierced by a trillion stars, the Milky Way, the Moon, maybe a Comet streaking solo through the Celestial congestion way out there. Just to sit, and look, and see, and imagine, to reach outside ourselves. To touch a place beyond our own routine. It’s always good.
And it always helps.

So, let me just say one thing about myself.
I got out of myself with these few minutes of writing.
Now I’m going outside to take just a little bit of my own advice.

Love

2010-01-26T10:35:00.001-08:00

I was watching a movie the other night. I would not call it a particularly good movie, in fact, I won’t even bother to mention the title because it is not really the point of these thoughts. However, there was a line in the film that got me thinking. I know, you’re probably wondering, “OK, what’s he thinking about now?” But here’s the deal. One of the characters was saying that he had heard from several Hospice workers he knew that, when on their deathbed, the two questions the dying seemed to ask themselves were, 1) “Have I ever loved anybody?” And 2) “Has anybody ever loved me?”
Interesting questions.

Interesting because they are the kind of questions that, I think, we would seem to take for granted. “Of course I’ve loved somebody, and of course somebody has loved me.” Seems like a no-brainer, the kinds of questions one could answer without really even having to think about it. But are they really?

If love is so prevalent, and so common in an individual, why is it that one of the two deathbed questions just happens to be “Have I ever loved anybody?”

To even address such a question, I suppose, one might think they have to first define the concept of Love. And that begs the question, “Should Love be defined according to accepted religious and historical definitions?, should it be defined by a predetermined standard of actions?, according to a personal and intimate feeling?, or even according to what I want Love to mean?” Should Love even be defined at all? Now granted, on one’s deathbed one is not necessarily going to analyze the meaning of love. In fact, I think that in such a unique situation one would know intuitively, instinctively even, the answer to such questions. The ‘meaning’ of Love would probably not even be a consideration. The ‘reality’ of Love, however, would be. But the idea of Love should be a personal consideration for the rest of us; those with time left on earth, and I believe it should be a consideration long before we ever reach those final moments of our lives.

So, is Love an intellectual concept? Is it an action? Is Love a feeling? Is it an elusive, and esoteric phenomena? You might think it is, more likely than not, all of that and more. I personally believe that Love is the embodiment of the Divine, which cannot be defined by us, but rather, must be defined, internally, for us.
But that’s just me.

“I love you” is thrown around these days like ecstasy at a late-night rave, like confetti on New Years Eve, like dust in a warm desert wind. But saying it does not necessarily enable it. Those words, spoken, are generally based on a feeling, a momentary, transitory feeling, and they do tend to, in my opinion, cheapen the very concept of love. In fact, friends, and family members even, will lie to you with one breath, and then say “I love you” with the next. It happens every day. “Love you brother” is a common social closure among friends; but without the commitment of the “I” at the beginning of the statement it is able to avoid being a dishonest proclamation while masquerading as honesty. Good friends and family members will use the “Love You” evasion as well. But sometimes, I acknowledge, the intention will be compromised out of fear, rather than for lack of sentiment.
Sad, but true.

“Love” is a very loaded concept, and a very uncertain proposition for most people. It is also an attribute we wish to identify with, whether we know what it really is, or not.
I think that is why people use the term so indiscriminately, and so carelessly.

Most people are afraid of what they don’t understand.
I think that most people are afraid of Love.

“Have I ever loved anybody? Has anybody ever loved me?”
That is something one cannot know about another,
something one can only ask themselves.

Only For Today

2010-01-21T13:41:00.000-08:00

Snow covers the ground today like hope clothes the faith of pilgrims. Icicles hang low from eaves left frozen overnight. My warm breath rises in the morning chill like prayer seeking the mind of God, or His ear, to be more exact. Trees droop heavy with the weight of change, the sky having quietly dumped its own burden when it became too much for its weakening arms to hold. Some of that load now left clinging to Pine branches high above the ground, wishing, like the sky, for a little relief of their own.

Gray skies threaten more of the miraculous, like the promise of adversity intended to challenge the resolve of men, like a rude intruder sent to awaken us from an inebriate slumber, or a bad neighbor hell-bent to test the depth of our humanity.

Footprints on the ground, a virgin shroud left undisturbed as of yet, but for those tracks expecting to be followed by some other creature on the next step up the food chain. I would follow them myself if I were lost and hungry. But I am not lost,
nor am I hungry.

It is a morning unlike any other, just as every one of us is truly different. And just as each day that arrives brings hope for the next, each breath we take is given as a prelude to the next, but without the promise, however, that another one will follow. We are here, in this place, in this time, only for today.

Only for now.

Such Unimaginable Happenstance

2010-01-14T14:55:00.001-08:00

Pray for the people of Haiti, particularly for the children who lost their parents,
and the parents who lost their children.

And while you’re at it, give some thought to the misdirected importance we give the privileged in our own county. Tell me that, in Gods eyes, there is not a broken, wounded, misplaced, or suffering child in Haiti that is not equally, or more, important than the spoiled royalty we serve with our money and adoration. Tell me that Michael Jackson’s life, or Anna Nicole Smith’s, or Farrah Faucet’s, for that matter, was of greater importance than was the baby of a poverty stricken mother whose shantytown shack has fallen down in shambles around her, her child lost to the rubble of such unimaginable happenstance.

Tell me that Pat Robertson, suggesting that the people of Haiti are cursed, implying that this tragedy was the judgment of God, is not blinded by his own reflection, and his own self-righteousness. Tell me that his life is more important than the innocent’s lost in Haiti. And I’ll tell you that I wouldn’t trade the life of one poor Haitian child for a thousand Pat Robertson’s, or a hundred Donald Trump’s, or a herd of other obnoxious celebrities with their tarnished brass treasures, their throbbing silver tongues, and their fancy gold dancing shoes.

Along with your prayers for the people of Haiti,
you might also want to send a check.

Dirty Little Secret

2010-01-13T10:29:00.000-08:00

I don’t normally write about my business dealings, or personal health issues, except maybe to illuminate a particular behavior, or to demonstrate some aspect or another of human nature. But I feel rather compelled to let you in on a situation I encountered yesterday in the course of attending to an illness I’ve been struggling with for the past two weeks. I’ve been laying low with a bronchial infection, which began as a mild cold, progressed to a persistent cough, and ultimately, became the bronchial infection that I ended up seeking treatment for. It’s a serious, but not life threatening condition, unless left untreated, in which case it could develop into pneumonia. I should have obtained a prescription of antibiotics earlier, but like many men do, I put it off until it became very apparent that I better do something about it. I’ve had this condition before, a couple of times over the years. Consequently I knew that I just needed the antibiotics to kill the infection and I’d be fine.

Like many, I belong to an HMO. I have a regular doctor within the company, and the corporation has computer records of all conditions and treatment I’ve received from them over the past many years. I emailed my doctor describing my symptoms, and asked her to write a prescription I could swing by and pick up. In response, she said she wanted me to come in for a visit. Although I knew what I had, and knew what I needed for treatment, she still insisted on scheduling an appointment. I guess she doesn’t want to put herself in jeopardy. OK, understandable. However, this particular HMO prides itself on the millions of dollars it spends on advertising suggesting that people take responsibility for their own health, in partnership with their doctor.

So, I’m paying my monthly premium to belong to the HMO, and now I’m charged a fee to visit the doctor, and when she sends me down to get chest Xrays (even though I knew I didn’t need them), they charge me another fee. I don’t really like that, but I guess I’m OK with it, sort of. However, when I go downstairs to the in-house pharmacy to pick up the medications the doctor ordered for me they want to charge me $120.00 for them. I said, “Excuse me.” The clerk said again, “That’ll be $120.00.” I kind of choked and responded, “Sorry, but I can’t afford that. I think that’s kind of outrageous.” And this is the remarkable part, and the reason for writing this blog. He says to me “OH, WELL, ACTUALLY I DON’T NEED TO CHARGE YOU THAT MUCH.” And then he says, “Let me go make a phone call. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” I’m left thinking, “You don’t need to charge me that much, but you were going to?” I’m beside myself. The pharmacy was full, about 150 people waiting for their prescriptions, so I went out and waited in the hallway. The clerk shuffled around some shelves for about five minutes, obviously just killing time. He didn’t know it, but I was watching him through the glass. He never did make a phone call, but then he called me back to the window and said, “OK, I got it all taken care of, that’ll be $72.00 now.” Just so you, my readers, understand what I’m saying here, they were going to charge me $50 more than they supposedly needed to. Dirty little secret. Of course my mind raced back over the years trying to get a sense of how often I’ve been charged more than I needed to be. Then I say to the clerk, “How much for just the antibiotic?” He says “$11.00,” and I said, “OK, I’ll just take those.”

I had to jump through a lot of hoops yesterday just to get the antibiotics I had initially asked for. It left me wondering, again, about the disingenuous practices of all these HMO’s. And if they were going to knock $50 off of the stated price of those medications, can you even begin to imagine what their profit margin must be? It’s got to be, not only obscene, but unconscionable as well. Reason in it’s self to be skeptical of all the drugs the industry is pushing on us, and doing their best to keep us dependent on.

Thrive?
Give me a break!

Question everything.

Parking Meters

2010-01-10T08:33:00.001-08:00

I’ve been thinking about Parking Meters.
Don’t ask me why. I just think about what presents itself.

So, let me see if I have this right. In the City, the taxpayers pay for the construction of the streets, their maintenance and repair. They pay for the installation and maintenance of the parking meters. They pay the salaries of the parking police who are employed to catch them parked with expired meters. They pay to park there, then they pay the expired meter fines (taxes) that can range up to a couple of hundred dollars, depending on the location and time of day.
The merchants pay taxes to the City for the privilege of doing business in the neighborhoods while the City discourages the citizens from doing business by installing parking meters to try and catch them staying too long in the store, or visiting other stores in the area.

Parking meters have always been an annoyance to people in the City, because of their inconvenience, but also because they are, essentially, nothing more than mechanical toll takers with permanent stainless steel smiles. Rather than an outstretched hand to collect your payment, they employ a convenient slot to gobble your coins or an electronic reader to collect your credit information. Now, the parking meters are not in existence so much for the quarters, or the debits, as they are for the fines that are generated by an individual’s oversight, forgetfulness, or unwillingness to return to feed them time and again. It’s in the City’s interest for the meter to run out on you. The City thrives on those fines. They would much rather hit you up for large fines than collect a routine handful of quarters.
This reality is proven out by the fact that if you get caught being a good Samaritan, feeding somebody else’s meter, the parking enforcer will still ticket the car parked in that space even though the extortion money (parking fee) has already been paid.

It’s not about the quarters. It’s never about the quarters.
It’s really about the fines. Works for them quite nicely.

Civil thievery at its finest.

The Hole We've Been Digging For Ourselves

2010-01-08T08:53:00.000-08:00

The hole we’ve been digging for ourselves is the hole we’ll eventually bury ourselves in.
Our society has gradually become so dismissive of the dishonest, inappropriate and reckless actions of one another that we find ourselves slowly burying ourselves alive in our own behaviors. If it seems to you that things have gotten too far out of control, it’s only because things have gotten too far out of control. By ‘out of control’, I’m not speaking of being independent of the control of others; I’m referring to the alarming loss of self-control so evident in the lives, manners, and actions of so many, including our supposed leaders and ‘role models’. The younger generation is mimicking the behavior of the older generation who in turn are mimicking the behavior of the younger generation. And no one is willing to take responsibility for their own influence. I think its time that adults (and I mean anyone over the age of 20) begin to take a hard look at the world they’re creating for the rest of those coming up behind them. It’s time for everybody to just grow the f*#k up.

We’ve reached a point in our denial that we no longer even entertain the idea that violence in our culture is influenced by the pervasive reach of violent movies, music videos and video games. Or at least we won’t admit it. Like good ‘progressives’ we blame the violence on poverty, and on ‘social injustice’, rather than on the actual greed driven purveyors of the violence, or our own insatiable appetite for it. We will not even accept that the alarming sexuality being exhibited by children is influenced by the pornography being circulated in commercials, movies, videos and Internet porn sites. In fact, we seem to love that children are indulging our voyeuristic instincts, and entertaining us sexually, both in public, and in the privacy of our homes. We want to dismiss the sexualizing of young people as their own ‘self-discovery’. Rock stars, celebrities, commercial advertisers, and other ethical sellouts continue to celebrate drugs and alcohol as if they were some kind of path to enlightenment. They care nothing about the repercussions of such influential actions. They say “I’m not a role model”. And in fact, they shouldn’t be role models, but people, and young people in particular, do copy their style and behavior. And everybody knows that, including, and especially, those claiming to not be role models. Too many compromised people are hiding behind art and celebrity these days, rather than confronting their own personal failures honestly, and with dignity. There is too much money to be made climbing the celebrity social ladder of success on the backs of the weak and disconnected. Take another toke, crack another brew, another swig of Jack, another pharmaceutical. Just relax, and don’t you worry. “Every little things gonna be alright.”
They dismiss their own pathetic example with the cliché that “Everybody makes their own decisions”. Or even worse, “I am not my brothers keeper”.
I’ve got news for you. We ARE our brother’s keeper. And unless we re-embrace that spiritual, and universal, sensibility, we will all go down together.

What we engage in, we perpetuate. What we allow, we encourage. What we permit, we promote. And what we condone, we own.

Accountability for each of us begins with a personal moment of enlightenment. We can be educated about a concept, a principal, a law of nature, or a behavior, but education is only the first step in the complex process of accountability. Education does not impact each recipient the same. As with any specific education, each of us will understand its importance, and its significance, in our own time, and on our own level. And we will understand it with a unique frame of reference as well, according to our own experience. With personal behavior, (unlike with the law, or unless it has been prohibited by a parent, a boss, or someone else in a position of authority over us) we are actually not responsible for it unless we know it to be detrimental to ourselves, or others, unless we understand the relationship between our behavior and its broader implication. How many times have we heard a teenager (anyone really) say, “I’m not hurting anyone but myself?” But once we do understand the dynamics of that relationship we become accountable, fully accountable. There are no more excuses.

Education can come from without, or it can come from within. The external world tries to educate us to the dangers of certain behaviors and indulgences, but the outer world, by its very nature, is easy to dismiss. After all, that world is very hypocritical. It tolerates, even encourages, certain behaviors from some people, but not from others.
The inner world, however, cannot be dismissed. Education rooted in the conscience of an individual can be ignored by that individual, and it can be deflected, but it cannot be denied. Once it’s there, it’s embedded. It is the moment of enlightenment. And, from that moment on, the recipient of that enlightenment becomes accountable for their actions. Fear of that accountability is one of the major reasons why so many people tend to keep their head thoroughly, and sufficiently, clouded with a myriad of intoxicants and other distractions. They may not want to listen to that particular internal voice, but it’s there. And it remains in place through every pathetic attempt to silence it.

To ultimately embrace conscience, however, is to pass from the over-extended, quivering, and seductive, grasp of adolescence into the strong and responsible arms of adulthood.
At whatever age it may finally occur.

My Continuing New Years Revolutions: 2010

2010-01-01T09:42:00.000-08:00

This is a personal inventory of the New Years Revolutions I made for 2009.
I’ve graded myself to see where I stand. To my way of thinking, there’s no reason to make new revolutions
as long as I can keep making excuses for not keeping
the ones that I’ve already made.

#1. Stop writing.
I’ve learned that whenever I write something I will undoubtedly offend someone. It is not possible to have an opinion in today’s world without crashing somebody’s PC party.
And reaching a conclusion about something is even more discouraged. Implies malice of forethought. I have to keep reminding myself, “don’t think, just be quiet and do my yoga”.

** Well, I didn’t do so well at this one since I’m still writing, I’m still thinking,
and I haven’t even started doing my yoga.
Grade: F

#2. Keep my opinions to myself.
After all, everybody has a right to they’re own confusion. . . .
I mean conclusion.

** I have to say “I’ve become a little less opinionated this year,
but you’d never know it because I’ve kept fewer of those opinions to myself.”
Grade: D-

#3. Listen to others.
It’s been said that “people don’t listen, they just wait to talk.”
OK, I’m listening, but the silence is deafening.

** I thought I’d been listening to others better this year,
but since I can’t remember anything anybody actually said,
maybe I wasn’t really listening after all.
Grade: D

#4. Trust our leaders.
Oh wait, I already tried that. Bad idea. Never mind.

** Well, I failed at the “Trust our Leaders” part,
But I did good on the “Never mind” part.
Grade: C-

#5. Trust myself.
But if I were the incumbent I’d vote myself out.

** If I knew who I was it would be easier for me to ‘Trust myself’,
but I don’t, so I decided to trust you to trust me instead.
Grade: C

#6. Allow people their own reality. Don’t expect them to share mine.
People are fond of saying “Perception is reality”, but actually, I think reality is reality.
We tailor our perception to make it fit our own pre-conceptions.
Damn, there I go again.

** Well, I allowed people to have their own perceptions, and consequently,
their own realities, but look at the world now.
I’ll never do that again.
Grade: C+

#7. Have a good look in the mirror.

** On second thought, if I were me, which I’m not, I wouldn’t advise that.
I had a good look in the mirror, and decided I just need a better mirror.
Grade: B-

#8. Stop trying to change the world.

Consider for a moment that the world might be perfectly content
drowning in violence, greed, hatred and deceit.
Just enjoy a good DVD and don’t worry about it.

** I have stopped trying to change the world.
Now I just try and remember to change my socks.
Grade: B

#9. Make more ice cubes.

With global warming breathing down our necks like a dragon, you can never store up too many ice cubes for the future. Get more freezers if you need to.

** I have ten acres covered in snow and ice.
if you were, as of yet, unable to make your own ice,
you’d be welcome to have some of mine.
Grade: B+

#10. Never take your own advice.

** Why would I even think of doing that?
Grade: A

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I don’t think most people really want to make changes.
I think they just want to make resolutions.
I think that those who want to make changes just make them.
They don’t wait for New Years Eve.